The Germinal Cell of Freud's Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy

Psychiatry
Interpersonal and Biological Processes
ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20
The Germinal Cell of Freud’s Psychoanalytic
Psychology and Therapy
Paul Bergman
To cite this article: Paul Bergman (1949) The Germinal Cell of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Psychology
and Therapy, Psychiatry, 12:3, 265-278, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1949.11022739
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The Germinal Cell of Freud's Psychoanalytic
Psychology and Therapy
Paul Bergman *
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T
HERE ARE MANY WAYS in which a student may try to assimilate and understand the work of a genius. He may acquaint himself with all the details of his
work and allow the impressions to sink into his own mind. He then trusts that an
unconscious process of selection and organization will take place, which will favor
those elements which are objectively significant and can become meaningful to him
subjectively. Or he may engage in the particular type of activity or follow the way of
life that the great creative person traced and learn to understand by doing. Another
way consists in attempting to find out whether there was an original experience, or
observation, or concept, that sent the creative mind out on its way, illuminating, as
it were, the world with the light gained at that one focal point. If there was an ex-.
perience of this kind, the attempt to reconstruct the course of the genius may result
in the student's arranging as logical steps and interrelationships what historically
may have been a vaguely conscious, tortuous, and sometimes inconsistent process.
The greatness of a speculative system be that a scientist is considered great only
may consist precisely in its organic unity if his thinking shows that particular orand self-consistency, while at the same ganic unity and power which stem from
time it embraces, reveals, or. _explains the passionate-and at least to some designificant aspects of the real world. In gree successful-pursuit of truth on one
philosophy, for example, Plato's thinking single path. This is the way that the
can be understood as developing from the genius of a Darwin, a Pasteur, an Eincore of the experience of bliss that the stein is perceived. I believe that Freud
philosopher must have felt when conceiv- belongs to the same group.
ing of a world of ideas as immovable and
The germinal cell of Freud's system,
more real than the changing world of as I see it, is an observation which Freud
perception. Outstanding thinkers in the made repeatedly when he approached the
earlier Christian tradition start with the zenith of his life. Before that time he had
conviction of the sinfulness of human been a good research man, a successful
nature and weave widespread nets of doctor, no doubt a most attractive and
thought around and from this source. The cultured gentleman. But from the time
germinal cell of Rousseau's thinking may that the germinal observation fell into
have been the feeling of the goodness of his rich mind, where affinities of unusual
nature and the depravity inflicted upon potential energy lay dormant, the system
it by human institutions and civilization of psychoanalysis developed.
in general. "As life closes, all a man has
This germinal observation, I believe, at
done seems like one cry or sentence," first consisted of several parts that can be
wrote William James. 1
distinguished from each other, and that
The thinking of great scientists seems in fact came to Freud at different times
to grow from a similar focal point. It may but grew in his mind into a complex and
powerful unity. First, Freud was im1 Quoted by F. O. Mathiessen in ,The James Family;
pressed by the fact that gaps in a perNew York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947; p. 133.
• Ph.D. Univ. of Vienna 20; M.A. Univ. of Indiana 43; Senior Psychologist, Research Department, The
MennInger Foundat10n, Topeka 43-. Diplorna~e American DOal:'<1 Of Examiners 1n prOfeSS10nai P$:\f¢,t).Ol()!tV';
Associate Member 'l'opeka Psyehoa~lytlc SOciety. J!'or blbl1ography, see lteference LIsts sect10n of this issue.
[265 ]
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266
son's (patient's) memory could be filled
under certain conditions, particularly under hypnosis. Second, he became impressed by the fact that certain symptoms
and tensions disappeared when these gaps
of memory were filled. Finally, he observed that the previously lost memories
very frequently contained scenes in which
the patients had struggled intensely
against their own sexual impulses.
The germinal observation, as it built
itself in Freud's mind into a nucleus of
unforeseen energy and power of development, can be formulated thus: For a
variety of reasons a person may experience intense conflict concerning a sexual
impulse. The tension or displeasure at
this moment may be so overwhelming that
the person eliminates the experience from
the context of his memory. The memory
of the person in fact shows a gap--or a
patently wrong substitute-for this point
or period of time, which seems to protect
the person from re-experiencing the intense (traumatic) conflict. Yet the organism from then on, or soon afterwards,
shows serious signs of malfunctioning
(symptoms). These symptoms can be
dissolved when the patient can be made
to remember what really happened and
how he felt when it happened. The excluded and walled-off part of the patient's
past is thus reintegrated. The current of
life is freed of a more or less strangling
obstacle.
How should this observation be evaluated? Is it just a curious item that one
would have to keep in mind when studying the more general problem of how
people change-for the worse, and for the
better~and would one likely find a great
many other ways by which people change
-for the worse, and for the better? Or
did this observation contain an element
basic to a great variety of changes in
people that at first sight may look very
different? Freud, possibly without ever
allowing this question much weight, engaged himself for the second alternative.
Two strong interests, waiting in his
mind, took hold of the germinal observation. The foremost interest was the de::lire Lu au! ve at a hypothetIcal picture of
PAUL BERGMAN
the "mental apparatus," that is to say,
of the scientific ideal of a machine model
that would explain how the human mind
dealt with incoming stimuli. The second,
not quite as intensive an interest, was
in relaton to therapy: how to help people
in trouble, on condition that it could be
done on the basis of correct understanding of the way their mental apparatus
worked. To Freud it was, from this time
on, out of the question to be concerned
with the therapeutic possibilities to the
exclusion of his understanding of the
mental apparatus.
That therapy to Freud was quite definitely of secondary importance can be
seen from many a passage in his writings.
