Psychoanalysis

PSYCHOANALYSIS. - It is a system of dynamic psychology, that is, one that studies in particular the forces of propulsion and direction of psychic activity, conceived and developed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).

At first it was only an exploratory and curative method for a certain category of nervous disorders. Subsequently it expanded into a true psychological system, which interprets subjective activities as originally produced by unconscious forces. A complete understanding of human nature must, according to p., take into account, besides introspective and behavioral data, other factors that cannot be directly observed but only inferred from their effects, and which, while eluding awareness, actively influence conduct.

P. is linked to the French psychopathological school. Jean-Martin Charcot had set out to study the symptoms presented by hysterics during the state of hypnosis, which he believed to be closely connected with hysteria. At the same time Bernheim in Nancy made use, with some success, of suggestion in the hypnotic state to cure certain illnesses; and he thought that hypnosis, though varying in intensity according to who induces it and who undergoes it, should be considered a normal fact for all men. Freud studied, after graduating, for about a year in Paris at the Salpêtrière, under the guidance of Charcot; and subsequently he also became acquainted with Bernheim. Both Freud and one of Charcot's most distinguished pupils, Pierre Janet, observed that not only in hysterics but in almost all patients with functional nervous disorders (disorders in which it is impossible to discover an anatomical or physiological alteration) a fragmentation or disintegration of the mind takes place, whereby activities that collaborate harmoniously in the healthy man function independently and sometimes in conflict. While P. Janet thinks that this is due to the weakening of general psychological tension and the reassertion of automatisms, and that by means of hypnosis a reconnection of the dissociated functions can be regained, Freud maintains that the cause of the disintegration lies in an incompatibility between the dissociated activities and the rest of psychic activity, caused by unconscious forces. Therefore only when the cause of the disorder is brought back to the light of consciousness does the disorder itself also disappear. Hence the cathartic method, that is, of recognizing and eliminating the unconscious causes of disorders, a method that Freud indicated in a study of a famous case treated by Dr. Breuer and which he employed especially at the beginning of his psychoanalytic treatments.

The birth certificate of p. may be considered the publication Studien über die Hysterie by Breuer and Freud in 1895. Then Freud separated from Breuer and continued the work alone. Since hypnosis was not successful in all patients and in many cases gave the impression of going around an obstacle rather than overcoming it, because, once one symptom ceased, another proliferated, Freud abandoned hypnosis and replaced it with the method of free associations. Leaving aside the presupposition of physiological relaxation (the subject lies comfortably on a couch, in a quiet and moderately lit environment), the injunction to hypnotic sleep was replaced by the instruction to say freely everything that passes through the mind, without worrying whether it is logically connected, whether it is important, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. One must abandon any voluntary control of one's thoughts and let them manifest as they come. It is not always an easy thing; and the analyst's skill lies precisely in guiding the subject with great discretion and letting the outpouring flow. Freud had the impression that there was a kind of force that actively opposed the return of the dissociated activities into awareness. At first it seemed that the origin of the disorders was to be ascribed to events that had aroused a strong and unpleasant emotion and that the memory of the fact had been repressed into the unconscious, whence, however, it continued to influence conduct. Subsequently Freud thought that the importance of these traumatic facts was to stimulate certain desires or tendencies in contrast with the general line of the personality; he maintained that these unconscious desires are of two types, aggressive and sexual, but with a great preponderance of the latter. Hence the great development that sexuality took on in Freud's conception.

In the study of dreams Freud found another path, indeed the main road, the "royal road," as he said, for the study of the unconscious. In his volume Traumdeutung of 1900 he set out to show that dreams are the manifestation of unconscious desires under false guises, so as to elude the forces that would repel them into the unconscious; and that in them many typical characteristics of neurotic symptoms appear. But other facts too can serve for the exploration of the unconscious. In the two volumes: Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens and Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, published in 1904 and 1905, Freud affirms that lapsus linguae et calami, clumsy acts, delays, forgettings, daydreaming, which to us would seem entirely fortuitous and without explanation, are instead revealing of a hidden design; and that this also occurs in the joke, in the witticism, in "humour."

In 1905 with the volume Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie he expounded a theory of the development of the sexual instinct from a certain number of component instincts, connected with particular parts of the body, which in a first stage would appear independent, but then would merge into the sexual instinct. In the work Zu Einführung des Narzissismus Freud complicated the description of psychosexual development with the introduction, after the phase of autoerotism, of a narcissistic phase, in which the libido, which has already organized the component instincts, turns toward the subject. The subsequent development requires the passage from the narcissistic stage to that of object-love, whether of a person or of a thing, in which a good part of the libido is sublimated, that is, deviates from a sexual outlet to the various objects or activities of social and civil life. A critical moment in development is the Oedipus complex: the child loves the mother and finds a rival in the father (the myth of Oedipus, who kills the father and marries the mother, expresses in terms of adult life the desires of the child). But being unable to achieve the satisfaction of his desire, the libido seeks new objects, which serve as a substitute for the one not obtained: the woman loved, the school, the city, etc. are the term of feelings originally directed toward the mother; the teacher, the policeman, the priest are the object of a mixture of feelings of love, admiration, respect or hatred, which were directed toward the father. Thus Freud interprets the psychic activity of the adult man as repressed infantile sexuality.

