Sigmund Freud believed that psychoanalysis is contraindicated for stupid or narcissistic people, psychopaths and perverts, and success can only be achieved with those who understand what morality is and seek treatment themselves. As French researcher Elisabeth Roudinesco writes, if we take his statements literally, it turns out that such treatment is suitable only for “educated people who are capable of dreaming and fantasizing.” But in practice, the patients he received at his home on Berggasse in Vienna did not always meet these criteria. T&P publishes an excerpt from the book “Sigmund Freud in His Time and Ours,” which was published by the Kuchkovo Pole publishing house.

It is known that the patients Freud accepted as “sick” before and after 1914 came to him for treatment to one degree or another under duress: these are all the women mentioned in “Studies on Hysteria”, these are Ida Bauer, Margarita Csonka and many others. Under such conditions, the likelihood that the treatment would be “successful” was small, especially when it came to young ladies who rebelled against the established order in the family, in their eyes Freud appeared as a lustful doctor or an accomplice of their parents. Conversely, patients who came to Berggasse for analysis of their own free will were generally satisfied. Hence the paradox: the more the treatment depended on the patient’s free desire, coming from himself, the more successful it was. And Freud concluded from this that the patient must fully accept all conditions, otherwise no psychoanalytic experience is possible. It is necessary to clarify that if the person being analyzed wanted to become an analyst himself, then the treatment then had a much greater chance of becoming therapeutic, then scientific, because the patient was directly involved in the matter itself. As a result, and without exception, the treatment, completely completed, that is, from the point of view of the person who turned to Freud, the most satisfactory - it was a treatment that, on the one hand, was voluntary, on the other, presupposed the most active participation of the patient *.

* This is precisely because psychoanalysts did not want to compare their cases with those that Freud did not report, and they could not give a real assessment of his practice. All other mixed movements - Kleinians, Lacanians, post-Lacanians, Ferencists, etc. - were satisfied with commentary; such is the canonical corpus, the story of Anna O. and the “cases” given in the “Studies on Hysteria”, as well as in the famous “Five Cases”, of which only three can be regarded as treatment. This left a free field for anti-Freudians, who took advantage of it to make Freud a charlatan, unable to cure anyone. The reality is much more complicated, and we have seen it.

Freud's patients were overwhelmingly Jews who suffered from neuroses at their core. in a broad sense this word, as it was given in the first half of the century: neuroses, sometimes mild, but often serious, which would later be called borderline states and even psychoses. A considerable number of patients belonged to intellectual circles, often these were famous people- musicians, writers, creative people, doctors, etc. They wanted not only to be treated, but to experience what word treatment is like, conducted by its creator himself. They mainly applied to Berggasse after having already visited other luminaries of the European medical world - psychiatrists or specialists in all types of nervous diseases. And, no matter what they say, until 1914 they all encountered the same notorious “therapeutic nihilism” so characteristic of mental medicine of this era.

Freud's development of a system of interpretation of the affects of the soul, which was based on an extensive narrative epic, which was more involved in deciphering riddles, rather than psychiatric nosography, received enormous success in psychoanalysis. On the couch of this original scientist, who also suffered from physical ailments, surrounded by a luxurious collection of objects, touchingly beautiful dogs, everyone could feel like the hero of some theatrical scene, where princes and princesses, prophets, deposed kings and helpless queens masterfully play their roles. Freud told fairy tales, summarized novels, read poetry, and recalled myths. Jewish stories, anecdotes, tales of sexual desires hidden in the depths of the soul - all this, in his eyes, was perfectly suited to endow modern man with a mythology that would reveal to him the splendor of the origins of humanity. In technical terms, Freud justified this position by arguing that a correctly conducted, that is, successful, analysis aims to persuade the patient to accept the authenticity of a certain scientific construction simply because highest advantage is simply to recapture the acquired memory. In other words, successful treatment is a treatment that will allow you to understand the underlying cause of suffering and failure, to rise above them in order to fulfill your desires.

Freud saw eight patients a day, his sessions lasting 50 minutes, six times a week, sometimes for many weeks or even months. It happened that the treatment was delayed endlessly, there were repetitions and failures. In addition, Freud received other patients for routine consultations, prescribed treatment, and conducted several psychotherapy sessions. He usually didn't make any notes, doing "couch art." It was an introduction to the journey: Dante leads Virgil, as in the Divine Comedy. If he recommended abstinence, he never followed any principles of “neutrality,” preferring a “hesitant attention” that allowed the unconscious to act. He talked, intervened, clarified, interpreted, confused and smoked cigars without suggesting to the patients, to which they reacted differently. Finally, if the occasion arose, he recalled some details from his own life, mentioned tastes, political preferences, and beliefs. In a word, he himself became involved in the treatment, confident that he would overcome the most stubborn resistance. When this failed, I always tried to understand why, while there was still hope for success. Sometimes he made tactlessness in telling his correspondents what happened during the sessions that he led, and sometimes he read letters to some patients that he had received about them, when all this should have remained confidential.

* The mathematician Henri Roudier calculated for me what Freud's condition was like at various stages of his life. Before the First World War - in florins and crowns, then, since 1924 - in shillings and dollars. Let us note that all the “monetary conversions” proposed in order to determine the price of Freud’s sessions and convert it into euros or dollars of the 21st century do not have any scientific basis, and the authors, among other things, contradict each other: for some it turns out 450 euros, for others - 1000, for others - 1300. Such calculations should in no case be taken seriously, they are aimed at presenting Freud as a fraudster or greedy man. We can talk about his condition only by comparing him with other contemporaries who did the same thing as him and came out of the same social class. Of course, Freud became rich, considering that at the same age his father lived in relative poverty.

Freud added up accounts every day, kept notes in a special diary (Kassa-Protokoll) and talked endlessly about money in letters. Between 1900 and 1914 his social status was equal to that of prominent professors of medicine, who meanwhile also saw patients privately*. He was quite wealthy, like all the more or less prominent practitioners of his generation, and led the same lifestyle.

During the war, income collapsed - at the same time as the Austrian economy. But starting in 1920, he gradually regained his fortunes, accepting patients not only from the former European powers, devastated by the financial crisis and the depreciation of money, but also from other psychiatrists or wealthy foreign intellectuals who came from the United States or wanted to train in psychoanalysis. Freud gradually became an analyst of analysts.

Whenever possible, he asked to pay for treatment in foreign currency. Over the years, he managed to place his savings abroad, adding quite significant sums for copyrights. If he earned less than a psychoanalyst living in New York or London, he was certainly more prosperous than his German, Hungarian and Austrian followers, who were struggling with the collapse of the economy. In October 1921, inviting Lou Andreas-Salomé to come to Vienna because she had expressed such a desire, he wrote: “If you are breaking with your homeland because freedom of movement is being encroached upon in the country, let me send you money to Hamburg, necessary for the trip. My brother-in-law manages my deposits there in marks, as well as income in hard foreign money (American, English, Swiss), I have become relatively rich. And I wouldn’t mind if wealth gave me some pleasure.”

* At the same time, in New York the price per session was $50. Here are economist Thomas Piketty's notes on Freud's income, calculated at my request: “Freud was a successful physician, which was not scandalous given the very high level of inequality that characterized the time. The average income was between 1200 and 1300 gold francs per year per inhabitant. Today, the average income (excluding taxes) is about 25,000 euros per year per adult. To compare the totals, it is better to multiply the amounts in gold francs 1900–1910 by a factor of the order of 20. Christfried Tögel attributes to Freud an income of about 25,000 florins, which corresponds to an annual income of 500,000 euros today. This is, of course, a fairly high profit, but also quite indicative of the highest level of the era. With constant inequality, this would correspond rather to approximately 250,000 euros in annual income today.”

For comparison, note that in 1896 Freud charged 10 florins per hour; in 1910 - from 10 to 20 crowns per session; in 1919 - 200 crowns or 5 dollars if the patient is an American (which is equal to 750 crowns), or a guinea, which is a little more than one livre sterling (600 crowns), if the patient is a low-income Englishman. Finally, in 1921, he considered asking from 500 to 1000 crowns, then settled on $25* per hour, which did not prevent him from charging less exorbitant amounts from some patients.

At times he could not contain his unfair and bitter anti-American sentiments, going so far as to claim, for example, that his followers across the Atlantic were only good because they brought him dollars. He scared just one interlocutor by saying that the Statue of Liberty could be replaced by another one that “holds the Bible in its hand.” The next day, during analysis, one of the students was told that Americans are so stupid that their entire way of thinking can be reduced to an absurd syllogism: “Garlic is good, chocolate is good, put a little garlic in chocolate and eat!”

Freud experienced the fall of the Central European empires and the gradual dominance of American psychoanalysts in the international movement as a deep humiliation. He was tormented by the fact that all patients were forced to pay, and was sympathetic to the idea that medical institutions should provide free care to the poor. The American concept of democracy, individual freedom, and the rights of peoples to self-determination in general appalled him. “The Americans,” he once told Sándor Rado, “are transferring the democratic principle from the realm of politics to science. Everyone should take turns being president. But they can’t do anything.”

Freud always believed that psychoanalytic treatment is contraindicated for people who are stupid, uneducated, too old, melancholic, manically obsessed, suffering from anorexia or hysteria, even occasionally. He also excluded psychoanalytic experiments for psychopaths or perverts “who do not want to come to terms with themselves.” Since 1915, he has added to the category of “unanalyzables” those who are subject to severe narcissistic disorder, possessed by the death drive, to chronic destruction and who cannot be sublimated. Later, when Ferenczi suggested that he undergo analysis, he joked that we were talking about a man who was approaching seventy, who smoked, who had a cancerous tumor, and nothing would help him. Freud also said the opposite - that psychoanalysis is intended to treat hysteria, neuroses associated with obsessive pursuit, phobias, anxiety, depression, and sexual disorders. And he added that success can only be achieved with smart people who understand what morality is and who strive to be treated.

“Maniacs, psychopaths, melancholics, narcissists also consulted other specialists who, like Freud, did not achieve successful results. But only Freud was accused both during his life and after his death."

In 1928 he made it quite clear to Hungarian follower István Hollos, a pioneer of psychiatric hospital reform, that he hated patients with psychotic disorders. “I was finally convinced that I don’t like these patients, they make me angry because they are unlike me, unlike anything that could be called human. This is a strange kind of intolerance that makes me completely unsuitable for psychiatry. I act in this case, as other doctors before us, in relation to patients with hysteria, is this not the result of partiality of the intellect, which always manifests itself much more clearly, an expression of hostility towards “It”? "?"

Taking these statements literally, one can decide, by believing the founder, that psychoanalysis is suitable only for educated people, capable of dreaming or fantasizing, aware of their condition, caring about improving their own well-being, with morality beyond all suspicion, capable, due to positive transference or antitransference, to be cured for several weeks or months. Well, we know that most of the patients who came to Berggasse did not fit this profile.

* As an example, it may be noted that the Viennese architect Karl Meireder (1856–1935), whom Freud treated for ten weeks for chronic melancholia in 1915, set a unique record by contacting fifty-nine doctors whose prescriptions and other treatments were found to be completely ineffective. But only Freud was accused of not curing him.

In other words, since the beginning of the century there has been a great contradiction between the guidelines for treatment that Freud advocated in his articles and his own practice. Realizing this, he corrected his theory, describing in “Introduction to Narcissism” and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” cases whose therapeutic success he strongly doubted. And meanwhile, trying to resist nihilism, but under the pressure of financial necessity, always striving to challenge, he undertook to analyze “unanalyzable” people - in the hope that he would be able, if not to cure them, then at least to alleviate suffering or change their attitude towards life.