Most clearly it is reflected in this one: "I
have told you that psycho-analysis began
as a therapeutic procedure, but it is not
in that light that I wanted to recommend
it to your interest, but because of the
truths it contains, because of the information it gives us about that which is of the
greatest importance to mankind, namely
his own nature, and because of the connections it has shown to exist between the
most various of his activities." 2
The germinal observation had shown
how a human being, without being aware
of it, can be under the influence of a
part of his own past. A piece of the present could be understood if a piece of the
past was elucidated. A young girl's hallucination of cigar smell could, for example, be traced to the repressed memory
of a moment when the girl struggled
against her own sexual wishes aroused by
the kiss of a cigar-smoking man. '
Under the impression of such observations, Freud conceived the task of his
psychology to be the genesis of all phenomena of the human mind. First, obviously, he attempted to understand in
this way the abnormal phenomena. But,
as he was unable to find a clear and
convincing demarcation between normal
and abnormal phenomena in the borderregion of psychopathology in which he
worked, he saw the possibility that one
set of laws might account for both nor~ Fl'('url, Ncw' rntronuctnry I,ccturell 011 J'llychoanalysis; New York, W. W. Norton Co., 1933; p. 214 f.
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GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
mal and abnormal phenomena. In a most
fruitful step he turned to an application
'of the genetic principle to all phenomena
.of the mind. ,How does love for the parents, or love in general, or any affect or
attitude in general come about? He expected the answers to come from investigations of the antecedents of thephenomenon.
His genetic psychology was meant to
be at the same time a causal psychology.
The germinal observation contains the
past not only as predecessor of the present, but also as its cause. The two other
directions in which functional relationships might be looked for, namely the
present (the structure of the "psychological field" in a later terminology), and
the future (a part of the "psychological
field"-the purposes), are less clearly
represented in the germinal observation.
Freud's thinking, therefore, at first goes
almost exclusively the way of causal laws
in the form of A happened at this time
because B happened in the past. He remained throughout his life more interestedin finding concrete examples of this
kind of law than in any of the other types
of psychological laws, be they structural,
purposive, or stimUlus-response laws.
The search for genetic, causal determination soon led Freud from the near past
to the distant past. There are childhood
memories that have the same convincing
relationship to the particulars of a neurotic symptom as the kiss of the cigarsmoking man had to the subsequent olfactory hallucination in the case of the
young woman patient. Sometimes a chain
of memories seems to lead back from
the present through various periods of
life, finally losing itself in the dim and
distant past of early childhood. Where
the configuration. of these memories belonging to different ages has constant elements, Freud, following the model of, the
germinal observation, takes the later ones
to be shaped by the earlier ones, and
tends to assume the earlier ones are less
distorted representations of the same dynamic constellation. Childhood, and particularly early childhood, becomes therefore the period of primary interest.
267
In many cases investigated by Freud
during the eaI'ly years of his system-building activities, childhood memories produced by patients had to be recognized
as false and impossible because of external evidence or internal inconsistency.
When Freud became aware of this fact;
he thought for a while it closed the way
of thinking 'which he had followed since
making the germinal observation. "At
that time I would gladly have given up
the whole thing. . . . Perhaps I persevered only because I had no choice and
could not then begin again at anything
else." 8 But' then he decided that what
he had uncovered was memory of fantasy.
This was a significant extension of Freud's
previous understanding of the germinal
observation.
There followed further extensions, even
more bold and stunning than the first
one. Certain elements in the adult patient's communications-certain fantasies,
dreams, attitudes, segments of behaviorcould not be referred to an earlier memory, of consciously experienced fact or
fantasy. Freud's new conception was that
the "Unconscious"-a concept which began to be regarded as a definite topologically defined part of the "mental apparatus"-contained elements that were
both determinable as to their content and
dynamically' active, but had never been
conscious to the individual. These elements could, for example, be "unconscious
fantasies" assumed to be generated at all
times that a' person lives and acts, without his being aware of more than the
conscious "surface" of his psychic activities. Or they could be fantasies stemming
from such an early time in the child's
'life that no conscious awareness can be
assumed to have existed. 4 Or they could
be mental contents stemming from a
phylogenetic heritage, a racial unconscious.5
8 Freud, "On the History of the Psychoanalytic
Movement" in Collected Papers, vol 1, p. 299; London, Hogarth Press, 1924.
• This mode of extension is not characteristic of
Freud. himself, but of the school of British psychoanalysts who eonsider it a logical consequence of
Freudian assumptions. Freud does not seem to
have' clearly indicated where he would draw the
limits of the applicabU1ty of his methodological
tools.
.
• This mode of extension is less characteristic of
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268
PAUL BERGMAN
One might well pause at thiS point and impulses underground in many a sensiadmire the hardly surpassable boldness tive person. Second, the sexual element
and originality of this kind of thinking. appeared where science which suffered a
Freud had .just finished explaining the scotoma"':"'for after all science was also a
reality of a present experience by the still function of the same civilization---did not
dynamically active reality of a past expe- want to see it: namely, in childhood. One
rience. He then proceeded to explain the after another of Freud's patients produced
reality of a present experience by a con- memories that unquestionably showed
struct which at no time had experiential that sexual perceptions and experiences
reality. He then declared this construct~ had taken place long before adolescencethe Unconscious-to constitute the real the time when the official science of that
psychic reality in relation to which the time allowed for such happenings. Next
phenomena of conscious experience were there were memories in which different
purely "surface" products of inner per- kinds of organ pleasure seemed to be
ception, with little ability to inform us involved; there was pleasure to be sure,
about psychic reality. This conscious ex- but not of the sexual organ. Freud, when
perience was as little to be trusted as Par- faced with this situation, widened the
menides or Plato had once trusted outer concept of sexuality-"libido"-to include
perception, since they had doubted that a great variety of organ pleasures, outit could inform one about the reality of standingly, of course, pleasure of the oral
the physical world. 6
and anal zone. 7 Thus memories that reI have so far followed the trends of called the pleasures one had found in
thought by which Freud wove one aspect eating, elimination, fighting, biting, suckof the germinal observation, namely the ing, scratching, and many others,were
past surviving and influencing the person by definition regarded as sexual.
