(1930).

International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 11:428-443

The Principle of Relaxation and Neocatharsis1

S. Ferenczi
At the conclusion of this essay many of you will very likely have the impression
that I ought not to have called it 'Progress in Technique', seeing that what I say in
it might more fittingly be termed retrogressive or reactionary. But I hope that this
impression will soon be dispelled by the reflection that even a retrograde
movement, if it be in the direction of an earlier tradition, undeservedly
abandoned, may advance the truth, and I honestly think that in such a case it is
not too paradoxical to put forward an accentuation of our past knowledge as an
advance in science. Freud's psycho-analytical researches cover a vast field: they
embrace not only the mental life of the individual but group psychology and study
of human civilization; recently also he has extended them to the ultimate
conception of life and death. As he proceeded to develop a modest
psychotherapeutic method into a complete system of psychology and philosophy,
it was inevitable that the pioneer of psycho-analysis should concentrate now on
this and now on that field of investigation, disregarding everything else for the
time being. But of course the withdrawal of attention from facts earlier arrived at
by no means implied that he was abandoning or contradicting them. We, his
disciples, however, are inclined to cling too literally to Freud's latest
pronouncements, to proclaim the most recently discovered to be the sole truth
and thus at times to fall into error. My own position in the psycho-analytical
movement has made me a kind of cross between a pupil and a teacher, and
perhaps this double rôle gives me the right and the ability to point out where we
are tending to be one-sided and, without foregoing what is good in the new
teaching, to plead that justice shall be done to that which proved its value in days
past.
The technical method and the scientific theory of psycho-analysis are so
closely and almost indissolubly bound up with one another that I cannot in this
paper confine myself to the purely technical side; I must review part of the
contents of this scientific doctrine as well. In
—————————————

1 Based on a paper read at the Eleventh International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Oxford,

July 28, 1929, entitled 'Progress in Analytic Technique'.

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the earliest period of psycho-analysis, a period of which I will give as concise a

summary as possible, there was no talk of any such division and, even in the
period immediately succeeding, the separation of technique and theory was
purely artificial and made simply for purposes of teaching.