These patients - maniacs, psychopaths, melancholics, suicides, libertines, masochists, sadists, self-destructors, narcissists - consulted other specialists who, like Freud, did not achieve successful results *. But only Freud was accused of all the vile things both during his life and after his death: a charlatan, a swindler, a money-lover, etc.

That is why it is very important to study in detail some of the courses of treatment - from those that turned out to be the most failed and, on the contrary, completed. Let us first emphasize that out of all 170 patients Freud accepted, no matter what they treated, about twenty did not receive any benefit, and about a dozen refused him, so much so that they hated the doctor himself. Most of them turned to other therapists, on the same payment terms, without achieving best results. Today, not a single researcher can say what the fate of these patients would have been if they had done nothing at all to get rid of their suffering. […]

After 1920, Freud could enjoy great happiness in contemplating the enormous success that psychoanalysis was enjoying on the other side of the planet. It was then quite clear that his work was moving forward, and yet he did not find satisfaction. Everything went as if he feared that, having abandoned his ideas, they would be accepted only to be distorted. “Who will the bumps fall on when I’m no longer alive?” - he said to himself, thinking about all sorts of “deviations” that his theory suffered through the fault of his contemporaries. Like most founders, Freud did not want to be a Cerberus, guarding his discoveries and concepts, taking on the risk of making idolatry and stupidity into law.

In this state of mind, he received patients from the victorious countries at Berggasse, in particular Americans, who paid him in foreign currency and came to learn the craft of psychoanalysis and get to know each other personally. Freud was indignant in vain; he was forced to admit that any treatment openly carried out in English with students ready to cooperate brings a possible future to psychoanalysis, one that he had not even thought about. Therefore, he was forced to moderate his anti-American views and admit that other promised lands were opening up for his theory: France, the United Kingdom, the USA, Latin America, Japan, etc.

* Among Freud's 170 patients, 20 are Americans, almost all from New York. Thaddeus Ames (1885–1963) met Freud in Vienna in 1911 or 1912. Monroe Meyer (1892–1939), a melancholic psychiatrist, committed suicide at age 47 using a sharp piece of glass. Anti-Freudians accused Freud that he was to blame for this voluntary death, which occurred 18 years after Monroe’s stay in Vienna. Leonard Bloomgard remained an orthodox Freudian.

Abram Kardiner was born in New York and came from a family of Jewish tailors who came from Ukraine. In October 1921, he, a young thirty-year-old doctor, went to Vienna to be treated by Freud, as many of his compatriots would do: Adolf Stern, Monroe Meyer, Clarence Obendorf, Albert Polon, Leonard Blumgard *. Passionate about anthropology and rejecting dogma, he was already practicing psychoanalysis when he was treated for the first time, on Horace Frink's couch, which he regarded as a failure.

He met with Freud for six months, talking about his parents - poor migrants fleeing anti-Semitic persecution: arriving on Ellis Island, looking for work, the death of his mother from tuberculosis when he was only three years old, prayers in a language he did not know , fear of unemployment, hunger, the appearance of a stepmother, who herself came from Romania and aroused a strong sexual desire in him. Kardiner spoke about musical tastes, about the doom of his own Jewry, about Yiddish, then about anti-Semitism, his desire to become a great “doctor,” about his interest in communities of national minorities - Indians, Irish, Italians, about that notorious “melting pot”, which It was also similar to Central European.

Kardiner also recalled times when he was a teenager. His stepmother had an underdeveloped uterus, which did not allow her to have children, which he was happy about. He told about his father that he once cursed and hit his mother, whom he did not marry for love. He retained in his memory the memory of an unfortunate woman who gave him life, but did not have time to raise him. It was precisely under the influence of the stepmother that the patient’s father was able to become a real husband, devoted to the family. After an unsuccessful love affair with a girl, followed by depression, Kardiner became interested in the study of medicine, wondering how he, the son of a Jewish tailor turned American, would become a brilliant intellectual, immersed in psychoanalysis and cultural studies. And yet he was tormented by anxiety, which made him vulnerable to any achievements in life.

He told Freud two dreams. In the first, three Italians urinated on him, each with his penis sticking up, and in the second, he slept with his own stepmother. Kardiner was clearly an ideal “Freudian patient” - intelligent, dreamy, suffering from a phobic neurosis, from a love fixation on a stepmother who replaced his mother, a victim of a cruel father who married before leaving, by agreement. But he did not at all bow to his Viennese teacher, he simply wanted to go through this experience with him. Admiring him, he willingly challenged his interpretations.

Another was the case of Clarence Obendorf, who, along with Brill, founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society and was treated at the same time as Kardiner. Freud despised him, considered him stupid and arrogant. Obendorff turned out to be much more faithful to him than Kardiner, although he was very cautious, and with good reason, about psychoanalysts seeking out “primary scenes” wherever possible. He believed that old-fashioned treatment was no longer suitable for new times.

* Clarence Obendorf (1882–1954) was an orthodox Freudian and was hostile to its simplified psychoanalysis. He wrote the first official work on the history of psychoanalysis in the United States.

On the very first day of analysis, he spoke about a dream in which he was transported in a carriage drawn by two horses, black and white, in an unknown direction. Freud knew that the patient was born in Atlanta, into a Southern family, and as a child he had a black nanny to whom he was very attached. He immediately gave a stunning interpretation of this dream, telling Obendorf that he would not marry because he would not be able to choose between a white and a black woman. Losing his temper, Obendorf argued for three months about sleep with Freud and Kardiner*. He felt all the more humiliated because he was a seasoned analyst who had trained on Federn's couch and had stopped interpreting dreams. According to Kardiner, he remained a bachelor, and Freud continued to despise him.

“If the person being analyzed wanted to become an analyst himself, then the treatment had a much greater chance of becoming therapeutic, then scientific”

Freud was much luckier with Kardiner than with Obendorf. A kind of Danube prophetess, he explained to him that he identified himself with the misfortune of his own mother, and this speaks of “unconscious homosexuality”, that the three Italians from his dream were the father who humiliated him, and that the break with his fiancée repeated the original refusal, which would not happen again , because he himself overcame it. Regarding another dream, Freud explained to Kardiner that he wanted to be subordinate to his father so as not to “awaken the sleeping dragon.” On two points - unconscious homosexuality and submission to the father - Freud was wrong, and the patient noticed this.

When six months had passed, Freud judged that Kardiner's analysis had been successful and predicted a brilliant career for him, an exceptional financial success, happiness in love affairs, and he was absolutely right. In 1976, having moved away from psychoanalytic dogmatism and leaving the widespread Oedipianism and the canonical interpretations of latent homosexuality or the law of the father, Kardiner recalled with pleasure his time at Berggasse: “Today I would say, when I have a general understanding, that Freud carried out my analysis brilliantly . Freud was a great analyst because he never used theoretical expressions - at least then - and formulated all his interpretations in ordinary language. The exception is the reference to the Oedipus complex and the concept of unconscious homosexuality; he processed the material without interruption from everyday life. As far as dream interpretation goes, it was extremely insightful and intuitive.” It is necessary to add about Freud’s mistake about the “sleeping dragon”. “The person who substantiated the concept of transfer did not recognize it. He was missing one thing. Yes, of course, I was afraid of my father when I was little, but in 1921 the person I was afraid of was Freud himself. He could give me life or break it, and this did not depend on my father.”

This evidence is all the more interesting because Kardiner came to Vienna because he considered his analysis from Frink insufficient. In any case, he did not know that he himself had been treated by Freud, and the treatment proceeded with great difficulty. Of course, Kardiner noticed Frink's aggressiveness, but he showed no signs of psychosis. A more dogmatic Freudian than Freud himself, Frink interpreted Kardiner's relationship with his father as a desire for Oedipal death. “You were jealous of him, jealous that he owned your stepmother,” he told him. This erroneous interpretation caused Kardiner a new outbreak of anxiety and a legitimate desire to end the treatment. Not wanting to harm Frink, Freud rejected this intention. At the end of the analysis, he told Kardiner his fears. He was no longer interested in therapeutic problems, he said. “My impatience is much less now. Some obstacles prevent me from becoming a great analyst, and I suffer from them. By the way, I'm more than a father. I do too much theory."

In April 1922, when Kardiner told him that psychoanalysis could not harm anyone, Freud showed two photographs of Frink, one taken before the analysis (in October 1920), and the other a year later. In the first, Frink looked like a man Kardiner knew, but in the second he looked confused and haggard. Were these metamorphoses really the result of experiments on the couch? Kardiner doubted this more than Freud, who never managed to escape the nightmare of this tragic treatment, which mixed marital relationships, adultery, psychoanalytic endogamy and misdiagnosis.

* “Morbid Fears and Obsessions” by Horace Frink: Horace W. Frink, Morbid Fears and Compulsions, Boston, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1918.

Horace Westlake Frink was born in 1883. He was neither Jewish, nor the son of European immigrants, nor rich, nor neurotic. Gifted with an exceptional mind, he began early to study psychiatry and wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Suffering from manic-depressive psychosis from his youth, he was analyzed by Brill, then joined the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and a few years later published a genuine bestseller that helped popularize Freudianism across the Atlantic*. In 1918, he became one of the most famous psychoanalysts on the East Coast, while suffering from bouts of melancholy and mania, accompanied by delusions and an obsessive desire to commit suicide. His life was divided in two: on the one hand, his legal wife Doris Best, with whom he had two children, on the other, his mistress Angelique Bijour, a former patient, a fabulously wealthy heiress who married the famous American lawyer Abraham Bijour, who was analyzed by him, and then - from Thaddeus Ames.

The mistress hurried Frink to get a divorce, and he went to Vienna to undergo treatment with Freud and finally decide who would become the woman of his life. In turn, Angelica (Anji) also consulted Freud, who advised her to get a divorce and marry Frink, otherwise he risks becoming a homosexual. He diagnosed his patient with repressed homosexuality. In fact, he was captivated by this brilliant man, calling him “a very nice boy whose condition has stabilized due to changes in life.” He encouraged him to take Brill's place.

It was impossible for Frink to accept such a diagnosis. Meanwhile, having lost his discretion after everything that “Herr Professor” did, he decided to leave Doris and marry Anji. Outraged by this behavior, which he said went against all ethics, Abraham Bijur wrote an open letter to the New York Times in which he called Freud a “quack doctor.” He gave a copy to Thaddeus Ames, who forwarded it to Freud, emphasizing that the New York Psychoanalytic Society might be in danger because of this matter if the letter were to be published. He told Jones, who was trying to put out the fire, that Anji had misunderstood everything. And he emphasized, however - this was his deepest thought - that society would be much more favorable towards adultery than to the divorce of two unhappy spouses who wanted to start a new family. Thus, he seemed to admit that he had pushed Horace and Anzhi to divorce, no matter what, but only because, as it seemed to him, both of them would not find a common language with their current spouses.

In other circumstances, Freud made different decisions, in particular, when he was sure that adultery was just a symptom of a problem that had not yet been resolved with his beloved spouse. In short, as much as he condemned adultery, he also favored “amicable separations,” provided that they led to a new marriage. As for this particular matter, he was sorely mistaken about Frink. And he persisted, sending him a meaningless letter: “I demanded from Anji that she not repeat to strangers that I advised you to marry her, otherwise you may have a nervous breakdown. Let me remark about your idea that she has lost part of her beauty, could it not be replaced by another - that she has gained part of her fortune? You complain that you don't understand your homosexuality, which implies that you can't imagine me being a rich man. If all goes well, we will replace the imaginary gift with a real contribution to psychoanalytic funds.”