without his awareness, into a system of
Similar memories were observed in
psychology. Let us see now what he did which no pleasure was recalled. Freud
with the fact that in his observation it assimilated this type of memory in the
was sexual conflict that caused the dis- germinal observation in two different
turbance. Here, for something like thirty ways: First, by assuming that the real
years, Freud used his genius for generali- event back in the past had contained the
zation to elaborate the doctrine of the pleasure element, but that repression
sexual content of the unconscious. First, could hit only the affective aspect of a
of course, quite a few of the uncovered total experience while leaving the mempathogenic memories of his hysteric pa- ory of the actual behavior and happentients of that time were obviously sexual. ings intact. Second, by assuming that
Such memories, and such types of pa- the remembered event, though it may
tients, appeared in later years with de- not have contained any pleasure element
creasing frequency in the analysts' offices. at the time of its happening, points to an
They were possibly products of a civiliza- event further back in the past that is
tion and education that, through rigorous no longer remembered. The remembered
condemnation of sexual impulses and event and the not-remembered Qne would
through their consistent association with at best have everything in common exthe vile and contemptible, forced these cept the affective pleasure element, .assumed to have been present in the notremembered earlier event. At worst they
Freud than of Jung. But Freud, while disapproving
of the wide use of this method by Jung, clearly
accepts its prinCiple and uses it with intense· subjective conviction, for example, in his last book on
Moses and Monotheism (New York, Alfred A. Knopf,
1939).
• "The unconscious Is the true psychic reality; in
its inner nature it is just as much unknown to us
as the reality of the external world, and it is just
as Imperfectly communicated to us by the data of
consciousness as is the external world by the reports of our sense-organs." Freud, The Interpretation. of Dreams; Nllw York, Mucmillan, 1039; p. 562.
• It is noteworthy that Freud himself never came
to include all organ pleasure in his concept of
sexuality. Othel" psychoanalysts, however, have
made this step that seems consistent with the
progress of Freud's thinking. Thus, for example,
E. H. Erikson includes all pleasure derived from
use of the motor and sensory functions of the
organism with sexuality in Freud's sense. "Problems of Infancy and Early Childhood" in CyeZopMUl of Medtctne: Surgery and SpecialtUe8; :Philadelphia, Davis, 1989.
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GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
would at least have in common a minimum of configuration of essential elements. This would be the case in the
so-called "screen-memories" with their
symbolic representation of the assumed
dynamically affective unconscious background.
I have mentioned pathological phenomena (symptoms) on the one hand, and
normal phenomena (affects, attitudes) on
the other as the material to which Freud
applied his scheme of explanation. Though
I do not intend to go into detail into the
well-known border zone between these
two fields, where Freud reaped some of
his most important triumphs, I should
like to discuss briefly two areas of minor
abnormal functioning of the mental apparatus: the dreams and the parapraxes.
The germinal cell of Freud's dream psychology was again closely akin to the
scheme of the germinal observation: A
dream represents usually a "wish" of sexual nature stemming from distant childhood and finding associative links with,
and more or less distorted expression
through, psychic material belonging to
the dreamer's present or recent past"day-residues." That is to say, according
to the Freudian scheme one may interpret
a dream similar to the way one interprets
a·neurotic symptom. There may be many
layers that have to be gone through, but
the task is not only solvable, but satisfactorily solved in principle, when the layer
of unconscious, sexual, childhood wishes
is reached. These three qualifications
came to stand, for a certain period of
Freud's thought, in such close association
that it seems almost unnecessary to enumerate them separately. The unconscious
at that time represented to Freud the
dynamically, forever active, sexual tendencies of the distant past. Repressed
sexual wishes of the immediate or near
past, such as the germinal observation
contained, were now reinterpreted as late
consequences of primal repressions which
must have taken place in the earliest years
of life. Thus a conceptual scheme is ready
which receives the endless variety of
dream phenomena and reduces them step
by step to u smull number of imltil'lr.t.l1al,
269
mostly sexual wishes, assumed to be inherent in the nature of childhood.
Parapraxes, finally, in a rather close
parallel to dreams and symptoms, are
explained as effects of the unconscious
upon the conscious mind. Insofar as the
unconscious in Freud's concept preserves
the tendencies of the past, one may say
that in parapraxes emotional attitudes
rooted in the past, incompatible with the
present purposes of the person, can affect
the present. They are, by the bright light
of everyday life, momentary eruptions
from the depths of the unconscious, making the person act differently from what
he had intended, or preventing the act
he had intended.
Thus far I have described the original
core of Freud's psychoanalytic psychology, as its creator developed it with a
dogged logical persistence from the germinal observation. I will now briefly
review the additions which Freud introduced in the course of the years. His own
experience mainly, plus the criticism of
a hostile world, forced him to add new
factors to his system. It still represents
a faSCinating spectacle to trace the steps
by which Freud, while opening himself
and his thinking to new observations, preserved the essential structure which he
perceived to be contained in the germinal
observation. He widened the system at
two opposite sides, at the side of the
repressed and at the side of the repressing
forces. Let us examine first what Freud
added to the side of the repressed forces.
Freud had originally conceived of the
repressed forces as consisting of sexual
instincts in a narrow sense. Soon he gave
a broader meaning to the word, including
particularly "pregenital" sexuality. He
again expanded the content of his libido
concept, for the last time as far as he personally was concerned,S when he brought
in the concept of "narcissism." He understood this concept as meaning all varieties
of positive interests in all aspects of the
own self, physical, mental, and social. In
his unique way of, synthesizing, Freud
evolved the concept of the Hnarcissistic"
8 I havfl mentioned above certain expansions ot
the libido concept hy nthl;'r Pllycho:lnnlyst9. nef~l"
lInca rUlll,III1!.!! 1.
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270
libido to be the fountainhead of all libidinous development, which he assumed to
proceed in a sequence of regular, predictable steps to the final level, "genital maturity." In this way, he conceived of the
task of describing phenomena of an
adult's life stream in terms of the place
on the axis of libidinal development to
which the relevant memories of the past
seemed to refer. Suppose a person wanted
to have a good library; this could be on
the basis of a narcissistic, an oral, an anal,
or a phallic interest; or it could be "overdetermined" by several of these instinctual sources. In cases in which the libido
or parts of .it seemed· to be attached to
any stage other than the one of final
genita\ maturity. Freud considered that
fixation at that stage, and/or regression
from a later stage, had taken place.