I
An intelligent patient and a physician with understanding shared in the
discovery of the forerunner of psycho-analysis, namely, the cathartic treatment of
hysteria. The patient found out for herself that certain of her symptoms
disappeared when she succeeded in linking up fragments of what she said and did
in an altered state of consciousness with forgotten impressions from her early life.
Breuer's remarkable contribution to psychotherapy was this: not only did he
pursue the method indicated by the patient but he had faith in the reality of the
memories which emerged, and did not, as was customary, dismiss them out of
hand as the fantastic inventions of a mentally abnormal patient. We must admit
that Breuer's capacity for belief had strict limitations. He could follow his patient
only as long as her speech and behaviour did not overstep the bounds marked out
by civilized society. Upon the first manifestations of uninhibited instinctual life he
left not only the patient but the whole method in the lurch. Moreover, his
theoretical deductions, otherwise extremely penetrating, were confined as far as
possible to the purely intellectual aspect or else, passing over everything in the
realm of psychic emotion, they linked up directly with the physical.
Psychotherapy had to wait for a man of a stronger calibre, who would not
recoil from the instinctual and animal elements in the mental organization of
civilized man; there is no need for me to name this pioneer. Freud's experience
forced him relentlessly to the assumption that in every case of neurosis a conditio
sine qua non is a sexual trauma. But, when in certain cases the patient's
statements proved incorrect, he too had to wrestle with the temptation to
pronounce all the material they had produced untrustworthy and therefore
unworthy of scientific consideration. Fortunately, Freud's intellectual acumen
saved psycho-analysis from the imminent danger of being once more lost in
oblivion. He perceived that, even though certain of the statements made by
patients were untrue and not in accordance with reality, yet the psychic reality of
their lying itself remained an incontestable fact. It is difficult to picture how
.
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much courage, how much vigorous and logical thinking and how much self-
mastery was necessary for him to be able to free his mind from disturbing affects
and pronounce the deceptive unveracity of his patients to be hysterical phantasy,
worthy as a psychic reality of further consideration and investigation.
Naturally the technique of psycho-analysis was coloured by these successive
advances. The highly emotional relation between physician and patient, which
resembled that in hypnotic suggestion, gradually cooled down to a kind of
unending association-experiment; the process became mainly intellectual. They
joined, as it were, their mental forces in the attempt to reconstruct the repressed
causes of the illness from the disconnected fragments of the material acquired
through the patient's associations. It was like filling in the spaces in an extremely
complicated crossword-puzzle. But disappointing therapeutic failures, which would
assuredly have discouraged a weaker man, compelled Freud once more to restore
in the relation between analyst and analysand the affectivity which, as was now
plain, had for a time been unduly neglected. However, it no longer took the form
of influence by hypnosis and suggestion—an influence very hard to regulate and
the nature of which was not understood. Rather more consideration and respect
were accorded to the signs of transference of affect and of affective resistance
which manifested themselves in the analytical relation.
This was, roughly speaking, the position of analytical technique and theory at
the time when I first became an enthusiastic adherent of the new teaching.
Curiously enough, the first impetus in that direction came to me through Jung's
association-experiments. You must permit me in this paper to depict the
development of the technique from the subjective standpoint of a single
individual. It seems as though the fundamental biogenetic law applies to the
intellectual evolution of the individual as of the race; probably there exists no
firmly established science which does not, as a separate branch of knowledge,
recapitulate the following phases: first, enlightenment, accompanied by
exaggerated optimism, then the inevitable disappointment and, finally, a
reconciliation between the two affects. I really do not know whether I envy our
younger colleagues the ease with which they enter into possession of that which
earlier generations won by bitter struggles. Sometimes I feel that to receive a
tradition, however valuable, ready-made is not so good as achieving something
for oneself.

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I have a lively recollection of my first attempts at the beginning of my psycho-

analytical career. I recall, for instance, the very first case I treated. The patient
was a young fellow-physician whom I met in the street. Extremely pale and
obviously struggling desperately for breath, he grasped my arm and implored me
to help him. He was suffering, as he told me in gasps, from nervous asthma. He
had tried every possible remedy but without success. I took a hasty decision, led
him to my consulting-room, got him to give me his reactions to an association-test
and plunged into the analysis of his earlier life, with the help of this rapidly sown
and harvested crop of associations. Sure enough, his memory-pictures soon
grouped themselves round a trauma in his early childhood. The episode was an
operation for hydrocele. He saw and felt with objective vividness how he was
seized by the hospital-attendants, how the chloroform-mask was put over his face
and how he tried with all his might to escape from the anæsthetic. He repeated
the straining of the muscles, the sweat of anxiety and the interrupted breathing
which he must have experienced on this traumatic occasion. Then he opened his
eyes, as though awaking from a dream, looked about him in wonder, embraced
me triumphantly and said he felt perfectly free from the attack.
I could describe many other 'cathartic' successes similar to this, at about this
time. But I soon discovered that, in nearly all the cases where the symptoms were
thus cured, the results were but transitory, and I, the physician, felt that I was
being gradually cured myself of my exaggerated optimism. I tried by means of a
deeper study of Freud's work and with the help of such personal counsel as I
might seek from him to master the technique of association, resistance and
transference. I followed as exactly as possible the technical hints that he
published during this period. I think that I have already told elsewhere how, with
the deepening of my psychological knowledge as I followed these technical rules,
there was a steady decrease in the striking and rapid results that I achieved. The
earlier, cathartic therapy was gradually transformed into a kind of analytical re-
education of the patient, which demanded more and more time. In my zeal (I was
still a young man) I tried to think out means for shortening the period of analysis
and producing more visible therapeutic results. By a greater generalization and
emphasizing of the principle of frustration (to which Freud himself subscribed at
the Congress at Budapest, in 1918), and with the aid of artificially produced
accentuations of tension ('active therapy'), I tried to induce a