But what are the forces that carry out this repression? He answers the question in the work Das Ich und das Er of 1923. He divides the psyche into three main parts: 1) the Er (a neuter demonstrative pronoun in German, translatable with the Latin Id), the unconscious in which the instinctual forces operate; 2) the Ich (translatable with the Latin Ego), the conscious I, which expresses tendencies of the Ego and actuates them, as far as circumstances permit; 3) the Super-ego or moral conscience. The Super-ego is not preformed like the Id and the Ego, but arises from the antagonism of the two toward the fifth year of age; it is constituted in large part by unconscious forces that turn back upon themselves, and in part are sublimated. At the boundary between the Id and the Ego operate repression, which removes certain conscious facts from the Ego and drives them into the Id; and censorship, which hinders the inverse passage from the Id to the Ego. The fact that the moral conscience is formed by the turning back of tendencies directed outward accounts for its inflexibility and aggressiveness. Freud developed his doctrine with regard to the problems of civilization (Totem und Tabu, 1912; Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, 1930) and of religion (Die Zukunft einer Illusion, 1927; and Maus und Monotheism, 1939). In treating religious problems, although Freud shows genius in fitting the facts into his doctrine, he arrived at rash and unfounded assertions; but what is more serious, he demonstrated no understanding of the positive value of the religious fact.

Psychoanalysis, in Freud's formulation, has not remained without criticisms and without dissent. As early as 1912 two of his pupils, Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, broke away from him; others departed later (Bleuler, Stekel), and innumerable today are the doctrines that qualify themselves as psychoanalytic but that openly conflict with Freud's psychoanalysis. Important developments have occurred in the United States on the part of F. Alexander, Karen Horney, Carl Rogers. Here only the position of Adler and of Jung is briefly mentioned. The former attributes the task of propelling psychic activity not so much to sexuality as to the "will to power," the need to affirm one's own individuality, and to the "feeling of community," the social need. The "feeling of inferiority," which originates from both, impels one to overcome obstacles or to compensations. Dreams express these fundamental tendencies: neurosis is their exasperation in the impotence to actuate themselves. Jung gives the libido a much broader meaning, including in it all the vital impulses; and, besides the individual unconscious, he affirms the existence of a collective unconscious, containing the "archetypes," that is, the schemata of concepts, of needs common to all humanity. The analysis must be carried out in order to discover the aspirations for the future. Religion is not an illusion, as Freud defined it, but the most significant and indispensable expression of psychic activity.

EVALUATION

A critical judgment of so vast a doctrine, which nevertheless amid the multiplicity of its aspects has a simple and decided line, is not easy. It may be observed that Freud's exceptional capacity to concentrate on the study of a single problem and to follow to the point of exasperation the interpretive threads that present themselves to him is reflected in the entire doctrinal construction, imparting to it a unitary character, but also a one-sided and closed one. Starting from a rather limited field of observation (the study of the psychoneuroses) and having established the active character of the Unconscious, psychoanalysis turns to discovering the Unconscious in all forms of psychic activity, just as, having fixed the principle of the libido and of repression, it employs it to explain any human fact.

Hence the interpretive schematism, easily accessible even to the uninitiated, which gives the impression of penetrating all the mysteries of earth and heaven. Psychoanalysis, which as a conception of life, that is, as a philosophy, has a clearly positivist and pessimist stamp, nonetheless meets with easy enthusiasms not only because it touches points particularly sensitive to human nature, but also because (contrary to what Freud taught and practiced) it seems to justify a free conduct of life. Hence the sympathies and the passionate and excessive reactions that it has aroused. The fact is that, under Freud's guidance, psychoanalysis established itself and developed in an almost complete isolation, both with respect to experimental psychology and with regard to the secessions that threatened its structure. But it is interesting that the secessionist schools themselves hark back to ideas that Freud himself expressed but did not develop. Here too it appears how one-sidedness is the merit, but also the weak point, of Freud's conception. Among the most serious inadequacies is the excessive part attributed to sexuality at the expense of other demands equally deeply rooted in human activity: the purely formal aspect of the moral conscience; the indiscriminate use of pathological terms in the description of both abnormal and normal facts; the enigma of a sublimation that gives rise to the most contrasting and qualitatively diverse activities, and that moreover unfolds in the Unconscious; the sometimes hostile indifference to the religious fact. Another defect of psychoanalysis must be pointed out: that of attributing to certain facts an interpretation that goes beyond the pure datum. The consequence is the difficulty of separating the fact from the interpretation. It is perhaps for this reason that little progress has been made with regard to the experimental verification of many psychoanalytic assertions. But this also makes it difficult to distinguish what can be considered as acquired for consciousness from what is doctrinal superstructure.