In the last period of his thinking Freud
gave up the heroic attempt to which he
had clung through several decades of his
life. He no longer regarded all repression
to be in the last analysis repression of
sexual, libidinous content. The germinal
observation somehow lost its sway over
his mind. Powerful experiences from various sources finally burst· the magic ring.
The change of social scene with the advent of the First World War may have
been paramount among these experiences.
However that may be, Freud now, for the
:first time, after having time and again
enlarged the concept of libido, decreased
it by taking out what had been considered the libido's sadistic and masochistic tendencies. In his final instinct
theory, he gave a distinct and equipotent
dynamic place to aggression-or to the
death instinct to be more exact.
Yet, even after this change, the basiccontent quality associated with the germinal observation remained unaltered. It
was no longer sex alone, but the duality
of sex and aggression against which the
human being had to defend himself. But
the human being was still under the tragic
fate that made him damage himself as a
consequence of the necessity to struggle
against the core of his own being, the
wild instincts forever seething in that part
of the personality that Freud came to
PAUL BERGMAN
call the "Id." There, as in the interior
of a volcano, pressure might surpass
counter-pressure, and result in destructive
eruptions.
Relatively the largest part of Freud's
psychological thinking during the closing
decades of his life was devoted to the
repressing forces of man's personality, as
seen from the vantage point of the germinal observation. For years he had been
satisfied to reaffirm again and again in
each individual instance the part of repression, while concentrating his interest
on the repressed memories, affects, instincts. But in the last two decades of
his life he began to be fascinated by the
variety of defenses that he· now thought
he was able to differentiate. Freud remained faithful to the structure of the
germinal observation as he saw it. He
held fast to the scheme of thought which
explained a phenomenon under scrutiny
as a product of historically determined
vicissitude of instinct. But repression
now appeared to him to be only one of
possible vicissitudes of instinct, though
some characteristics of repression went
with a variety of other defenses like projection, turning against the self, and so
on. He learned to distinguish modes of
defense where repression in the original
sense did not occur at all. The mechanism
of isolation, for example, served the purpose of defepse without forcing the
warded-off memory out of consciousness.
Thus analysis of defenses, and of ego
tendencies in general, gradually emerged
into the foreground in Freud's later years.
In the germinal observation the conflict had obviously been between the ego
and the instinctual impulse. Closer scrutiny of the repressing part of the personality showed that another conflict was
frequently involved, a conflict between the
person's ego and his ethical standards and
aspirations, represented by his conscience.
This type of conflict was quite conscious
in some cases; in other cases it seemed to
be only marginally conscious; and in still
others there was no trace of such conflict.
With another of his bold strokes of genius,
Freud conceived of the hypothesis that
such conflict was ubiquitous, that its
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GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
minor role or relative absence in the consciousness of some people was due to
essentially the same mechanisms of defense by which the "Ego" wards off consciQuS awareness of its struggle with the
instincts. Thus Freud came to posit the
"Super-Ego," with conscious and unconscious dynamic effects, as one of the
constituent parts of the personality. But,
characteristically, he was less concerned
with the relationship of the superego to
the cultural influences than with its relations to the environment at the time of
early childhood. Cultural influences must
necessarily, to a high degree, determine
what a person considers as "oughts" and
"ought nots." The adult figures of the
child's environment embody and transmit
culturally conditioned standards. But
Freud's interest turned mainly towards
the problem of how the conscious and
unconscious parts of conscience, the superego, became historically determined by
childhood experiences. Seen from the
vantage point of the germinal observation the following becomes apparent: the
prohibition of the sexual impulse as well
as the impulse had a history, and according to Freud, the history of a person con-'
tained the explanation of. both the impulse and the prohibition in their actual
interaction, the earliest history standing
higher in explanatory value.
Freud finally completed his topology of
the major dynamic centers of the mental
apparatus when he added to the unconscious id (instinctual impulses) the unconscious superego (conscience impulses)
and the unconscious ego. In one sense
this seems to be an obvious deduction
from the germinal observation, in which
the ego of the patient did not know with
what it was dealing or what means it was
using for what reasons. However, it illustrates again Freud's consistency and boldness in theory formation. In his final
formulation he ascribed to the unconscious ego (in anthropomorphic language)
such qualities as one would assume to
exist in a person (within the person) who
would be subjected to pressures from the
outcr world, supercgo and id, and would
react to them in the way that the ego
271
does. And, again, the structure of the
unconscious ego is explained mainly, by
the history of the earliest pressures exerted upon what must be considered· a
constitutionally predisposed stratum.
In this last half of my paper I will
attempt to show how Freud's ideas about
therapy developed logically, in a consistent-if you want, stubbornly consistentway from the germinal observation. Anticipating the results of the search, I
might say that Freud did not neglect
the most remote possibility of putting to
therapeutic use what seemed to him-at
least in rudimentary form--contained in
the germinal observation; but he refused
with equal consistency and determination
to assimilate any element into the theory
of therapy that could not be fitted into it."
The followi~g quotation may give the
reader a feeling for Freud's reluctance to
use therapeutic means outside of what he
considered legitimate analysis (in my interpretation, the intellectual system built
upon the germinal observation):
Perhaps it [the outcome of treatment] may
depend, too, on whether the personality of
the analyst allows of the patient's putting
him in the place of his ego·ideal, and this
involves a temptation for the analyst to play
the part of prophet, saviour, and redeemer
to the patient. Since the rules of analysis are
diametrically opposed to the physician's making use of his personality in any such manner,
it must be honestly confessed that here we
have another limitation to the effectiveness
of analysis. . . .10
Let us once more recall the elements
contained in the germinal observation:
an event of the patient's life had been
traumatic; although the memory contained no trace of the event, there was a
pathological symptom; when memory was
restored, the symptom disappeared.