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freer repetition of early traumatic experiences and to lead up to a better solution

of them through analysis. You are doubtless aware that I myself and others who
followed me sometimes let ourselves be carried away into exaggerations of this
active technique. The worst of these was the measure suggested by Rank and, for
a time, accepted by myself—the setting of a term to the analysis. I had sufficient
insight to utter a timely warning against these exaggerations, and I threw myself
into the analysis of the ego and of character-development, upon which in the
meantime Freud had so successfully entered. The somewhat one-sided ego-
analysis, in which too little attention was paid to the libido (formerly regarded as
omnipotent), converted analytical treatment largely into a process designed to
afford us the fullest possible insight into the topography, dynamics and economy
of symptom-formation, the distribution of energy between the patient's id, ego
and super-ego being exactly traced out. But when I worked from this standpoint, I
could not escape the impression that the relation between physician and patient
was becoming far too much like that between teacher and pupil. I also became
convinced that my patients were profoundly dissatisfied with me, though they did
not dare to rebel openly against this didactic and pedantic attitude of the analyst.
Accordingly, in one of my works on technique I encouraged my colleagues to train
their analysands to a greater liberty and a freer expression in behaviour of their
aggressive feelings towards the physician. At the same time I urged analysts to be
more humble-minded in their attitude to their patients and to admit the mistakes
they made, and I pleaded for a greater elasticity in technique, even if it meant the
sacrifice of some of our theories. These, as I pointed out, were not immutable,
though they might be valuable instruments for a time. Finally, I was able to state
that in my experience not only did my patients' analysis not suffer from the
greater freedom accorded them but, after all their aggressive impulses had
exhausted their fury, positive transference and also more positive results were
achieved. So you must not be too much surprised, if, once more, I have to tell you
of fresh steps forward or, if you will have it so, backward in the path that I have
followed. I am conscious that what I have to say is not at all likely to be popular
with you. And I must admit that I am afraid it may win most unwelcome popularity
amongst the true reactionaries. But do not forget what I said at the beginning
about progress and retrogression; in my view a return to what was good in the
teaching of the

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past most emphatically does not imply giving up the good and valuable
contributions made by the more recent development of our science. Moreover, it
would be presumptuous to imagine that any one of us is in a position to say the
last word on the potentialities of the technique or theory of analysis. I, for one,
have learnt humility through the many vicissitudes which I have just sketched. So
I would not represent what I am about to say as in any way final. In fact, I think it
very possible that in a greater or lesser degree it will be subject to various
limitations as time goes on.

II
In the course of my practical analytical work, which extended over many
years, I constantly found myself infringing one or another of Freud's injunctions in
his 'Recommendations on Technique'. For instance, my attempt to adhere to the
principle that patients must be in a lying position during analysis would at times
be thwarted by their uncontrollable impulse to get up and walk about the room or
speak to me face to face. Or again, difficulties in the real situation, and often the
unconscious machinations of the patient, would leave me with no alternative but
either to break off the analysis or to depart from the general rule and carry it on
without remuneration. I did not hesitate to adopt the latter alternative—not
without success. The principle that the patient should be analysed in his ordinary
environment and should carry on his usual occupation was very often impossible
to enforce. In some severe cases I was even obliged to let patients stay in bed for
days and weeks and to relieve them of the effort of coming to my house. The
sudden breaking-off of the analysis at the end of the hour very often had the
effect of a shock and I would be forced to prolong the treatment until the reaction
had spent itself; sometimes I had to devote two or more hours a day to a single
patient; often, if I would not or could not do this, my inflexibility produced a
resistance which I felt to be excessive and a too literal repetition of traumatic
incidents in the patient's childhood; it would take a long time even partly to
overcome this unconscious identification of his. One of the chief principles of
analysis is that of frustration, and this certain of my colleagues and, at times, I
myself applied too strictly. Many patients suffering from obsessional neurosis saw
through it directly and utilized it as a new and quite inexhaustible source of
resistance-situations, until the physician finally decided to knock this weapon out
of their hands by indulgence.