Like all his followers, Freud contributed his share to the financing of the psychoanalytic movement. Therefore, it is not surprising that he gave Frink the idea of ​​also participating financially with some kind of donation in order to recover from phantasms. As for the interpretations, according to which a woman who has lost her attractiveness in the eyes of her lover can interest him with her condition, it stemmed from traditional ideas about the bourgeois family. Freud behaved with his patient as in the old days - a matchmaker, confusing the couch and marriage advice. Proof that he did not understand Frink's disorder, mistaking him for an intelligent neurotic with repressed homosexuality in relation to his father. Having gained the opportunity to marry his mistress, he experienced a terrible feeling of guilt and in November 1922 returned to Vienna again. When he suffered a brief episode of delirium, he felt as if he was lying in a grave, and during the sessions he paced frantically in circles until Freud called another doctor, Joe Asch, to treat him and look after him at the hotel. The situation worsened when, after her ex-husband married Anji, Doris died from complications of pneumonia. Frink claimed that he loved his first wife, then began to harass his second.

In May 1924, Freud was forced to abandon his patient, declare him mentally ill and unfit to lead the New York Psychoanalytic Society. “I pinned all my hopes on him, although the reaction to psychoanalytic treatment was of a psychotic nature. […] When he saw that he was not allowed to freely satisfy his childhood desires, he could not stand it. He resumed his relationship with his new wife. Under the pretext that she was intractable in matters of money, he did not receive in return the signs of recognition that he constantly demanded from her.” At the request of Frink himself, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was treated by Adolf Meyer, and here he learned that Anji wanted to break up with him. Throughout his subsequent life, he fell into inspiration and melancholy, and died in 1936, forgotten by everyone.

40 years later, his daughter Helen Kraft discovered among Adolf Meyer’s papers her father’s correspondence with Freud, as well as many other documents, and, publicly revealing their contents, called the Viennese teacher a charlatan. Anti-Freudians took advantage of this to accuse Freud of manipulating the patients who became victims of his insidious theories under his pen. As for psychoanalysts, they continued to turn a blind eye to the clinical errors of their idol. […]

“So, let’s imagine that we have a patient in front of us. He may suffer from mood swings that are beyond his control, or from complete despondency that has sapped his energy. He can hardly decide on anything or is extremely embarrassed in public.
Quite unexpectedly, he may feel that performing the usual work that he previously performed professionally now causes him great difficulties. And in general, he finds it difficult to make any serious decision, any undertaking.
One day, for some unknown reason, he experienced a terrible attack of fear and from that time on he could no longer cross the street on his own or ride on the railroad without painful efforts on himself.
He may have to give up both altogether. Or, what is especially noteworthy, his thoughts began to act according to their own plan and do not allow interference with this plan. He is constantly haunted by certain impulses that are alien to him, but he is not able to refuse them.
Something imposes extremely ridiculous tasks on him - for example, counting the number of all windows facing the street. And if you need to perform some simple actions, for example, throw a letter at Mailbox or turn off the gas stove, literally after a second he begins to doubt whether he really performed this action and has to check himself.
At first, all this only causes a person annoyance, but gradually this state becomes completely unbearable. A man finds that he is no longer able to get rid of the idea that he simply needs to push a child under the wheels of a carriage, throw an unknown person off a bridge into the water, and all day long he has to ask himself whether he is the same murderer whom the police are looking for as the culprit the crime committed.
Of course, all this is obvious nonsense, absurdity, and the person himself understands this perfectly well, he has never done anything bad to anyone, but the feeling of guilt from this is no less.”

Or another patient, a woman: “She is a pianist, but her fingers are cramped and they refuse to obey her. When she wants to go out to people, she immediately manifests a completely natural need, the satisfaction of which is absolutely incompatible with being in decent society. So, she has to refuse to attend parties, concerts, balls, theaters, and other public places.
If she does leave the house, which happens extremely rarely, she is immediately hit with severe headaches or other painful sensations. It is likely that she has to end any meal with vomiting, and this, given the duration this phenomenon may even be life-threatening.
And finally, all that remains is to sympathize with her in the fact that she cannot bear even the slightest anxiety, although such anxiety is simply impossible to avoid. All this leads to the fact that she begins to fall into unconscious states, often accompanied by muscle cramps that resemble epilepsy, although she most likely does not suffer from it.”

Or the third patient, a man: “As for other patients, they may feel some deviations in a specific area where emotional life makes special demands on the body (in other words, on physiology). If men suffer from this, they often consider themselves completely incapable of outwardly showing tender feelings for the opposite sex.
At the same time, in relation to objects that are not so beloved, they probably have at their disposal the entire arsenal of means necessary for this. Or, it may also happen that their own sensuality begins to tie them to those people whom they openly despise and from whom they clearly want to get rid of.
They find themselves in such conditions that the implementation of any sensual desire becomes an extremely unpleasant matter. If our patients are women, then due to fear, disgust or any other difficulties they feel unable to comply with the demands of sexual life; when they nevertheless surrender to love, they consider themselves deceived in their expected pleasures, which nature, as they believe, gives them as a reward for compliance.”

In the end, the patient learns that there are people who specifically treat just such diseases - psychoanalysts.” The outsider, who is invisibly always present here with us, shows signs of impatience when Freud talks about the manifestations of nervous diseases. He became very attentive, he was intrigued and said something like this: “So, now we will find out what to do with a patient whom the doctor, the psychoanalyst, could not help.”

Freud replies: “But nothing happens between the psychoanalyst and the patient except that they simply talk to each other. A psychoanalyst does not use instruments in his work and does not prescribe medications. At the slightest opportunity, he allows the patient to be in his previous environment, trying not to harm his usual relationships with other people throughout the entire analytical treatment. Naturally, such an approach is not a prerequisite, and, moreover, cannot be implemented in all cases. The psychoanalyst devotes a certain amount of time to the patient, asks him to speak, listens carefully to him, and then speaks himself, having first asked the patient to listen to him.” Now our Outsider's whole appearance clearly shows a certain contempt. It was as if he thought: “And nothing more? Words, words, words, as Prince Hamlet said.” He naturally remembers Mephistopheles’ mocking speech about how cleverly some people use words. This speech is in the memory of every true German. And he also says: “It turns out that this is just another type of witchcraft. You talk and thus eliminate suffering.”

Freud: “There is no doubt that it would be witchcraft if it had a much more rapid effect. Swiftness is certainly a characteristic of sorcery; it is characterized, one might say, by the unexpectedness of success. However, psychoanalytic treatment takes months and even years; so that such long-term “witchcraft” loses its wonderful character. However, we would not like to treat the word with contempt. This is an extremely powerful tool, it is the means by which we communicate to each other about our feelings, it is a way of influencing other people.
A well-timed word of support can bring immeasurable benefit, but in other cases another word can bring terrible suffering. Of course, the primacy in the creation of the world remains with the deed; the word appeared later, and the replacement of activity with the word is already a phenomenon of cultural progress. However, originally the word was still witchcraft, a magical act, and it continues to retain quite a lot of its former power.

Our Outsider does not let up: “Now, let’s say that the patient is no better prepared to understand psychoanalytic treatment than I am. How can you lead him to believe in the magic of the word, which is designed to save him from suffering?”

Freud: “Of course, the patient must be prepared, and for this there is a very simple way. The psychoanalyst asks him to be completely sincere, not to deliberately hide anything that comes to his mind, and then generally not to take into account absolutely any interference that might interfere with the expression of certain thoughts or memories. Everyone knows that he has something that he can admit only with incredible difficulty, and even something that he generally considers unacceptable to tell anyone. These are "intimate matters".

The patient also guesses (and this is already a great progress in his psychological self-knowledge) that he has something else that he would not like to admit even to himself and that he hides from himself, even expels from his own consciousness, if this is something still pops up in it. It is likely that in a certain situation the patient himself will notice that he has an extremely remarkable psychological problem, which is that he needs to protect his own thoughts from himself. As if his so-called “self” is no longer something unified, and as if there is also something else in him that can be opposed to this “self”.

The patient may perceive a certain opposition between the “self” and spiritual life in the broad sense of this concept. If he now accepts the demands of psychoanalysis and begins to talk about everything, then more direct communication soon becomes possible. The exchange of thoughts occurs under such unusual conditions that it may well lead to the most unexpected result.

“I understand perfectly well,” says our Outsider, “that any neurosis has something that oppresses the patient, contains a certain secret. By pushing the patient to reveal it, you free him from heavy oppression and cure him. However, this is still the same good old principle confession, which the Catholic Church has used since time immemorial for the purpose of maintaining dominion over the souls of believers."

Freud: “And here we need to answer: “Yes and no.” It seems that confession is indeed an element of psychoanalysis and, to some extent, an introduction to it. However, all this is far from matching true essence psychoanalysis, and is not at all suitable for explaining its action. During confession the repentant sinner says what he knows, but during psychoanalysis the neurotic has to say much more. We also know nothing about confession ever having the power to eliminate obvious symptoms diseases."

“Then I don’t understand anything at all,” sounds the voice of the Outsider. “What is it: to say more than he knows. However, it is quite possible that you, as a psychoanalyst, have a stronger influence on your patient than a confessing priest on the person being confessed.” sinner, since you have been dealing with the patient for a much longer period of time, intensively, not to mention taking into account individuality.
You use your influence to distract the patient from painful thoughts and fears. It would be enough just to know that in this way it is possible to relieve such physiological manifestations as convulsions, diarrhea, and vomiting. However, I know that such influences have very good results when using hypnosis. It is quite possible, thanks to your efforts. You have a strong hypnotic influence on the patient, you establish a suggestive connection with his personality, even if you do not consciously strive for this.
As for the miracles of your therapy, they are all nothing more than a consequence of hypnotic suggestion. However, as far as I know, hypnotic therapy itself works much faster than your psychoanalysis, which, according to your own statement, lasts months and years."

Freud comments: “So our Outsider is not so ignorant and helpless as we believed at the very beginning. It is easy to see that he seeks to understand psychoanalysis with the help of his previous knowledge, to add it to something that he already knows. Now we are faced with the difficult task of explaining to the Outsider that he will not succeed, that psychoanalysis is a method sui generis (Sui generis (Latin) - forming a special species through itself), something original and new that can only be understood with with the help of new views or, if it suits you better, new hypotheses. However, the Outsider certainly deserves our response to his last point."

Freud replies: “What has been said about the special personal influence of the psychoanalyst is certainly worthy of great attention. This influence actually occurs and plays a big role. However, it is not similar to the influence of hypnotism. It seems to us that we can prove to you that the situations here are completely different. It will probably suffice to simply note that we do not use personal influence as a "push" to suppress symptoms of suffering, as is the case with hypnotic suggestion. Further, it would be erroneous to assume that exactly this moment necessarily is a carrier of treatment.
This is probably true only at the very beginning; and later it opposes our psychoanalytic intentions and forces us to resort to decisive countermeasures. I would like to show you with one example how far beyond psychotherapy, which works through switching and suggestion, is psychoanalytic technique. If our patient suffers from a feeling of guilt, as if he had committed a serious crime, we do not advise him to ignore his remorse and do not emphasize his undoubted innocence. He had already tried all this, although unsuccessfully; do it yourself.
As for us, we try to explain to him that this strong and long-lasting sensation that torments him has something real at its core, and we will probably be able to discover this something.”

