The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a distant one, which is perhaps altogether uncertain” (170). Thus her capacity for love should lead the patient to conclude she needs to make a sacrifice, momentarily forego her pleasure and obey the “reality principle” for which she will be rewarded—later.

      But why should delaying satisfaction make the patient’s love any more real than the genuineness already felt towards the analyst? Is realistic love identical to the genuine, aim-inhibited kind that epitomizes the analytic attitude, or are they different kinds of love entirely? Why can’t the analyst return the patient’s love if, after all, it’s genuine? Is the patient’s love real, but the object of her love “unrealistic”; or is the patient’s love only “imagined” in the first place? What happens at completion of analysis when, healthy and cured, the patient’s conflicts no longer jeopardize the genuineness of her feelings and the achievement of her aims? Why can’t she be rewarded with the prize for which she so earnestly struggled? Because, “After all the difficulties have been successfully overcome, she will often confess to having had an anticipatory phantasy at the time when she entered the treatment, to the effect that if she behaved well she would be rewarded at the end by the doctor’s affection” (169). Often enough, patients fail to resolve their “transference” at termination. And often enough, analysts fall in love with their patients. Occasionally, some even marry them subsequent to treatment. Of course, this is never accepted by their peers. Why not? Freud explains that

      for the doctor, ethical motives unite with the technical ones to restrain him from giving the patient his love. The aim he has to keep in view is that this woman, whose capacity for love is impaired by infantile fixations, should gain free command over a function which is of such inestimable importance to her; that she should not, however, dissipate it in the treatment, but keep it ready for the time when, after her treatment, the demands of real life make themselves felt. (169)

      This is only one of the many contexts in which Freud equates technical issues with ethical ones. Psychoanalysis comes into being where the two intersect. This is why the analyst

      must not stage the scene of a dog-race in which the prize was to be a garland of sausages but which some humorist spoilt by throwing a single sausage on to the track. The result was, of course, that the dogs threw themselves upon it and forgot all about the race and about the garland that was luring them to victory in the far distance. I do not mean to say that it is always easy for the doctor to keep within the limits prescribed by ethics and technique. Those who are still youngish and not yet bound by strong ties may in particular find it a hard task (169; emphasis added)

      It isn’t always so easy to say whose ethics Freud is emphasizing: those of the patient or the doctor? Surely both carry equal weight. In fact, the question of ethics plays a major function in Freud’s estimation of what reality is comprised of. Let’s return to his comments about the opposition between the pleasure principle and ethical behavior: “She has to learn from him [the analyst] to overcome the pleasure principle, to give up a satisfaction which lies to hand but is socially not acceptable, in favor of a more distant one, which is perhaps altogether uncertain, but which is both psychologically and socially unimpeachable” (170).

      In other words, if patients ever hope to overcome their infantile yearnings and obtain real satisfaction subsequent to the termination of analysis, they have to renounce whatever remains of their love for the analyst and do the right thing: conform to “socially acceptable” conduct. In this particular context, Freud equates real (“realistic”) love with what is socially and ethically “unimpeachable.” The analysis is a microcosm of society; it helps us come to terms with—by accepting—society’s rules. Freud believed it was critical to distinguish between genuine feelings of love (dominated by the pleasure principle) on the one hand, and attaining real love (the “garland of sausages”) by submitting to what is practicable, on the other. It is perhaps ironic that Freud was so concerned with ethics and propriety when he devoted most of his life to rebelling against the beliefs of the society to which he belonged. In practice, Freud bent the rules whenever he was compelled to by individual judgment and tact. But we would be mistaken if we equated Freud’s concern for behaving realistically (and ethically) with capitulating to the arbitrary customs of one’s neighbors.

      Being true to one’s feelings—and to one’s principles—requires sacrifice. It doesn’t always obtain gratification. What is true isn’t necessarily reducible to what is real. It may be true that I love somebody, but unrealistic to expect my love can be returned in the way that I want it to be. What is “socially acceptable” merely determines what is attainable. The purpose of analysis is to realize what is possible. It’s easy to love one’s analyst and certainly convenient, but although this love, so immediate and ready to hand, may be accessible, is it realistic? If the so-called infantile origins of all love, essentially narcissistic, can be conquered, sooner or later it is necessary to succumb to disappointment. The wish to be loved by one’s analyst must inevitably go unrewarded, not because the feelings that prompt these longings aren’t genuine, but because their satisfaction is simply a denial of reality, of the limitations their situation engenders. Yet, how is the patient’s emancipation—so elusive and painful—finally achieved? If Freud’s comments suggest anything, it’s that we have to work for our freedom; and this work is of a special kind. Even if the love felt for one’s analyst is genuine, it isn’t enough. To be viable, love requires more than genuineness—it entails suffering. Real love needs to recognize and accept life’s laws and limitations. This is what it means to be ethical. It isn’t a question of doing what is “good,” but of doing what is right: whatever fits the occasion.

      Yet, when Freud says that genuine love—if his patient were capable of it—would lead her to become docile and submissive, that she would strive to perform the analytic work in order to please him, is this entirely convincing? If she were docile, would she cease to experience erotic longings, or simply accept them? Is normality determined by the conscious control over one’s impulses, or the freedom from these impulses themselves? If hysteria, in particular, is epitomized by a demand for love that can be insatiable, is the demand itself pathological or simply one’s refusal to recognize it? What is it about erotic strivings, after all, that can be said to be “neurotic” when we know that the repression of those strivings is the cause of neurosis?

      In his 1914 paper “On Narcissism” Freud proposed that all children set before themselves an ideal of themselves that, in turn, becomes the object of their erotic yearnings. “This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego” (1957c, 94). Because every child is reluctant to give up earlier sources of satisfaction, Freud argued that “when, as he [she] grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal” (94). Yet, a positive, or aggrandized, ego ideal cannot compensate for the absence of real sources of gratification—in the form of genuine love—from others. Freud concluded that “idealization is a process that concerns the object; by it that object, without any alteration in its nature, is aggrandized and exalted in the subject’s mind” (94). In other words, other people compensate for the individual’s own sense of personal frustration and dissatisfaction. The qualities one wishes for oneself—qualities that might, in turn, be exalted by others—are projected onto someone else.

      It isn’t difficult to appreciate how children, who rely on the comfort of idealizing phantasies to cope with the pain of their inherently frustrating emancipation, would resort to the same tendency when they grow older: to idealize other people as a way of procuring love, in phantasy. All analysts are an object for such idealization by their patients. In fact, the more we repress our desires, the more likely we will idealize others as a compensation. “Being loved” becomes a substitute for one’s impoverished capacity to love. This is why the tendency to idealize others is an essential component of “falling in love.” Idealizing is a magical transformation of one’s world. It has the power to circumvent repressions СКАЧАТЬ