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I had the greatest conscientious scruples about all these infringements of a

fundamental rule (and about many others which I cannot instance in detail here),
until my mind was set at rest by the authoritative information that Freud's
'Recommendations' were really intended only as warnings for beginners and were
designed to protect them from the most glaring blunders and failures; his
precepts contained, however, almost no positive instructions, and considerable
scope was left for the exercise of the analyst's own judgment, provided that he
was clear about the metapsychological consequences of his procedure.
Nevertheless, the exceptional cases have become so numerous that I feel
impelled to propound another principle, not hitherto formulated, even if tacitly
accepted. I mean the principle of indulgence, which must often be allowed to
operate side by side with that of frustration. Subsequent reflection has convinced
me that my explanation of the way in which the active technique worked was
really a very forced one: I attributed everything that happened to frustration, i.e.
to a 'heightening of tension'. When I told a patient, whose habit it was to cross her
legs, that she must not do so, I was actually creating a situation of libidinal
frustration, which induced a heightening of tension and the mobilization of
psychic material hitherto repressed. But when I suggested to the same patient
that she should give up the noticeably stiff posture of all her muscles and allow
herself more freedom and mobility, I was really not justified in speaking of a
heightening of tension, simply because she found it difficult to relax from her rigid
attitude. It is much more honest to confess that here I was making use of a totally
different method which, in contrast to the heightening of tension, may safely be
called relaxation. We must admit, therefore, that psycho-analysis employs two
opposite methods: it produces heightening of tension by the frustration it imposes
and relaxation by the freedom it allows.
But with this, as with every novelty, we soon find that it contains something
very, very old—I had almost said, something commonplace. Are not both these
principles inherent in the method of free association? On the one hand, the
patient is compelled to confess disagreeable truths but, on the other, he is
permitted a freedom of speech and expression of his feelings such as is hardly
possible in any other department of life. And long before psycho-analysis came
into existence there were two elements in the training of children and of the
masses: tenderness and love were accorded to them, and at the

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same time they were required to adapt themselves to painful reality by making
hard renunciations.
If the International Psycho-Analytical Association were not so highly cultivated
and self-disciplined an assembly, I should probably be interrupted at this point in
my discourse by a general uproar and clamour. Such a thing has been known to
happen even in the English House of Commons, usually so dignified, when a
particularly infuriating speech has been made. 'What on earth do you really
mean?' some of you would shout. 'We have scarcely reconciled ourselves to some
extent to the principle of frustration, which you yourself carried to all lengths in
your active technique, when you upset our laboriously placated scientific
conscience by confronting us with a new and confusing principle, whose
application will be highly embarrassing to us.' 'You talk of the dangers of
excessive frustration', another and no less shrill voice would chime in. 'What
about the dangers of coddling patients? And, anyhow, can you give us any
definite directions about how and when the one or the other principle is to be
applied?'
Softly, ladies and gentlemen! We are not yet advanced far enough to enter on
these and similar details. My only object for the moment was to prove that, even
though we may not admit it, we do actually work with these two principles. But
perhaps I ought to consider certain objects which naturally arise in my own mind
too. The fact that the analyst may be made uncomfortable by being confronted
with new problems surely need not be seriously discussed!
To compose your minds I will say with all due emphasis that the attitude of
objective reserve and scientific observation which Freud recommends to the
physician remains, as ever, the most trustworthy and, at the beginning of an
analysis, the only justifiable one and that, ultimately, the decision as to which is
the appropriate method must never be arrived at under the influence of affective
factors but only as the result of intelligent reflection. My modest endeavours have
for their object merely a plain definition of what has hitherto been vaguely
described as the 'psychological atmosphere'. We cannot deny that it is possible
for even the cool objectivity of the physician to take forms which cause
unnecessary and avoidable difficulties to the patient, and there must be ways and
means of making our attitude of friendly goodwill during the analysis intelligible to
him without abandoning the analysis of transference-material or falling into the
errors of those who treat neurotics, not analytically, i.e. with complete sincerity,
but with a simulation of severity or of love.