Freud on psychoanalysis
part 2

“I would be extremely surprised,” says the Outsider, “if by such an explanation you freed the patient from remorse. But what are your analytic intentions, and what are you actually doing with the patient?”

Freud: “If I want to be fully understood by you, then I probably need to present that part of psychological teaching that is still unknown or insufficiently appreciated outside the psychoanalytic circle. From the theory presented to your attention, it is not difficult to deduce what we want from the patient and how we achieve it. I will present everything in the form of dogma, as if the theory was always a completely completed scientific system.
However, one should not assume that as such it suddenly appeared all at once, like some kind of philosophical system. It was developed by us extremely slowly, we fought for a long time for every part of it, constantly improving our theory, being in continuous contact with reality, until, in the end, our theory acquired the very form in which it is probably quite suitable for our goals. Just a few years ago I would have had to present this teaching in completely different words.
Of course, I cannot guarantee that the current form of expression will remain unchanged. You are well aware that science is by no means a revelation; from the very beginning it does not have the character of something infallible, definite, unchangeable, which human thinking so passionately desires. However, in the form in which our teaching is now, it is exactly what we have.
If you consider that our science is extremely young, that it is less than a hundred years old, and that it is probably dealing with extremely difficult material, then you will be able to treat my message with understanding. However, you can always interrupt me whenever you want if you don’t have time to follow my thoughts or want to get more detailed explanations.”

Outsider: "I would like to interrupt you before you even begin. You said that you would present me with a new psychology, but, as I believe, psychology cannot be new science. There is quite a large number various types psychology, there are many different psychologists, and at school they told me about significant achievements in this area."

Freud: “I had no idea of ​​challenging all this. If we consider the issue more seriously, it turns out that all the achievements of psychology relate, rather, to the physiology of the sense organs. Regarding the doctrine of mental life, then it could not develop, since it was delayed by a single, but very significant mistake. What is the scope of this teaching today, how is it taught in school?
Let us take into account that in addition to valuable views on the physiology of the sense organs, today we also have a classification and definitions of our mental processes, which, thanks to their widespread use and corresponding reflection in the language, have become the common property of all educated people. However, it is obvious that this is not enough to understand our mental life.
Haven’t you noticed that every historian, biographer, philosopher, writer makes up his own science of psychology, puts forward his own special hypotheses about the laws and purposes of mental acts, while all this is to a certain extent true and at the same time just as unreliable ? There is no common ground in all of this.
Therefore, it turns out that there are no authorities in the field of psychology. Here everyone has the opportunity to engage in a kind of “poaching” in accordance with their tastes. If you raise a problem in physics or chemistry, then everyone who does not have the so-called “special knowledge” will remain silent. However, if you find the courage to make any statement in the field of psychology, then you will have to take into account the opinions and objections of every interested person.
There may be no "special knowledge" in this area at all. Every person has his own mental life, and that is why each of us takes himself for a psychologist. But what grounds does he have for this?
Once they talked about a woman who wanted to work as a teacher; she was asked if she knew how to handle small children. “Naturally,” she answered immediately, “I was once a small child myself.”

Outsider: “So, despite all these circumstances, you were talking about the “common foundation” of mental life, which all psychologists do not notice and which you are going to discover by observing patients?”

Freud: “I do not think that these circumstances make our data unnecessary. It is impossible to know any object of study unless one examines its anomalies. Embryology, for example, would not have achieved its current recognition if it had not been able to explain the nature of the occurrence of congenital deformities. I have often observed people whose thoughts go their own way, they think intensely about problems that are completely indifferent to them.
Does ordinary school psychology provide any explanation for this anomaly? Let us note that at night, each of us’s thinking goes its own way and creates images that we subsequently do not understand, which are unusual for us and inspire completely justified fears, since they resemble painful delirium. I'm talking about dreams.
The common people have always sincerely believed that dreams have some meaning, some value, definitely mean something. It is precisely this meaning of dreams that traditional psychology is unable to unravel and will never unravel. There is absolutely nothing she can do about dreams. When she tries to somehow explain them, all these explanations turn out to be very far from psychology; it all comes down, for example, to explaining dreams by the presence of irritation of certain sensory organs, different depths of sleep of individual parts of the brain, and so on.
However, we can say that psychology, which is not able to explain dreams, has absolutely no use for understanding normal mental life and cannot even claim to be a science.”

Outsider: "You are becoming aggressive. You have probably touched sore spot. Naturally, I heard that in psychoanalysis dreams are given great importance, they are interpreted, with their help they are used to identify real events that caused certain deviations and the like.
However, it is also known that psychoanalysts themselves cannot cope with differences in the interpretation of dreams. If this is indeed the case, then the benefits of psychoanalysis should not be exaggerated."

Freud: “Here you are, in fact, largely right. Of course, for both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the interpretation of dreams has acquired great importance. And when I think about the confusion that some psychoanalysts have made with the interpretation of dreams, it is quite easy for me to lose heart and admit the truth of the famous pessimistic saying of our great satirist Nestroy: “Any progress in its development is always only half as great as it seemed at first !" However, don't you know that people confuse and distort literally everything they deal with?
If you are careful and self-disciplined, most mistakes in dream interpretation can be avoided. However, don’t you think that I will never get to the point if we constantly deviate from the topic?

Freud on psychoanalysis
part 3

Outsider: "You were going to talk about the fundamental premises of the new psychology, if I understand correctly?"

Freud: “I wouldn’t like to start like that. I will first talk about our assumptions regarding the structure of the mental apparatus.”

Outsider: “I would like to clarify what you call the mental apparatus, and what is it made of?”

Freud: “You will soon understand what the psychic apparatus is. But I would ask you not to ask what material it is made of. This is not of psychological interest, and for psychology this question is as insignificant as for optics the question of what material to make the walls of a telescope from - metal or thick paper. We do not touch the material point of view at all, but we pay attention to the spatial point of view.
Let's imagine before us an unknown apparatus designed for mental functioning, and precisely as an instrument that consists of several parts - we call them instances; each of them has its own special function and in space is located relative to each other in a certain way, that is, the spatial relationships “in front” and “behind”, “superficial” and “deep” make sense for us, first of all, only in the case of depicting a regular sequence of functions. Am I making myself clear?"

Outsider: “Not really, but perhaps later I will be able to understand it, but in any case, this is some special anatomy of the soul that natural scientists do not consider at all.”

Freud: “I think this is an ordinary auxiliary idea, of which there are many in science. The very first of these performances were always rather discordant. In such cases, you can say: "Open to revision" (Open to revision (English) - open for revision.). The value of an auxiliary representation, which the philosopher Hans Vaichinger would call a “fiction,” depends on what can be achieved through it.

But I will continue. We stand firmly on the basis of worldly wisdom and recognize in people a certain special mental structure, which, on the one hand, is associated with the reaction to irritation of the senses and the perception of physiological needs, and on the other hand, is an intermediary between them. We call this substructure "I". There is nothing new in this, we all accept such a hypothesis, unless the person is a philosopher, and some accept this hypothesis even being philosophers.
However, we do not believe that such a description of the mental apparatus is complete. In addition to the “I,” we have been able to thoroughly study another psychic area, which is much more vast, grandiose and dark than the “I,” and which we call “It.” First of all, we are interested in the relationship between these two authorities.

You will probably be dissatisfied that we have chosen simple pronouns to designate these two of our psychic authorities or areas, instead of giving them full-sounding names taken from ancient Greek. However, we psychoanalysts prefer to be in touch with the public way of thinking and use familiar concepts instead of discarding them. And there is no merit in this, we need to act this way, because our patients, who are very often smart, but not always educated, must understand our teaching.
The impersonal “It” is directly adjacent to certain ways of perceiving the world by normal people. “It was realized by me,” they sometimes say, “it was something in me that at that moment was stronger than me”: “C'etait plus fort que moi” (C""etait plus fort que moi (French) - it was stronger than me.).

In psychology, we are able to describe relationships only through comparisons. And there is nothing special about this; similar things occur in other scientific fields. However, we also need to replace these comparisons, because none of them are constant. Thus, when I clarify for you the relationship between the “I” and the “It,” I ask you to imagine the “I” as a façade of the “It,” as its foreground, and at the same time as its outer, cortical layer. Let's focus on the last comparison. We know that the cortex has its own special qualities due to the influence of the environment to which it is adjacent.
It turns out that we imagine the “I” in the form of a layer of the psychic apparatus, a layer of the “It” instance that appeared under the influence of the external world (in other words, reality) and a changed layer of the psychic apparatus. You see how seriously we deal with spatial representations in psychoanalysis. The “I” area is indeed superficial for us. "It" is a deeper area. The area of ​​the “I” lies between reality and the “It” - a purely mental phenomenon.”

Outsider: “I have absolutely no desire to ask you how to confirm all this. However, tell me, first of all, why did you need this division into “I” and “It”, what pushes you to this?”

Freud: “Your question tells me how to properly continue my presentation. It is extremely important to know that at certain points the "I" and the "It" deviate extremely greatly from each other. For “It” and “I” there are completely different rules for the flow of mental processes. The "I" pursues its own ends and uses its own means. An enormous amount could be said about this, but wouldn’t it be better to give just one new comparison and one example to illustrate? Think about the difference between the front and the rear during war. It is not surprising that at the front many things go differently than in the rear, and that in the rear many things are allowed that should be completely prohibited at the front. In this case, the proximity of the enemy is of course decisive.
As for mental life, for it this enemy is the proximity of the external world. “Outside”, “alien”, “enemy” - once upon a time these concepts were identical. Now let’s give this example: in “It” there are no conflicts; contradictions and opposites in a determined order are not far from each other, and in addition to this, they are often brought together by certain compromise formations. But the “I” in such cases experiences a conflict that must certainly be resolved, and the solution is as follows: a person abandons one aspiration in favor of another.
The area of ​​the “I” is an organization that is very noticeably distinguished by its desire for unity, for synthesis. However, such a character is not at all inherent in “It”; it can be said to be incoherent, and its individual aspirations pursue their own goals absolutely independently and without taking into account the goals of other aspirations.”

Outsider: “If such an important psychic rear really exists, then how can we explain that it was not noticed until the advent of psychoanalysis?”

Freud: “And here we return to one of your previous questions. Psychology denied itself access to the sphere of the “It” because it adhered to the simple premise that all mental acts are conscious by us, that awareness is the hallmark of everything mental, and that even if unconscious processes in our brain do exist, they do not belong to mental acts and They don't concern psychology at all.
The common opinion is: “This is already understandable.” Indeed, psychologists in many cases proceed from this, but it is extremely easy to show that such a position is incorrect. Even the simplest self-observation leads to the conclusion that there are associations that could not have arisen without certain prerequisites. However, psychologists know nothing about these earliest stages of thinking, which in fact must also be of a mental nature, believing that a ready-made result appears in consciousness. Sometimes psychologists are able to become aware of these preliminary thought processes by reconstructing them after the fact. "Most likely, there was a normal distraction," they say, "if these preparatory works were not noticed."
Pretty good excuse! However, how can one fail to notice the fact that, in parallel with ordinary consciousness, we observe manifestations that are of a mental nature, often extremely complicated, about which consciousness is in no way aware, and psychologists know nothing about them. However, why this dispute? We can call on hypnotic experiments to help, which very convincingly demonstrate the existence of unconscious thoughts to everyone - demonstrate to everyone who doesn’t mind learning.”