Originally Freud's therapy was exclusively directed towards recovery of memories. Thus it already appears in the
8 This discussion is only concerned with Freud's
theory of therapy. It would be of extraordinary
interest to discuss Freud's actual practice of ther·
apy, but this would hardly be possible as very little
material on what Freud actually did, felt, and spoke
wit.h hiR pllt.ipnta I~ uvtliltlblc.
10 Freud, The Ego and the Jd; London, Hogarth
PrallE, 1929i p. 72.
272
PAUL BERGMAN
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paper that is generally felt to mark the
threshold of psychoanalysis proper-the
"preliminary communication" of 1893: 11
tances, any more than either hypnosis
or urging alone could do it. Nor did the
"technical artifices"-such as laying the
hand on the patient's forehead-work too
We found, at first to our greatest surprise, well.
that the individual hysterical symptoms imAt the time of his contributions to the
mediately disappeared without returning if
we succeeded in thoroughly awakening' the Studies in Hysteria, Freud had already
memories of the causal process with its ac- found that passive waiting for the pathocompanying affect, and if the patient circum- genic memories frequently did not yield
stantiaily discussed the process in the most
detailed manner and gave verbal expression the desired results, even when the patient cooperated to the' best of his capacto the afJect.12
ity. He therefore chose to let "directive"
At that time Freud (and Breuer) techniques alternate with "nondirective"
thought that a state of hypnosis was ones, as one would say in modern termineeded in order to reintegrate the dis- nology. Having come to regard the paoriented memories. 1s Yet two years later, tient's memories as stratified in layers of
when Studies in Hysteria was published, different resistance potential.,...,.the pathoFreud had. already essentially given up genic nucleus carrying the highest potenhypnosis, having found this technique of tial, the most closely connected or assolimited use.14 He then resorted to forcibly ciated memories being next highest, and
urging the patients to remember:
so on-Freud proposed the division between directive and nondirective tech. . . and as this urging necessitated much
exertion on my part, and showed me that I niques in the following way:
had to overcome a resistance, I, therefore, . . . I could perhaps say that one should
formulated the. whole state of affairs into himself undertake the opening of the inner
the following theory: Through my psychic strata and the advancement in the radial
work I had to overCome a psychic force in direction, while the patient should take care
the patient which opposed the pathogenic of the peripheral extension.l1
idea from becoming conscious (remembered).lS
"Radial direction" means direction of
higher resistance, "peripheral extension"
In addition to urging, Freud tempo- the addition of memory material of the
rarily used various minor "technical arti- same potential of resistance, as it were.
fices" as reinforcements of suggestion for
It is the analyst then whom Freud
the task of overcoming the patient's psy- believed must select, first, the weak points
chic forces of "resistance," as he came to at which to depart from the material...;;..
name them.16 He soon chose "free associa- thoughts, feelings, memories-which the
tion" as the technique he considered best patient offers, and who must point out
suited to enable patients to relax the the gaps and flimsy constructions' in the
vigilance of the resistances and to allow patient's explanations:
for the emergence of the repressed memories. Yet it was clear that free associa- One, therefore, tells the patient, 'You are
what you assert can have nothing
tion alone could not overCOme the resis- mistaken,
to do with the thing in question; here we
will have to strike against something which
11 Breuer and Freud, "The Psychic Mechanism of
Hysterical Phenomena" In Studies in Hysteria; New will occur to you. . • . ' 18
York, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph No.
61, 1947; chapter 1.
.
.. Reference footnote 11; pp. 3-4. ItaUcs in original
text are sometimes omitted in quotations in this
paper.
lS"Our observations have often taught us that a
memory which has hi.therto provoked attacks becomes incapable of it when it is brought to reaction
and associative correction in a hypnotic state."
Reference footnote 11: PP. 10-11.
•• "I was, therefore, forced to dispense with hypnotism and yet obtain the pathogenic reminiscences."
neferenee footnote 11; p. 200.
111 Reference footnote 11; p. 201.
10 Reference footnote 11; p. 202.
Second, Freud, at least in later stages
of the analysis, believed the analyst should
suggest to the patient the direction in
which to look for the pathogenic memories:
In these later stages of the work it is of
advantage if one can surmise the connection
'7
Reference footnote 11; p. 221.
lS Reference footnote 11; p. 222.
GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
and tell it to the patient before it has been
revealed to him. If the conjecture is correct, the course of the analysis is accelerated. . . .19
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Freud apparently considered this technical device very essential for psychoanalysis. He returns to its discussion
many times in later years. Thus, for instance, with all desirable clarity, in a
work written 10 years after the Studies
in Hysteria, he states:
273
And 30 years after the Studies in Hysteria:
You must know that the correct reconstruction of such forgotten experiences in childhood [in analysis] always results in a tremendous therapeutic effect, no matter whether
such reconstructions may be objectively confirmed or not. 23
Finally, at the end of his life, more than
forty years after the Studies in Hysteria,
Freud wrote a paper especially for the
In a psycho-analysis the physician always purpose of stressing this same point of
gives his patient (sometimes to a greater and therapeutical technique which seemed to
sometimes to a less extent) the conscious. him of paramount importance:
anticipatory images by the help of which
he is put in a position to recognize and to
grasp the unconscious material. For there
are some patients who need more of such
assistance and some who need less; but there
are none who get through without some of it.
Slight disorders may perhaps be brought to
an end by a person's unaided efforts, but
never a neurosis. . . .20
The same note is struck again 15 years
after the Studies in Hysteria:
The treatment is made up of two parts, out
of what the physician infers and tells the
patient, and out of the patient's work of as·
similation, of 'working through,' what he
hears. The mechanism of our curative method
is indeed quite easy to understand; we give
the patient the conscious idea of what he may
expect to find (bewusste Erwartungsvorstellung), and [through] the similarity of this
with the repressed unconscious one leads him
to come upon the latter himself.21
The point is again made in a work writ:.
ten 25 years after the Studies in Hysteria:
In quite a number of cases . . . the analysis
divides itself into two clearly distinguishable
stages: in the first, the physician procures
from the patient the necessary information,
makes him familiar with the premises and
postulates. of psycho-analysis, and unfolds to
him the reconstruction of the genesis of his
disorder as deduced from the material brought
up in the analysis. In the second stage the
patient himself lays hold of the material put
before him, works on it, recollects what he
can of the apparently repressed memories,
and behaves as if he were living the past
over again.22
,. Reference footnote 11; p. 223.