As for the methods of investigation introduced by psychoanalysis, the difficulty is not so grave. One can therefore, with Dalbiez, distinguish between doctrine and method, each to be evaluated within its own sphere. If psychoanalytic doctrine as a whole can be judged neither definitive nor satisfactory, and in its philosophical developments unacceptable, this does not exclude that psychoanalytic methods (free associations, the study of dreams, projective methods) can be accepted and used. But this already means breaking the unity of Freud's system. On the other hand, it must be recognized that psychoanalysis has posed the problem of the Unconscious and has boldly opened certain paths for exploring it; that it has given a "dynamic" framing to psychic processes, and has brought into evidence the enormous importance that affectivity has in them.

With regard to therapeutic applications, which go under the generic name of psychoanalysis, although employing quite varied criteria, one remains perplexed before the successes vaunted by the different schools. This would seem to indicate that the therapeutic value of the treatment is independent of the doctrinal principle that inspires it, and that therefore its mode of action is exceedingly obscure. A psychoanalytic treatment is not a thing to be taken lightly. "L'intérêt médical et psychothérapeutique - says indeed the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII - du patient trouve ici une limite morale. Il n'est pas prouvé, il est même inexact, que la méthode pansexuelle d'une certaine école de psychanalyse soit une partie intégrante indispensable de toute psychothérapie sérieuse et digne de ce nom; que le fait d'avoir dans le passé négligé cette méthode ait causé de graves dommages psychiques, des erreurs dans la doctrine et dans les applications en éducation, en psychothérapie et non moins encore dans la pastorale; qu'il soit urgent de combler cette lacune et d'initer tous ceux, qui s'occupent de questions psychiques, aux idées directrices, et même, s'il le faut, au maniement pratique de cette technique de la sexualité (Discorso di S. S. Pio XII al I Congresso internazionale di istopatologia del sistema nervoso, in L'Osserv. Rom., 17 sett. 1952, col. 4).

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PEDAGOGY

The extreme delicacy and the gravity of the consequences inherent in every psychoanalytic treatment would be increased if, as some wish, the treatment were also applied in the field of education. This would be the most anti-pedagogical and dangerous work that could be performed.

In fact, the soul of the child is still comparable to soft wax, on which impressions, and especially certain particular impressions that are more pulsating, such as those concerning sexuality, are stamped in so deep a manner that one is never cautious enough not to make them witnesses, or interlocutors, or readers of certain subjects. It is a common norm of every method of education, even when it is a matter of normal subjects. Now, to probe the soul of a child or of an adolescent (who, in the supposition of the necessity of psychotherapeutic cures, is already of itself inclined to hypererotism) with inopportune questions, often crude, on everything that concerns the "libido," the first bursting forth of the passions, the first defeats and the successive relapses accompanied by the description of the circumstances of environments and of company, the analyses of images and of dreams, regarding all that modesty would not wish to reveal, the bringing to light of tendencies, perhaps still hidden, cannot fail to make the veins and pulses tremble in every honest and conscientious educator. All the more so since, on the one hand, the psychoanalyst, instead of basing himself on a true and motivated understanding of the state of mind of the child or adolescent before him, bases himself on the unilateral interpretation of his doctrines, which reduce everything to sexuality, and on the other hand the images and ideas concerning the "libido" have in themselves so strong a dynamism that they make the violence of the passions more acute. For this reason, expert and authoritative psychologists warn against the p. of children, in which one can easily run the risk of suggesting things to which the subject would never have come or of clouding and irremediably destroying his healthy, serene and precious innocence (cf. Discourse of His Holiness Pius XII, ibid., col. 4).

Nor is it of any avail to compare psychoanalytic treatment to the sacramental Confession of the Catholic Church, nor to the confidential confession made to a trusted person, to whom one can manifest one's crises, even the most humiliating, and one's doubts in order to obtain relief, comfort, a word of encouragement. For to reveal confidentially or sacramentally to a trusted person one's uncertainties, struggles and defeats is not the same as subtly investigating and bringing to light what offends natural modesty and what one would not wish to manifest in that manner and in those circumstances. Moreover, the value of sacramental Confession consists not only in the liberation from a weight that burdened the conscience, obtained through the purely verbal manifestation and recounting of one's faults, but in the necessary presence of repentance and of purpose, and above all in the divine efficacy of the words of absolution, which reintroduces Grace into the soul.