Outsider: "I have no desire to deny it, but I believe that I have finally understood you. What you call "I" is actually consciousness, and your "It" is the so-called subconscious, oh about which so much is said now. However, for what purpose was all this masquerade organized with new names for old phenomena? "

Freud: “But this is not a masquerade at all. The previous names that you are trying to return do not apply here. And don’t even try to force literature on me instead of science. If someone starts talking about the subconscious, then I am not sure whether he considers the subconscious from a spatial point of view, as something that is in the soul below consciousness, or from a qualitative point of view, as a different consciousness, and at the same time as something mystical. This person probably doesn’t clearly understand this himself. Moreover, the only acceptable pair of opposites here is “conscious and unconscious.” However, the belief that this pair coincides with the division into “I” and “It” is fraught with serious consequences. Naturally, it would be wonderful if everything actually turned out to be so simple.
In this case, mastering our theory would be easy, but not everything is so simple. It is only true that any processes that take place in the “It” were and remain unconscious processes and that only processes in the “I” can be conscious, and no more. But they are not all like this, they are not always like this unconditionally, and, in general, quite large parts of the “I” can remain unconscious for a long time.
Awareness of mental processes is an extremely difficult matter. I cannot resist demonstrating (albeit rather dogmatically) how we view this problem. Remember that the "I" is the outer, peripheral layer of the "It". From our point of view, on the outer surface of this very “I” there is a special area, system, organ, directly facing the outside world - call it what you want - and only through irritation of this area does the phenomenon that we call consciousness appear. This organ can be equally well excited from the outside, in other words, by perceiving stimuli from the outside world with the help of the senses, and from the inside, where it first takes into account the sensations in the “It”, and then the processes occurring in the “I.”

Freud on psychoanalysis
part 4

Outsider: “But all this, as time goes on, becomes less and less clear and even begins to elude my understanding. You invited me to a discussion on the question of whether amateurs who are not doctors can undertake psychoanalytic treatment. And therefore, why all this debate about risky, obscure theories that you have never been able to convince me are correct?

Freud: “I know very well that I cannot convince you. This is not possible, and therefore is not even part of my plans. When we teach our students the theoretical subjects of psychoanalysis, we see how little impression the theory has on them. Psychoanalytic teaching is accepted by them with the same coldness as other abstractions that they have known before. It is likely that some of the students really wanted to be convinced that the theory was correct, but at first there were no signs confirming that this would certainly happen. Therefore, we strive to ensure that everyone who wants to engage in psychoanalysis with other people must first undergo psychoanalysis himself.
And only in the course of such “self-analysis,” when a person actually experiences the processes discovered by psychoanalysis on his own body, or, more correctly, on his own soul, does he acquire beliefs that he will later use as a guide, already being a psychoanalyst. Therefore, how can I expect that you, an outsider, will accept our theories if I can only provide you with an incomplete, abbreviated, and therefore unclear image of the doctrine, which is not at all confirmed by yours? own experience?
And this is why I do this. I do not raise the question at all about whether psychoanalysis is a correct teaching or, on the contrary, the hypotheses it puts forward are a gross error. I am unfolding our theory to you only because it is in this way that I can best explain the totality of ideas of psychoanalysis, what prerequisites lie at the basis of working with each specific patient, and what psychoanalysis generally does with its patients.
In this way, some clarity will be brought to the problem of amateur psychoanalysis. However, you have absolutely no need to worry: if you have followed me for such a long time, you have probably already overcome all your fears, and the subsequent story will probably be easier for you to accept. Now let me rest a little."

Freud on psychoanalysis
part 5

Outsider: “It seems to me that you have a desire to tell me how the theory of psychoanalysis views the origin of nervous suffering.”

Freud: “Indeed, I will try to do this. However, for this purpose we need to examine our "I" and our "It" from a new, so-called dynamic point of view, that is, taking into account the forces that act both within them and between them. Before this we were content only with a description of the mental apparatus.”

Outsider: “But only on the condition that this too will not be incomprehensible to me!”
Freud: “I believe that very soon you will find your bearings quite easily. So, from our point of view, the forces that motivate the mental apparatus to activity originate in the organs of the body as a manifestation of basic physiological needs. Remember the famous words of our poet-philosopher: love and hunger. However, this is a completely respectable pair of forces! Physiological needs, since they are stimuli for mental activity, we call drives. Now these drives fill the “It”; all energy accumulates in “It”, one might even say it is produced by it.
The forces located in the “I” also have no other origin, but originate in the drives of the “It”. What do drives require? They need satisfaction, in other words, the creation of situations in which physiological needs temporarily disappear. Our organ of consciousness experiences a decrease in the tension of needs as pleasure, and a moment later its increase is already experienced as displeasure. Thanks to these fluctuations, a whole series of sensations of pleasure or displeasure arises, on the basis of which the entire mental apparatus coordinates its activity. Therefore we can speak of the “dominance of the pleasure principle.”

When the claims of the “It” drives do not find satisfaction, unbearable states immediately make themselves felt. Experience ambiguously shows that situations of satisfaction are realized exclusively with the help of the external world. It is here that the part of “It” that faces the outside world, namely the area of ​​“I”, begins to function. Let's imagine that all the driving force that sets a certain vehicle in motion originates from “It”. In this case, the “I” takes control, and if there is no control, then the goal, naturally, will not be achieved.
The drives in the “It” require immediate, uncompromising satisfaction, and thanks to this they achieve either everything or nothing, even experiencing significant damage. The task of the “I” in this situation is to protect against any failure, to mediate between the claims of “It” and objections real world. In this case, the activity of the “I” develops in two directions. With the help of the senses and the consciousness system, on the one hand, the “I” monitors the outside world in order to catch a favorable moment for safe satisfaction, and on the other hand, the “I” influences the “It”, restraining its “passions”, forcing the drive not to rush to satisfy desires and even, if necessary, change them or completely abandon them for a certain compensation. By this restraint of impulses, the “I” replaces the previously only decisive principle of pleasure with the so-called principle of reality, which, even if it has exactly the same final goals, nevertheless at the same time takes into account the conditions that the real external world poses.
Later, the “I” comes to understand that in addition to the adaptation to the outside world that we have already indicated, there is another path that almost completely guarantees satisfaction. This path is an invasion into the external world, changing it, creating conditions in it under which satisfaction can occur. Such activity becomes the highest achievement of the “I”. The real storehouse of worldly wisdom is in knowing when it is advisable to pacify your passions and bow to reality or, conversely, take the side of these same passions and resist the outside world. Today in psychoanalysis this phenomenon is usually called self-plastic and alloplastic adaptation, depending on whether this process occurs by changing one’s own mental organization or by changing the external (including social) world.”

Outsider: “So what happens? “It” allows “I” to achieve such dominance over it, despite the fact that, if I was not mistaken in listening to your explanation, that “It” is stronger?”

Freud: “Indeed, this is what happens when the “I” is fully formed, shows activity, has access to all parts of the “Id” and, due to all this, influences it. Naturally, there is no natural enmity between the “I” and the “It”; they form one whole, and in case of complete health they are practically inseparable from each other.”

Outsider: "All this is pleasant to our ears, but I do not see how this ideal union is consistent with the phenomena of disease."

Freud: “The remark makes sense. When the “I” and its relationship to the “It” fully correspond to ideal requirements, there will be no nervous disease. The occurrence of the disease is very unexpected, although for a connoisseur of general pathology there is no big surprise here, and he will find convincing confirmation that it is the most obvious manifestations tendencies to develop and strengthen differences carry within them the beginnings of the disease and lead to the failure of a certain function.”

leads to a very important and lasting action on the part of the unconscious. We can make the assumption that this complex with its derivatives is the basic complex of every neurosis, and we must be prepared to find it no less valid in other areas of mental life. The myth of Oedipus the King, who kills his father and marries his mother, is a little modified manifestation of infantile desire, against which the idea of ​​incest subsequently arises. At the heart of Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet is the same incest complex, only better hidden.

At the time when the child is in possession of a basic complex that has not yet been repressed, a significant part of his mental interests is devoted to sexual issues. He begins to think about where the children come from, and learns from the signs available to him about the actual facts more than the parents think. Typically, interest in issues of childbirth manifests itself as a result of the birth of a brother or sister. This interest depends solely on the fear of material damage, since the child sees only a competitor in the newborn. Under the influence of those partial drives that characterize the child, he creates several infantile sexual theories, in which the same genital organs are attributed to both sexes, conception occurs as a result of food intake, and birth occurs through evacuation through the end of the intestine; The child views copulation as a kind of hostile act, as violence. But it is precisely the incompleteness of his own sexual constitution and the gap in his information, which consists in ignorance of the existence of the female genital canal, that forces the child researcher to stop his unsuccessful work. The very fact of this childhood research, as well as the creation of various theories, leaves its mark on the formation of the child’s character and gives content to his future neurotic illness.

It is absolutely inevitable and quite normal that a child chooses his parents as the object of his first love choice. But his libido should not be fixed on these first objects, but should, taking these first objects as a model, move on to other persons during the final choice of the object. The separation of a child from his parents must be an inevitable task so that the child’s social status is not endangered. At a time when repression leads to choice among partial drives, and subsequently, when the influence of parents should decrease, great tasks lie ahead in the work of education. This education, undoubtedly, is not always carried out as it should be at present.

Do not think that with this analysis of the sexual life and psychosexual development of the child we have moved away from psychoanalysis and from the treatment of neurotic disorders. If you want, psychoanalytic treatment can be defined as a continuation of education in the sense of eliminating the remnants of childhood” (Freud 3. On psychoanalysis // Psychology of the unconscious: Collection of works / Compiled by M.G. Yaroshevsky. M., 1990. P. 375).

TASK 2

Look through books and periodicals on psychology in recent years, choose the work of a foreign or domestic psychologist, the author of which is an adherent of the psychoanalytic approach.

- Read, paying attention to the conceptual apparatus.

- Highlight the author's main initial settings.

- What aspects of mental and personal development does the author consider to be the most important?

- Outline those practical problems of mental development, education and upbringing that are proposed to be solved in the context of psychoanalytic theory.

Beret at the end of the nineteenth century. Freud's ideas were based on two important stages, which became the prerequisites for the creation of psychoanalysis. First of all, this is the method developed by Joseph Breir, a doctor from Vienna, the second point preceding Freud's theory is the method of the psychiatrist Hippolyte Bernheim. Sigmund worked with Breuer for a short time, and the professor observed the work of Bernheim’s method at one of the demonstration training sessions. How to characterize Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis briefly? It's worth starting from the beginning.

Josef Breuer method

The Austrian psychiatrist worked for several years to develop a method called catharsis. Research lasted from 1880 to 1882. The doctor's patient was a 21-year-old girl with paralysis of both right limbs and a complete lack of sensation. The girl also had an aversion to food and many other not only physical, but also mental disorders. Dr. Breuer introduced the patient into hypnosis, through which he brought the girl to that point in her life when experiences that traumatically appeared for the first time. He sought the psychological and emotional state that possessed her at that moment in her life and got rid of the symptoms of such a state “stuck” in her consciousness. The patient's medical history was a real breakthrough, and in 1895 Breuer and Freud published working together Based on these data, a work entitled “Studies on Hysteria” was published. The experiences and disorders that provoked the symptoms of the disease were subsequently called mental trauma. Breira's work has had significant influence to Sigmund Freud's "Introduction to Psychoanalysis".