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III
I expect that various questions and objections, some of them, I admit, very
awkward ones, have arisen in your minds. Before we discuss them, let me state
the main argument which, in my view, justifies us in emphasizing the principle of
relaxation side by side with that of frustration and of the objectivity, which is a
matter of course for the analyst. The soundness of any hypothesis or theory is
tested by its theoretical and practical usefulness, i.e. by its heuristic value, and it
is my experience that the acknowledgment of the relaxation-principle has
produced results valuable for both theory and practice. In a number of cases in
which the analysis had come to grief over the patient's apparently insoluble
resistances, when a change was made from the too rigid tactics of frustration
hitherto employed, and analysis was once more attempted, it was attended with
much more substantial success. I am not speaking only of patients who had failed
to get well with other analysts and who gratified me, their new analyst, by taking
a turn for the better (partly out of revenge on the old, perhaps). I am speaking of
cases in which I myself, with the one-sided technique of frustration, had failed to
get any further but, on making a fresh attempt and allowing more relaxation, I
had not nearly so long-drawn-out a struggle with interminable personal
resistances, and it became possible for physician and patient to join forces in a
less interrupted analysis of the repressed material, or, as I might say, to tackle the
'objective resistances'. On analysing the patient's former obstinacy and
comparing it with the readiness to give way, which resulted from the method of
relaxation, we found that a rigid and cold aloofness on the analyst's part
represented to the patient a continuation of his infantile struggle with authority,
and the same reactions in character symptoms were repeated as formed the basis
of the real neurosis. Hitherto my idea in terminating the treatment has been that
one need not be afraid of these resistances and might even provoke them
artificially; I hoped (and to some extent I was justified) that, when the patient's
analytical insight had gradually closed to him all avenues of resistance, he would
be cornered and obliged to take the only way left open, namely, that which led to
health. Now I do not deny that every neurotic must inevitably suffer during
analysis; theoretically it is self-evident that the patient must learn to endure the
suffering which originally led to repression. The only question is whether
sometimes we do not make him suffer

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more than is absolutely necessary. I decided on the phrase 'economy of suffering',

to express what I have realized and am trying to convey—and I hope it is not far-
fetched—namely, that the principles of frustration and indulgence should both
govern our technique.
As you all know, we analysts do not attach a very great scientific importance
to therapeutic effects in the sense of an increase in the patient's feeling of well-
being. Only if our method results not merely in his improvement but in a deeper
insight into the process of recovery may we speak of real progress in comparison
with earlier methods of treatment. The way in which patients improved when I
employed this relaxation-therapy as well as the older method was in many cases
quite astonishing. In hysterics, obsessional neurotics and even in persons of
nervous character-types the familiar attempts to reconstruct the past went
forward as usual. But, after we had succeeded in a somewhat less superficial
manner than before in creating an atmosphere of confidence between physician
and patient and in securing a fuller freedom of affect, hysterical physical
symptoms would suddenly make their appearance, often for the first time in an
analysis extending over years. These symptoms included paræsthesias and
spasms, definitely localized, violent emotional movements, like minature
hysterical attacks, sudden alterations of the state of consciousness, slight vertigo
and a clouding of consciousness with subsequent amnesia for what had taken
place. Some patients actually begged me to tell them how they had behaved
when in these states. It was easy to see that these symptoms were fresh aids to
reconstruction—physical memory-symbols, so to speak. But there was this
difference—this time, the reconstructed past had much more feeling of actuality
and concreteness about it than heretofore, approximated much more closely to an
actual recollection, whereas till then the patients had spoken only of possibilities
or, at most, of varying degrees of probability and had yearned in vain for
memories. In certain cases these hysterical attacks actually assumed the
character of trances, in which fragments of the past were relived and the
physician was the only bridge left between the patients and reality. I was able to
question them and received important information about dissociated parts of the
personality. Without any such intention on my part and without my making the
least attempt to induce a condition of the sort, unusual states of consciousness
manifested themselves, which might almost be termed autohypnotic. Willy-nilly,
one was forced to compare them with the phenomena of the Breuer-Freud
catharsis. I