.. Freud, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old
Boy," in Collected Papers, vol. 3, p_ 246; London,
Hogarth Press, 1924 .
.. Freud, "The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic
Therapy" in Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 286.
.. Freud, "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman," in Collected Papers, vol. 2,
p.208.
5
The analyst finishes a piece of construction
and communicates it to the subject of the
analysis so that it may work upon him; he
then constructs a further piece out of the
fresh material pouring in upon him, deals
with it in the same way, and proceeds in
this alternating fashion until the end . . .
one lays before the subject of the analysis
a piece of his early history that he has forgotten, in some such way as this: 'Up to
your nth year you regarded yourself as the
sole and unlimited possessor of your mother;
then came . . .' and so on.24
Gradually, as Freud gained in experience, he became impressed with the possibilities of influencing the dynamiC interplay of forces in the patient from the side
of the resistances as well as from the side
of the unconscious material.
[He found that it helped to] obtain his [the
patient's] collaboration and cause him to view
himself with the objective interest of the
investigator. . . . [The analyst] does as well
as he can as an explainer . . . as a teacher,
as a representative of a freer and more superior philosophy of life, and as a confessor,
who through the continuance of his sympathy
and his respect imparts, so to say, absolution
after the confession. One endeavors to do
something humane for the patient as far as
the range of one's own personality and the
measure of sympathy which one can set apart
for the case allows. 25
But:
. . . one can hardly dispense with oneaffective factor, that is, the personal equation of
the doctor, and in a number of cases this
alone is enough to break the resistance. 26
.. Freud, The Problem of Lay Analyses; New York,
Brentano's, 1927.
.. Freud, "Constructions in Analysis," Int. J_ Psychoanalysis (1938) 19: p. 380 .
•• Reference footnote 11; p. 213.
.. Reference footnote 11; pp. 213-214.
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274
The emotional attachment of the pa·
tient to the physician, while it is the most
powerful tool in overcoming the resis·
tance, soon also proved in many cases
to be a serious obstacle to the. task of
remembering. For, more and more regu·
larly, Freud found that the "painful ideas
emerging from the content of the analysis
would be transferred to the physician," 21
would be "deceptively" experienced as
present, not as past, as associated with
the physician's person, not with the person to whom they originally-in the traumatic scene of the past-referred. Freud
originally regarded this transference as
a disturbance in remembering. But after
some time, when he became convinced
that the pathogenic material of the earliest years of life could not be safely recovered as memories, he turned the table
on the situation by the ingenious idea of
moving the transference into the center
of his therapeutic attention. What could
not be remembered was, he felt, made
accessible, since in all essentials the transference seemed to preserve the traits of
the distant past.
. . . here the patient remembers nothing of
what is forgotten and repressed, but that he
expresses it in action. He reproduces it not
in his memory but in his behavior; he repeats it, without of course knowing that he
is repeating it. . . . We soon perceive that
the transference is itself only a bit of repetition, and that the repetition is the transference of the forgotten past not only on to
the phYSiCian, but also on to all the other
aspects of the current situation . . . while
the patient lives it through as something real
and actual, we have to accomplish the therapeutic task, which consists chiefly in translating it back again into terms of the past.ls
·Freud described this turnabout with
all possible precision as a change of tactics, not as a change of goal:
The tactics adopted by the physician are
easily justified. For him recollection in the
old style, reproduction in the mind, remains
the goal of his endeavors, even when he
knows that it is not to be obtained by the
newer method. 29
"Reference footnote 11; p. 230.
.. Freud, "Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psycho-Analysis" in Collected Papers, vol.
2, pp. 369 ff.
.. Reference footnote 28; p. 373.
PAUL BERGMAN
In this same paper he also summarizes
succinctly the means-ends relationships
obtaining between transference, overcoming of resistances, and memories.
From the repetition-reactions which are exhibited in the transference the familiar paths
lead back to the awakening of the memories,
which yield themselves' without difficulty
after the resistances have been overcome. so
To summarize the last part of the discussion one might say: Whether the
patient actually remembers or whether
he repeats old patterns of behavior and
feeling-in his relationship to the analyst
or to other persons of his contemporary
life sphere--the task of the analyst, according to Freud, remains the same: he
should help the repressed past to emerge
into consciousness, either as memory or
as construction of the past. In the latter
case it is important that the patient accept
the construction not only intellectually
but also emotionally.31 Timing of the
interpretations and constructions offered
by the analyst therefore becomes of importance.
. . • psycho-analysis . . . prescribes that two
conditions are to be fulfilled before it is done.
First, by preparatory work, the repressed
material must have come very near to the
patient's thoughts, and secondly, he must be
sufficiently firmly attached by an affective
relationship to the phYSician (transference)
to make it impossible for him to take fresh
flight again [that is, to repress again].82
In the course of his work Freud developed a variety of techniques that attempted to attack the pathological equilibrium of the patient not so much by
calling forth the repressed past, but rather
by weakening, devaluating, or destroying
the opposing "resistances."
The main instrument Freud now b&lieved should be used against the strength
of the resistances was again interpretation; and, consistently enough, he con.. Reference footnote 28; p. 375.
81 Difficulties arise at this point because Freud
offers no satisfactory operational definition of "emotional acceptance." The temptation Is here to judge
by the therapeutic effect, and to neglect all testimony of the patient as to his "emotional acceptance"
of a construction if he does not improve in his
condition.
.. Freud, "Observations on 'Wild~ Psycho-Analysis"
in Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 302 .
GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
ceived of demonstration of the historical
(childhood) pattern of the resistance as
the main type of interpretation.