Hippolyte Bernheim Method

The psychiatrist also used hypnosis in the treatment process. Freud's work was greatly influenced by the peer method, since in 1889 Sigmund attended one of Bernheim's teaching sessions. The psychiatrist's lessons made it possible to derive concepts such as resistance and repression. These aspects are a protective mechanism of the psyche of any person. Subsequently, Freud used the method of free association instead of hypnosis. The result of the work was the introduction of the concept of a conscious substitute to displace the unconscious.

Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

The main ideological component of the theory and concept is characterized by the following provisions: for both men and women, erotic disorders are the main factor leading to the development of the disease. Freud came to this conclusion because other mental experiences do not give rise to repression and replacement. The psychoanalyst noted that other, non-erotic emotional disturbances do not lead to the same results, they do not have such significant significance, and even more - they contribute to the action of sexual moments and can never replace them. Such observations and problems of Freud's psychoanalysis were based on many years of practical experience and were described by the professor in his work “On Psychoanalysis.”

Freud also noted that only childhood experiences explain sensitivity to future trauma. This theory is described in Sigmund Freud's book "Introduction to Psychoanalysis". And only by revealing in our consciousness these childhood memories, which are always forgotten in adulthood, can we get rid of the symptoms. Analytical work must extend to the time of puberty and early childhood. Freud substantiated the proposed theory through the concept of the “Oedipus complex” and the sequence of phases in the psychosexual development of each person. There are 4 of these stages in total and they can be associated with basic instincts: oral, anal, phallic, genital.

What is classical psychoanalysis?

The process of recognizing what is hidden in the depths of consciousness is carried out through the following methods and basic instincts:

• Free association method;
• Interpretation of dreams;
• The use of accidental slips, as well as erroneous human actions.

Any session is based on one main rule - the patient must say absolutely everything, without fear or embarrassment. Freud wrote that one should say everything that comes to mind, even if at first glance the thoughts seem incorrect or even meaningless to the patient. There is no room for critical choice here. And only if you follow this rule will it be possible to “pull” out of a person the material that will enable the psychoanalyst to repress all complexes. This is how the essence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis can be briefly explained.

Free association method

The basis of psychoanalysis is precisely the essence of the technique: if some objects are perceived at one time or in close proximity, then in the future the appearance in the consciousness of one of them may entail the awareness of a completely different one.

Freud wrote that the patient sometimes becomes abruptly silent and refers to the fact that he has nothing more to say and there are no thoughts in his head. However, if you look at it, there is no one hundred percent refusal on the part of thoughts. human consciousness never. Random slips of the tongue, erroneous actions are nothing more than hidden desires, repressed intentions and fears hidden in the depths of the subconscious. This is all that a person, for some reason, cannot show to others and to himself. This is how Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis can be briefly described.

Dream interpretation

One of Freud's most popular theories was the interpretation of dreams. The psychoanalyst described dreams as messages from the unconscious part of the brain, which are encrypted and represent meaningful images. When Freud was seventy years old, in 1931 the book “The Interpretation of Dreams” was republished for the third time. The professor himself wrote that this work contains the most valuable of all the discoveries he made in his entire life. Freud believed that such insights occur only once in a person’s entire life.

Transfer process

The essence of the transference process is that a person who does not fully satisfy the need for love pays attention to any new face, in the hope of throwing out his active libido power. That is why it is quite normal for these hopes to turn towards their psychoanalyst. The doctor, in turn, must clearly understand that the patient’s love directed towards him is mostly forced, and in no case is a confirmation of the superiority of the psychoanalyst. The doctor has no reason to take this state of affairs seriously, and under no circumstances should he be proud of such a “conquest.” Countertransference is put in opposition to the transference process. When the analyst experiences reciprocal unconscious feelings towards the patient. Freud believed that this phenomenon was quite dangerous, primarily for the doctor. This is because such feelings can lead to mental illness for both in the future. Each of the processes was described by Freud in his books on psychoanalysis.

Resistance processing process

An important stage is overcoming resistance and psychoanalysis of the individual. It begins with the doctor revealing to the patient those thoughts, feelings and resistances that have never been recognized before. After which the mentee is given time to penetrate as deeply as possible into resistance unknown to him until now, in order to further process and overcome it.

What are the patient's resistances? First of all, this is a mechanism that works on an unconscious level, and its task is to prevent the awareness of those unacceptable thoughts and desires that were previously repressed. Freud wrote that the processing of resistances is very the hard part, but in practice it becomes truly painful not only for the patient. The psychoanalyst also faces a real test of patience. However, despite the complexity, it is this part of the work on consciousness that has the maximum transformative effect on the patient. This is where analytical treatment differs from treatment by suggestion.

Catharsis

This process promotes liberation from repressed experiences that traumatize the psyche through emotional release. This internal conflict is resolved on a neurotic level due to those memories and traumas that were once stuck in the psyche as negative emotions.

Technique of classical psychoanalysis

For general idea and descriptions of the techniques of classical psychoanalysis, Freud used the following explanations:

• The psychoanalyst insisted that the patient should lie on a sofa or couch during the session, and the doctor, in turn, should be behind the patient in such a way that he would not see him, but only hear him. This is because the facial expression of a psychoanalyst should not give the patient food for thought, much less influence what the patient says.
• Under no circumstances should you tell the patient what he should or should not talk about. The doctor must know everything about the patient that he knows about himself.
• The patient must say absolutely everything, without hiding names, dates, places, and so on. There are no secrets or modesty in psychoanalysis.
• During the session, the patient should devote himself entirely to unconscious memory. That is, a person must turn off conscious influence on his memory. Simply put, you just need to listen and not think about whether you remember something or not.
• We must not forget about working with dreams, because this is one of the main methods of the theory of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that if you understand the unconscious needs of a person that are expressed in dreams, you can find the key to solving that very basic problem;

It is possible to reveal to the patient all the information received and explain the meaning of his thoughts and condition no earlier than the moment when the transference process begins. The patient must be attached to the doctor, and this will only take time.

Scope and guarantees

Briefly about the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and the scope of application of the theory, the following can be said: the professor mentioned that psychoanalysis in its classical sense is not designed for people over 50 years old. He explained this by saying that older people had already lost the flexibility of mental experiences, which is what therapy is aimed at. It is not recommended to arrange psychoanalysis sessions for loved ones. Freud wrote that he felt confused about the issue of relatives and said that he did not believe in individual influence on their subconscious. Also, some patients, before starting work, ask to eliminate one specific symptom, but the doctor cannot be responsible for the selective power of the analysis. You can touch what is “not necessary”, at least using the associative method. Typically, psychoanalysis is a very long process that can drag on for years. Freud noted that he gives each of his patients the opportunity to say “stop” and terminate treatment at any time. However, short-term treatment can create the effect of an unfinished operation, which can only worsen the situation in the future. The scope of application of the method is described in more detail in the works of Sigmund Freud.

Criticism of the theory of psychoanalysis

Freud's theory of psychoanalysis causes a storm of debate to this day. First of all, because some provisions do not have a way to refute them, and therefore are unscientific. His point of view was expressed by Paul Bloom (professor of psychology), who wrote that the provisions of Freud's theory are vague and cannot be verified by any scientifically reliable method. This is why they cannot be used scientifically.

The famous biologist Peter Medawar, who at one time received the Nobel Prize, spoke in the same vein. The professor described the theory of psychoanalysis as the greatest intellectual fraud of the twentieth century. The philosopher Leslie Stevenson, who analyzed Freud's theory in his book, shared the same opinion.

Freud also had followers, including such famous personalities as Erich Fromm, Jung, Karen Horney. However, in the future, in their studies, they also abandoned the key thought and ideas of Freud’s psychoanalysis - that the main motive for the occurrence of mental trauma is nothing more than a sexual factor. The research changed directions towards the impact of social and cultural elements of society and the environment on the mental and mental condition person.

The foundations of the psychoanalytic approach to understanding the development of the psyche in ontogenesis were laid by 3. Freud (1856-1939)1. Mental development in psychoanalysis it is identified with the process of complication of the sphere of drives, motives and feelings, with the development of personality, with the complication of its structures and functions. Freud identified three levels of the human psyche (according to the criterion of the fundamental possibility of awareness of mental processes) - consciousness, preconscious and unconscious. At the center of it scientific interests there was an unconscious level of the psyche - a container for the instinctive needs of the body, drives, primarily sexual and aggressive. It is the unconscious that initially opposes society. Freud viewed personality development as an adaptation (adaptation) of the individual to the external social world, alien to him, but absolutely necessary. Human personality, according to Freud, includes three structural components - the Id, the Ego and the Super-Ego, which do not arise simultaneously. It (Id) is the primitive core of personality; it is innate in character, located in the unconscious and subject to the pleasure principle. The id contains innate impulsive drives (the life instinct Eros and the death instinct Thanatos) and forms the energetic basis of mental development.

I (Ego) is a rational and, in principle, conscious part of the personality. It arises as biological maturation occurs between 12 and 36 months of life and is guided by the principle of reality. The Ego's job is to explain what is happening and build behavior.

man so that his instinctive demands are satisfied, and the restrictions of society and consciousness are not violated. With the assistance of the Ego, the conflict between the individual and society should weaken throughout life. The Super-I (Super-Ego) as a structural component of the personality is formed last, between 3 and 6 years of life.

The super-ego represents conscience, the ego-ideal and strictly controls compliance with the norms accepted in a given society. Tendencies on the part of the Id and Super-Ego, as a rule, are of a conflicting nature, which gives rise to anxiety, nervousness, and tension in the individual. In response, the Ego creates and uses a number of defense mechanisms, such as repression, rationalization, sublimation, projection, regression, etc. However, while the child’s Ego is still weak, not all conflicts can be resolved. Experiences become long-lasting, “fixed”, forming a certain type of character, i.e. The foundation of personality is laid by the experiences of early childhood. It should be noted, however, that Freud did not specifically study the child’s psyche, but came to formulate the main provisions of his theory of personality development by analyzing the neurotic disorders of adult patients. Approaches to understanding childhood sexuality were outlined by Freud at the beginning of the 20th century. in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). He proceeded from the idea that a person is born with a certain amount sexual energy(libido), which in a strictly defined sequence moves through different areas body (mouth, anus, genitals). Freud outlined the order of development of psychosexual stages as the body matures (a biological factor of development) and believed that the stages are universal and inherent in all people, regardless of their cultural level. Periodization of age-related development 3. Freud is called a psychosexual theory of personality, since the central line of his theory is associated with the sexual instinct, broadly understood as receiving pleasure. The names of the stages of personal development (oral, anal, phallic, genital) indicate the main bodily (erogenous) zone with which the feeling of pleasure is associated at this age.

Stages are a kind of steps along the path of development, and there is a danger of getting “stuck” at one stage or another, and then components of childhood sexuality can become prerequisites for neurotic symptoms in later life.

1. The oral stage lasts from birth to 18 months. Main source pleasure at the initial stage of psychosexual development is connected with the satisfaction of a basic organic need and includes actions associated with breastfeeding: sucking, biting and swallowing. At the oral stage, attitudes towards other people are formed - attitudes of dependence, support or independence, trust. The mother awakens sexual desire in the child and teaches him to love. It is the optimal degree of satisfaction (stimulation) in the oral zone (breastfeeding, sucking) that lays the foundations for a healthy independent adult personality. Extremes of maternal attitude in the first six months of life (excessive or, on the contrary, insufficient stimulation) distort personal development, and oral passivity is fixed. This means that an adult will use demonstrations of helplessness and gullibility as ways to adapt to the world around him, and will need constant approval of his actions from the outside. Too much parental affection accelerates puberty and makes the child “spoiled” and dependent. In the second half of the first year of life, with teething, when the emphasis shifts to the actions of biting and chewing, the oral-sadistic phase of the oral stage begins. Fixation in the oral-sadistic phase leads to such adult personality traits as a love of controversy, a cynical consumer attitude towards others, and pessimism. The mouth area, according to Freud, remains an important erogenous zone throughout a person’s life. The attachment of libido to the oral zone sometimes persists in adults and makes itself felt by residual oral behavior - gluttony, smoking, biting nails, chewing gum, etc.

2. The anal stage of personality development, associated with the emergence of the Ego, occurs between the ages of 1-1.5 and 3 years. Anal eroticism is associated, according to Freud, with pleasant sensations from the work of the intestines, from excretory functions, and with interest in one’s own feces. At this stage, parents begin to teach the child to use the toilet, for the first time demanding that he give up instinctive pleasure. The method of toilet training practiced by parents determines the future forms of self-control and self-regulation of the child.

The correct educational approach is based on attention to the child’s condition and on encouraging children to have regular bowel movements. Emotional support for neatness as a manifestation of self-control, according to Freud, has a long-term positive effect in the development of neatness, personal health and even flexibility of thinking.

With an unfavorable development option, parents behave excessively strictly and demandingly, achieving neatness as early as possible, focusing mainly on formal routine moments. In response to these inadequate demands, children develop a kind of protest tendencies in the form of “holding back” (constipation) or, on the contrary, “pushing out”. These fixed reactions, later spreading to other types of behavior, lead to the formation of a unique personality type: anal-retaining (stubborn, stingy, methodical) or anal-pushing (restless, impulsive, prone to destruction).

3. Phallic stage (3-6 years) - the stage of psychosexual development with the participation of the genital zone itself. At the phallic stage of psychosexual development, the child often examines and explores his genitals, and shows interest in issues related to the appearance of children and sexual relations. It is during this age period that a certain historical conflict is revived in the individual development of each person - the Oedipus complex. The boy develops a desire to “possess” his mother and eliminate his father. Entering into unconscious rivalry with his father, the boy experiences fear of supposed cruel punishment on his part, fear of castration, in Freud's interpretation. The child's ambivalent feelings (love/hate for the father) that accompany the Oedipus complex are overcome between the ages of five and seven. The boy suppresses (represses from consciousness) his sexual desires towards his mother. Identifying oneself with the father (imitation of intonations, statements, actions, borrowing norms, rules, attitudes) contributes to the emergence of the Super-Ego, or conscience, the last component of the personality structure.

In girls, Freud implies a similar dominant complex - the Electra complex. Resolution of the Electra complex also occurs by identifying oneself with the parent of the same sex - the mother and suppressing attraction to the father. The girl, by increasing her resemblance to her mother, gains symbolic “access” to her father.

4. Latent stage - sexual lull, from 6-7 years to 12 years, until the beginning of adolescence. The energy reserve is directed towards non-sexual goals and activities - study, sports, cognition, friendship with peers, mainly of the same sex. Freud especially emphasized the importance of this break in human sexual development as a condition for the development of a higher human culture.

5. Genital stage (12 - 18 years) - a stage determined by biological maturation during puberty and completing psychosexual development. There is a surge of sexual and aggressive impulses, and the Oedipus complex is reborn at a new level. Autoeroticism disappears and is replaced by interest in another sexual object, a partner of the opposite sex. Normally, in youth there is a search for a place in society, the choice of a marriage partner, and the creation of a family. One of the most significant tasks of this stage is liberation from the authority of parents, from attachment to them, which provides the necessary for cultural process the contrast between the old and new generations.

Genital character is an ideal personality type from a psychoanalytic position, the level of personality maturity. A necessary quality of genital character is the ability for heterosexual love without guilt or conflict experiences. A mature personality is characterized by Freud much more broadly: it is multifaceted, and it is characterized by activity in solving life problems and the ability to make efforts, the ability to work, the ability to delay gratification, responsibility in social and sexual relations and caring about other people. Thus, 3. Freud was interested in childhood as a period that transforms the adult personality. Freud was convinced that all the most significant things in personality development happen before the age of five, and later a person is only “functioning”, trying to overcome early conflicts, so he did not identify any special stages of adulthood. At the same time, the childhood of an individual is preformed by events from the history of the development of the human race (this line is represented by the revival of the Oedipus complex, the analogy of the oral stage in the development of personality and the cannibal stage in the history of the human community, etc.). The most significant factors in the development of personality in classical psychoanalysis- this is biological maturation and ways of communicating with parents. Failures to adapt to the demands of the environment in early childhood, traumatic experiences in childhood and fixation of libido predetermine deep conflicts and illnesses in the future.

Table 7

Psychoanalysis 3. Freud

Main subject Personal development

Research

Methods

research Analysis of clinical cases, free association method

tions, analysis of dreams, slips, etc.

Basic Concepts Levels of the psyche (consciousness, preconscious, unconscious), personality structure (Id, Ego, Super-Ego), psychological defense, sexual energy (libido), sexual instinct, life instinct, death instinct, stages of psychosexual development, erogenous zones, pleasure principle, reality principle, Oedipus complex, Electra complex, identification, conflict, residual behavior, fixation, genital character.

Key Ideas The initial antagonism of the child and the outside world, personality development as the individual’s adaptation to the social world. Personality development = psychosexual development. Personality development is most intense in the first 5 years of life and ends with the end of puberty. Stages of personality development in an invariable sequence determined by biological maturation: oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital.

Development factors Internal (biological maturation, transformation of the amount and direction of sexual energy) and external (social, influence of communication with parents).

Valuable The dynamic concept of development shows the unity of a person’s mental life, the significance of childhood, the importance and longevity of parental influence. The idea of ​​sensitive attention to the child’s inner world

Directions

Critics- Mythological

Lack of strict formalized research methods and statistical data

Difficulty of verification

A pessimistic view of development opportunities beyond adolescence.

The value of the psychoanalytic concept is that it is a dynamic concept of development; it shows a complex range of experiences, the unity of a person’s mental life, and its irreducibility to individual functions and elements. Although these ideas are largely mythological, they nevertheless reveal the significance of childhood, the importance and long-term influence of parental influence. Communication with parents in the early years, their influence on ways to resolve typical age-related contradictions, conflicts and adaptation failures affect later, manifest themselves characteristic problems already in an adult. Psychoanalysts insisted that negative childhood experiences lead to infantilism, self-centeredness, and increased aggressiveness of the individual, and such an adult will experience significant difficulties with his own child in fulfilling the parental role. The most important aspect of the psychoanalytic approach can be considered the idea of ​​sensitive attention to the child, the desire to discern behind seemingly ordinary words and actions the issues that truly worry or confuse him. So, K.G. Jung, analyzing the “conflicts of a child’s soul,” critically remarks: “After all, usually children are not listened to at all, usually they (at any age) are looked after as if they are insane, as soon as the matter concerns something significant, but everything else comes down to training leading to automaton-like perfection" (emphasis added - I.Sh.). This approach, according to Jung, is unacceptable: “We must take children as they really are, we must stop seeing in them only what we would like to see in them, and when raising them, we must comply not with dead rules, but with natural direction of development."

The further development of the psychoanalytic direction in psychology is associated with the names of K. Jung, A. Adler, K. Horney, A. Freud, M. Klein, E. Erikson, B. Bettelheim, M. Mahler and others.

Psychoanalysis of childhood

Attempts to organize analytical work with children from the standpoint of traditional psychoanalysis have encountered real difficulties: children do not express an interest in studying their past, there is no initiative to contact a psychoanalyst, and the level of verbal development is insufficient to formalize their experiences in words. At first, psychoanalysts mainly used observations and reports from parents as material for interpreting observations and reports.

Later, psychoanalytic methods were developed aimed specifically at children. Freud's followers in the field of child psychoanalysis, A. Freud and M. Klein, created their own, different versions of child psychotherapy.

A. Freud (1895-1982) adhered to the traditional position for psychoanalysis about the child’s conflict with the social world full of contradictions. Her works “Introduction to Child Psychoanalysis” (1927), “Norm and Pathology in Childhood” (1966) and others laid the foundations of child psychoanalysis. She emphasized that in order to understand the causes of difficulties in behavior, a psychologist must strive to penetrate not only into the unconscious layers of the child’s psyche, but also to obtain the most detailed knowledge about all three components of the personality (I, It, Super-Ego), about their relationships with the outside world, about mechanisms psychological protection and their role in personality development.

A. Freud believed that in the psychoanalysis of children, firstly, it is possible and necessary to use analytical methods common to adults on speech material: hypnosis, free associations, interpretation of dreams, symbols, parapraxia (slip of the tongue, forgetting), analysis of resistance and transference. Secondly, she also pointed out the uniqueness of the technique for analyzing children. The difficulties of using the method of free association, especially in young children, can be partially overcome by analyzing dreams, daydreams, daydreams, games and drawings, which will reveal the tendencies of the unconscious in an open and accessible form. A. Freud proposed new technical methods to help in the study of the self. One of them is the analysis of the transformations undergone by the child’s affects. In her opinion, the discrepancy between what was expected (based on past experience) and what was demonstrated (instead of grief - a cheerful mood, instead of jealousy - excessive tenderness) emotional reaction the child indicates that defense mechanisms are working, and thus it becomes possible to penetrate the child’s self. Rich material on the formation of defense mechanisms at specific phases child development presents an analysis of animal phobias, characteristics of school and family behavior of children. Thus, A. Freud attached great importance to children's play, believing that, being carried away by the game, the child will become interested in the interpretations offered to him by the analyst regarding defense mechanisms and the unconscious emotions hiding behind them.

A psychoanalyst, according to A. Freud, to be successful in child therapy must have authority with the child, since the child’s Super-Ego is relatively weak and unable to cope with the impulses released as a result of psychotherapy without outside help. Of particular importance is the nature of the child’s communication with an adult: “Whatever we begin to do with a child, whether we teach him arithmetic or geography, whether we educate him or subject him to analysis, we must, first of all, establish a certain emotional relationship between ourselves and the child. How harder work, which lies ahead of us, the stronger this connection should be,” emphasized A. Freud. When organizing research and correctional work with difficult children (aggressive, anxious), the main efforts should be aimed at forming attachment and developing libido, and not at directly overcoming negative reactions. The influence of adults, which gives the child, on the one hand, hope for love, and on the other hand, makes him fear punishment, allows him to develop over the course of several years his own ability to control his inner instinctual life. Moreover, part of the achievements belongs to the forces of the child’s self, and the rest to the pressure of external forces; the relationship between influences cannot be determined. When psychoanalyzing a child, A. Freud emphasizes, the external world has a much stronger influence on the mechanism of neurosis than in an adult. The child psychoanalyst must necessarily work to transform the environment. The outside world and its educational influences are a powerful ally of the child’s weak self in the fight against instinctive tendencies.

The English psychoanalyst M. Klein (1882-1960) developed her approach to organizing psychoanalysis at an early age.

The main attention was paid to the child's spontaneous play activity. M. Klein, unlike A. Freud, insisted on the possibility of direct access to the content of the child’s unconscious. She believed that action is more characteristic of a child than speech, and free play is the equivalent of the flow of associations of an adult; stages of the game are analogues of the associative production of an adult.