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••. our work is aimed directly at finding out
and overcoming the 'resistances', and we can
with justification rely on the complexes coming to light as soon as the resistances have
been recognized and removed. . . . In male
patients the most important resistances to
the treatment seem to be derived from the
father-complex and to express themselves in
fear of the father, and in defiance and incredulity towards him.aa
Freud, of course, did not believe that
finding and naming the resistance did
away with it.
One must allow the patient time to get to
know this resistance of which he is ignorant.
to 'work thrOUgh' it, to overcome it, by continuing the work according to the analytic
rule in defiance of it. Only when it has come
to its height can one, with the patient's cooperation, discover the repressed instinctual
trends which are feeding the resistance; and
only by living them through in this way will
the patient be convinced of their existence
and their power.s,
.
In certain cases he considered it necessary to use special pressures to overcome
the tenacity of the resistance-for instance, in cases of anxiety hysteria.
• . . the analytic technique must undergo certain modifications according to the nature of
the disease and the dominating instinctual
trends in the patient. Our therapy was, in
fact, first designed for conversion-hysteria;
in 'anxiety-hysteria (phobias) we must alter
our procedure to some extent. The fact is
that these patients cannot bring out the material necessary for resolving the phobia so
long as they feel protected by retaining their
phobic condition',85
One can hardly ever master a phobia if one
waits till the patient lets the analysis infiuence him to give it up . . . one succeeds
only when one can induce them [the agoraphobic patients] . . . to go about alone and
to struggle with their anxiety while they
make the attempt. One first achieves, therefore, a considerable moderation of the phobia,
and it is only when this has been attained
by the physician's recommendation that the
associations and memories come into the
88 Reference footnote 21; pp. 288-289.
"Reference footnote 28; p.375.
85 Reference footnote 21; p 289.
275
patient's mind enabling the phobia to be
solved.as
. Freud considered a similar, but even
stronger, active pressure against the dy~
namic force of the resistances to be necessary in cases of obsessiV'e and compulsive
neurosis.
In severe cases of obsessive acts a passive
waiting attitude seems even less well adapted
• . • in their analysis there is always the
danger of a great deal coming to light without its effecting any change in them. I think
there is little doubt that here the correct
technique can only be to wait until the treatment itself has become a compulsion, and
then with this counter-compulsion forcibly to
suppress the compulsion of the disease.81
In his masterpiece of clinical discussion,
the famous "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis," Freud described how
he for the first time used another technique of pressure against resistance, obviously the most forcible type of pressure
available to an analyst.
Only one way was to be found of overcoming
it [the patient's shrinking from an independent existence]. I was obliged to wait until
his attachment to myself pad become strong
enough to counter-balance this s~rinking, and
then played off this one factor against the
other. I determined ... that the treatment
must be brought to an end at a particular
fixed date, no matter how far it had advanced.
. . . Under the inexorable pressure of this
fixed limit his [the patient's] resistance and
his fixation to the illness gave way. . ..88
In one of his last works Freud again
discusses this technical device. Here the
reader gets the impression that Freud
felt rather ambivalent about setting a
term.as
At this point it remains for me to demonstrate how Freud, as he developed his
system of dynamic psychology, described
his therapy in terms of this system, that
is, in dynamic terms, yet did not at any
time give up the reference base of the
germinal observation.
88 Freud, "Turnings in the Ways of PsychoAnalytic Therapy" in, Collected Papers, vol. 2, pp.
399-400.
8' Reference footnote 36; p. 400.
88 Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" in Collected Papers, vol. 3, pp. 477-478.
"" Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable,"
Internat. J. Psychoanalysis (1937) 18:, p. 375-.
276
PAUL BERGMAN
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An early paper, written in 1904,made
clear the equivalence between the earlier
formulations in terms of memory and
availability to consciousness, arid the later
formulations, in terms of instincts and
their reintegration into the total personality.
.
The task which the psycho-analytic method
tries to perform may be formulated in different ways, which are, however, in their essence equivalent. It may, for instance, be
stated thus: the task of the cure is to remove the amnesias. When all gaps in mem~
ory have been filled in, all the enigmatic
products of mental life elucidated, the continuan~ and even the renewal of the morbid
condition is impOSSible. Or the formula may
be expressed in this fashion: all repressions
are to be undone; the mental condition is
then the same as if allamnesias are removed.
Another formulation reaches further; the
problem consists in making the unconscious
accessible to consciousness, which is done by
overcoming the resistances.40
A still more concise .formula, from a
paper written in 1914, states it in these
words:
The aim of these different procedures [used
by Freud in the course of developing the
psychoanalytic technique] has of course remained the same throughout: descriptively,
to recover the lost memories; dynamically, to
conquer the resistances caused by repression.41
In the framework of Freud's dynamic
psychology the repressed memories are
now considered to be the hiding places
of the withdrawn, regressed, or fixated
libido.
.
The libido (entirely or in part) has found
its way back into regression .and has reanimated the infantile imagos; and thither
we pursue it in the arialytic treatment, aim. . ing always at unearthing it, making it accessible to consciousness and at last serviceable
to reality. Wherever. in our analytic delving
we come upon one of the hiding places of the
withdrawn libido, there ensues a battle; all
the forces which have brought about the regression of the libido will rise up as 'resistances' against our efforts in order to main·
tain the new condition.'2
40
Freud, "Freud's Psycho-Analytic Method" in
Collected. Pape7's, vol. 1, p. 269.
41Reference footnote 28; p. 367.
.. Freud, "The Dynamics of the
Transf~rence"
CQ1!sotutZ PupunJ, yul. 2, J,lJ,l. 3111·318.
in
Similarly, the transference sttuation,
previously described in terms of deceptive present mental content that has to
be diagnosed as originating in the past
and put into memory context, was now
seen as the field of opposing dynamic
forces; instincts that from the unconscious seek for discharge, the repressing
forces, the analyst's demands for rational
evaluation.4s
Another dynamic evaluation of the
transference stressed not its character as
the thing to be analyzed-and iIi this way
eventually yielding the pure metal of
analytic therapy, namely the repressed
memories-but its character as force that
allies itself to the analyst's demands for
rational evaluation and gives· power to
the patient's own rational and realistic
tendencies. One must asslime that Freud
herewith meant certain aspects of positive transference.
. . . the patient's intellectual interest and understanding . . . alone is hardly worth consideration by the side of the other forces
engaged in the struggle, for it is always in
danger of succumbing to the. clouding of
reasoning power under the influence of reo
sistances. Hence it follows that the new
sources of strength for which the sufferer is
indebted to the analyst resolve themselves
into transference, mid instruction (by explanation). The patient only makes use of
the instruction, however, in so far as he is
induced to do so by the transference. 44
In Freud's mind-if I understand it
rightly-the dynamic formulations never
superseded his fundamental faith that
the germinal observation contained the
essential aspect of man's freeing himself
from mental illness and disturbance. At
the end of his long life and work he
summed up his thinking on analytic therapy in the remarkable work on "Analysis
Terminable and Interminable."
At one point in this paper he asked the
question whether one can ever "be certain that no further change would take
place in him [the patient] if his analysis
were continued." The initial part of
Freud's answer is relevant:
48
Reference footnote 42; p. 322•
.. :Reference footnote 28; p. 364465.
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GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
277
The implication is that by means of analysis cussed exclusively upon therapeutic reSUlts
it is possible to attain to absolute psychic· and who employ analytic methods but only
normality and to be sure that it will be main- up to a certain point. An analysis oJ early
tained, the supposition being that all the childhood such as we are conSidering Is
patient's repressions have been lifted and tedious and laborious and makes demands
both upon the physician· and upon the patient
every gap in his memory filled. 411
which cannot always be met."
Absolute psychic normality appears to
Whether Freud held strictly to his
be present when "every gap· in the memory has been filled." The further discus- theory of therapy in actual practice I do
sion confirms the stress placed on re- not know. There is no doubt that many
covery of memory as the specific factor of his closest collaborators and disciples,
of analytic therapy. Through evaluation even while Freud was still alive, pracof other factors, like strength of instinct, ticed psychoanalysis with a marked
inherited qualities of the ego, and so on, change of empha,sis as compared to
Freud arrives at a pessimistic general Freud's theory of psychoanalytic therapy.
outlook for analytic therapy, as it ca,n- Not only the remainder of the early abrenot deal with these factors. But traumatic action theory, but also the stress on
genetical reconstruction and recovery of
memories can be recovered.
early memories took second place iri their
There can be no doubt that, when the aeti- hands behind structural analysis, that is,
ology of the neurosis is traumatic, analysis the attempt to acquaint the ego with the
has a far better chance. Only when the traumatic factor predominates can we look for unconscious mechanisms and the unconthat most masterly achievement of psycho- scious contents active in current life situaanalysis, namely, such a reinforcement of the tions. This change of emphasis may posego that a correct adjustment takes the place sibly have become even more marked
of that infantile solution of the patient's early
since Freud's death.
conflicts which proved so inadequate. 46
However that may be, from the point
The therapy, then, that Freud worked of view of a general theory of psychoout, appears to be the logical extension therapy a reliable evaluation of the facts
of the paramount impression that the contained in the germinal observation regerminal observation had, once and for mains of great interest. Questions arise
all, made on his mind. Uncovering his- here in regard to Freud's interpretation
tory, and particularly earliest history, of the germinal observation and in regard
is its essence; recovery of memory, par- to the place that the kind of processes
ticularly of earliest memory, is the most taking place in the germinal observation
desired means and end. To Freud this may occupy in relation to other processes
interest in the earliest phases of the pa- seemingly bringing about changes in hutient's development became the one fea- man beings.
ture by which he wanted to distinguish
In regard to the interpretation of the
genuine psychoanalysis from. other psy- germinal observation, we should have
chotherapies which used an alloy of ana- more secure knowledge of the factors that
lytic and other methods, or used analytic make the disappearance of an event from
methods to an insufficient degree.
memory pathogenic. Is all such disappearance pathogenic, at least where strong
In my own writings and in those of my
followers more and more stress is laid upon emotions are involved, or can there be
the necessity for carrying the analyses of indifferent or possibly even beneficial forneurotics back into the remotest period of getting of such events? Probably in his
their childhood, the time at which sexual later years Freud would have accepted
life reaches the climax of its early develop- such different possibilities, as he no doubt
ment. . . . This requirement is not only of
theoretical but also of practical importance, would have accepted the possibility of
for it distinguishes our efforts from the work indifferent or even damaging effect of
of those physicians whose interests are fo.. Reference footnote 39; p. 376.
M Reference footnote 39; p. 377.
~ Freud, "Some Psychological Consequences of the
AnatOmical Distinction Between the Sexes." Intemat•
J. Psychoanalysts (1927) 8: p. 133.
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278
recovering emotionally highly cathected
memories. Furthermore, still in regard to
the interpretation of the germinal observation, one would like to know what part
abreaction plays in it; what part possible
restructuring of the patient's self as he
permits himself to perceive a new aspect
of himself; what part the participation of
the therapist in the situation, particularly
when he acts "as a teacher, as a representative of a freer and more superior
philosophy of life, and as a confessor,
who through the continuance of his sympathy and his respect imparts, so to say,
absolution after the confession." 48 One
may wonder, for instance, whether without the therapist's sympathetic attitude
.. See the quotation as referenced in footnote 25.
PAUL BERGMAN
recovery of memories would have the
same therapeutic effect; or what happens
to the patient if no recovery of memories
is attempted, yet the therapist offers his
sympathetic attitude and "more superior
.
philosophy of life."
By raising these questions, however, I
have already overstepped the boundaries
of this paper. A casual treatment at this
time would be a great injustice to the importance of these questions for the general theory of psychotherapy, as well as
for the general theory of personality. A
more thorough discussion, on the other
hand, might well wait for a different, possibly more systematic context.
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