Psychoanalysis with children, according to Klein, was based primarily on spontaneous children's play, which was helped to manifest itself by specially created conditions. The therapist provides the child with a lot of small toys, “a whole world in miniature,” and gives him the opportunity to act freely for an hour. Most suitable for psychoanalytic gaming equipment are simple non-mechanical toys: wooden male and female figures of different sizes, animals, houses, fences, trees, various vehicles, cubes, balls and sets of balls, plasticine, paper, scissors, a soft knife, pencils, crayons, paints, glue and rope . The variety, quantity, and miniature size of toys allow the child to widely express his fantasies and use his existing experience of conflict situations. The simplicity of toys and human figures ensures their easy inclusion in plots, fictional or prompted by the child’s real experience. The game room should also be equipped very simply, but provide maximum freedom of action. Play therapy requires a table, a few chairs, a small sofa, a few pillows, a washable floor, running water, and a chest of drawers. Each child's play materials are kept separately, locked in a specific drawer. This condition is intended to convince the child that his toys and playing with them will be known only to himself and the psychoanalyst. Observation of the child’s various reactions, the “flow of children’s play” (and especially manifestations of aggressiveness or compassion) becomes the main method of studying the structure of the child’s experiences. The undisturbed flow of the game corresponds to the free flow of associations; interruptions and inhibitions in games are equivalent to interruptions in free association. A break in play is seen as a defensive action on the part of the ego, comparable to resistance in free association.

The game can manifest a variety of emotional states: feelings of frustration and rejection, jealousy of family members and accompanying aggressiveness, feelings of love or hatred for a newborn, the pleasure of playing with a friend, confrontation with parents, feelings of anxiety, guilt and the desire to improve the situation.

Prior knowledge of the child's developmental history and presenting symptoms and impairments assists the therapist in interpreting the meaning of children's play. As a rule, the psychoanalyst tries to explain to the child the unconscious roots of his play, for which he has to use great ingenuity to help the child realize which of the real members of his family are represented by the figures used in the game. At the same time, the psychoanalyst does not insist that the interpretation accurately reflects the experienced psychic reality; it is rather a metaphorical explanation or an interpretative proposal put forward for testing. The child begins to understand that there is something unknown ("unconscious") in his own head and that the analyst is also participating in his game. M. Klein provides a detailed description of the details of psychoanalytic gaming techniques on specific examples. Thus, at the request of her parents, M. Klein conducted psychotherapeutic treatment of a seven-year-old girl with normal intelligence, but with a negative attitude towards school and poor academic success, with some neurotic disorders and poor contact with her mother. The girl did not want to draw or actively communicate in the therapist’s office. However, when she was given a set of toys, she began to act out the relationship that had excited her with her classmate. It was they who became the subject of interpretation by the psychoanalyst. Having heard the therapist's interpretation of her game, the girl began to trust him more. Gradually, during further treatment, her relationship with her mother and her school situation improved.

Sometimes the child refuses to accept the therapist's interpretation and may even stop playing and throw away toys when told that his aggression is directed at his father or brother. Such reactions, in turn, also become the subject of interpretation by the psychoanalyst.

Changes in the nature of the child’s play can directly confirm the correctness of the proposed interpretation of the game. For example, a child finds a dirty figurine in a box with toys, which symbolized his younger brother in a previous game, and washes it in a basin from traces of his previous aggressive intentions. So, penetration into the depths of the unconscious, according to M. Klein, is possible using gaming techniques, through the analysis of the child’s anxiety and defense mechanisms. Regularly expressing interpretations of his behavior to the child patient helps him cope with emerging difficulties and conflicts. Some psychologists believe that the game itself is healing. So, D.V. Winnicott emphasizes the creative power of free play (play) in comparison with play according to the rules (game). Knowledge of the child's psyche with the help of psychoanalysis and play techniques has expanded the understanding of the emotional life of young children, deepened the understanding of the earliest stages of development and their long-term contribution to the normal or pathological development of the psyche in adulthood. Child psychoanalyst J. Bowlby considered, first of all, emotional development children. His theory of attachment is based on a synthesis of modern biological (ethological) and psychological data and traditional psychoanalytic ideas about development.

The key idea of ​​Bowlby's theory is that the mother is important not only because she satisfies the child's primary organic needs, in particular she satisfies hunger, but most importantly, she creates the child's first sense of attachment. In the first months of life, the child's cries and smiles guarantee him maternal care, external safety and security. An emotionally protected child is more effective in his exploratory behavior, and the paths of healthy mental development are open to him.

Various disturbances in the primary emotional connection between mother and child, “attachment disorders,” create a risk of personality problems and mental illness (for example, depression). Bowlby's ideas immediately found application and, starting in the 1950s, led to a practical reorganization of the hospital system for young children, which made it possible not to separate the child from the mother. R. Spitz emphasizes that the relationship between a child and his mother at a very early age influences the formation of his personality in the future3. Very indicative of the psychoanalytic approach to the study and correction of development

in childhood there are such concepts as “attachment”, “security”, the establishment of close relationships between children and adults, the creation of conditions for establishing interaction between children and parents in the first hours after birth.

E. Fromm’s position on the role of mother and father in raising children and the characteristics of maternal and paternal love has become widely known. Mother's love is unconditional: the child is loved simply because he is. The mother herself must have faith in life and not be anxious, only then can she convey to the child a feeling of security. “Ideally, mother’s love does not try to prevent the child from growing up, does not try to assign a reward for helplessness.” Fatherly love is, for the most part, conditional love, it is necessary and, what is important, it can be earned - by achievements, fulfillment of duties, order in affairs, compliance with expectations, discipline. A mature person builds images of parents within himself: “In this development from mother-centered to father-centered attachment and their final synthesis lies the basis of spiritual health and maturity.” The representative of psychoanalytic pedagogy, K. Bütner, draws attention to the fact that the traditional sphere of family education for psychoanalysis is complemented and even enters into a competitive, contradictory relationship with the system of institutional, non-family education. The influence of videos, cartoons, games, and the toy industry on inner world children are constantly growing, and often it can be assessed sharply negatively. A representative of the Paris School of Freudianism, F. Dolto, examines children’s passage through the symbolic stages of personality development5. In her books “On the Child’s Side” and “On the Teenager’s Side”, she analyzes numerous problems from a psychoanalytic point of view: the nature of childhood memories, the child’s well-being in kindergarten and school, attitude towards money and punishment, upbringing in a single-parent family, the norm and pathology of parental behavior. -children's relationships, in vitro conception. Child psychoanalysis had a significant influence on the organization of work with children in the educational and social spheres, and on work with parents. On its basis, numerous early intervention programs and therapy options for the “parent-child” and “father-mother-child” relationships have been created for parents and children at risk. Currently, there are many centers for psychoanalytic therapy for children. However, according to one of the prominent representatives of this trend, S. Lebovichi, “to this day it is not easy to accurately determine what exactly psychoanalysis is in a child”2. The goals of modern long-term psychoanalytic therapy for a child are formulated in a very wide range: from eliminating neurotic symptoms, alleviating the burden of anxiety, improving behavior to changes in the organization of mental activity or resumption of the dynamic evolution of mental processes of development.

SELF-TEST QUESTIONS:

1. Name the motives underlying human behavior according to 3. Freud.

2. Describe the structure of personality and its development in the process of ontogenesis. What are the prerequisites for the emergence of a person’s internal conflict?

3. Why can the approach of psychoanalysis to understanding mental development be characterized as preformist?

4. Using the Freudian model of psychosexual development, try to explain the behavior of an overly punctual and tidy person; prone to foul language and boasting; a person constantly striving to evoke sympathy and self-pity.

5. How has the psychoanalytic approach been transformed in child psychoanalysis (goals, methods, methods of correction)?

EXERCISE 1

Read an excerpt from Freud’s work 3 “On Psychoanalysis”, highlight in the text concepts specific to psychoanalysis, key provisions characteristic of this approach, paying attention to their wording. “The child’s relationship to his parents is far from being free from sexual excitement, as is shown direct observations on children and later psychoanalytic research on adults. The child views both parents, especially one of them, as the object of his erotic desires. Usually the child follows in this case the impulse on the part of the parents, whose tenderness has very clear, although restrained in relation to its purpose, manifestations of sexual feeling. Father, as a rule, prefers daughter, mother-son; the child reacts to this by wanting to be in the father's place if it is a boy, and in the mother's place if it is a girl. The feelings that arise between parents and children, and also, depending on the latter, between brothers and sisters, are not only positive and tender, but also negative and hostile. The complex that arises on this basis is predetermined for rapid repression, but nevertheless it produces a very important and lasting effect on the part of the unconscious. We can

suggest that this complex with its derivatives is the basic complex of every neurosis, and we must be prepared to find it no less valid in other areas of mental life. The myth of Oedipus the King, who kills his father and marries his mother, is a little modified manifestation of infantile desire, against which the idea of ​​incest subsequently arises. At the heart of Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet is the same incest complex, only better hidden. At the time when the child is in possession of a basic complex that has not yet been repressed, a significant part of his mental interests is devoted to sexual issues. He begins to think about where the children come from, and learns from the signs available to him about the actual facts more than the parents think. Typically, interest in issues of childbirth manifests itself as a result of the birth of a brother or sister. This interest depends solely on the fear of material damage, since the child sees only a competitor in the newborn. Under the influence of those partial drives that characterize the child, he creates several infantile sexual theories, in which the same genital organs are attributed to both sexes, conception occurs as a result of food intake, and birth occurs through evacuation through the end of the intestine; The child views copulation as a kind of hostile act, as violence. But it is precisely the incompleteness of his own sexual constitution and the gap in his information, which consists in ignorance of the existence of the female genital canal, that forces the child researcher to stop his unsuccessful work. The very fact of this childhood research, as well as the creation of various theories, leaves its mark on the formation of the child’s character and gives content to his future neurotic illness.

It is absolutely inevitable and quite normal that a child chooses his parents as the object of his first love choice. But his libido should not be fixed on these first objects, but should, taking these first objects as a model, move on to other persons during the final choice of the object. The separation of a child from his parents must be an inevitable task so that the child’s social status is not endangered. At a time when repression leads to choice among partial drives, and subsequently, when the influence of parents should decrease, great tasks lie ahead in the work of education. This education, undoubtedly, is not always carried out as it should be at present. Do not think that with this analysis of the sexual life and psychosexual development of the child we have moved away from psychoanalysis and from the treatment of neurotic disorders. If you want, psychoanalytic treatment can be defined as a continuation of education in the sense of eliminating the remnants of childhood” (Freud 3. On psychoanalysis // Psychology of the unconscious: Collection of works / Compiled by M.G. Yaroshevsky. M., 1990. P. 375).

TASK 2

Look through books and periodicals on psychology in recent years, choose the work of a foreign or domestic psychologist, the author of which is an adherent of the psychoanalytic approach.

Read, paying attention to the conceptual apparatus.

What aspects of mental and personal development does the author consider

the main ones?

Outline those practical problems of mental development, education and upbringing that are proposed to be solved in the context of psychoanalytic theory.

Give your own example of a relevant practical situation similar type.

What do you consider valuable from what you read, what seemed new, what was dubious or incomprehensible?

Prepare a thesis statement.

Additional literature:

1. Zesharnik B.V. Theories of personality in foreign psychology. M., 1982. S. 6-12, 30-37.

2. Obukhov Y.A. The importance of the first year of life for the subsequent development of the child:

(Review of D. Winnicott’s concept) // School of Health. 1997. T. 4. No. 1. P. 24-39.

3. Fromm E. Psychoanalysis and ethics. M., 1993.

4. Yaroshevsky M.G. History of psychology. M., 1985. S. 329-345, 377-397.