- 437 -

must confess that at first this was a disagreeable surprise, almost a shock, to me.
Was it really worth while to make that enormous detour of analysis of associations
and resistances, to thread the maze of the elements of ego-psychology and even
to traverse the whole metapsychology in order finally to arrive at the good old
'friendly attitude' to the patient and the method of catharsis, long believed to
have been discarded? But a little reflection soon set my mind completely at rest.
There is all the difference in the world between this cathartic termination to a
laborious psycho-analysis and the fragmentary eruptions of emotion and
recollection which the primitive catharsis could provoke and which had only a
temporary effect. The catharsis of which I am speaking is, like many dreams, only
a confirmation from the unconscious, a sign that our toilsome analytical
construction, our technique of dealing with resistance and transference, have
finally succeeded in drawing near to the ætiological reality. There is little that the
paleocatharsis has in common with this neocatharsis. Nevertheless we must
admit that here, once more, a circle has been completed. Psycho-analysis began
as a cathartic measure against traumatic shocks, the effects of which had never
spent themselves, and against pent-up affects; it then devoted itself to a deeper
study of neurotic phantasies and their various defence-mechanisms. Next, it
concentrated rather on the personal affective relation between analyst and
patient, being in the first twenty years mainly occupied with the manifestations of
instinctual tendencies and, later, with the reactions of the ego. The sudden
emergence in modern psycho-analysis of portions of an earlier technique and
theory should not dismay us; it merely reminds us that, so far, no single advance
has been made in analysis which has had to be entirely discarded as useless and
that we must constantly be prepared to find new veins of gold in temporarily
abandoned workings.

IV
What I am now about to say is really the logical sequel to what I have already
said. The recollections which neocatharsis evoked or corroborated lent an added
significance to the original traumatic factor, when we compared the ætiology of
the different neuroses. The precautions of the hysteric and the avoidance of the
obsessional neurotic may, it is true, have their explanation in purely psychic
phantasy-formations; nevertheless the first impetus towards abnormal lines of
development had always been received through real

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psychic convulsions and conflicts with the environment—incidents of the nature of

traumas and having the effect of shock. Such were invariably the precursors of
the formation of nosogenic psychical forces, for instance, of conscience.
Accordingly, no analysis can be regarded (at any rate in theory) as complete
unless we have succeeded in penetrating to the traumatic material produced in
recollection. This statement is based, as I said, on experience acquired in
relaxation-therapy; if it be true, it adds considerably (from the theoretical as well
as the practical standpoint) to the heuristic value of this modified technique.
Having given due consideration to phantasy as a pathogenic factor, I have of late
been forced more and more to deal with the pathogenic trauma itself. It became
evident that this is far more rarely the result of a constitutional hypersensibility in
children (causing them to react neurotically even to a commonplace and
unavoidable painful experience) than of really improper, unintelligent, capricious,
tactless or actually cruel treatment. Hysterical phantasies do not lie when they tell
us that parents and other adults do indeed go monstrous lengths in the
passionate eroticism of their relations with children, while, on the other hand,
when a quite innocent child responds to this half-unconscious play on the part of
its elders the latter are inclined to think out severe punishments and threats
which are altogether incomprehensible to him and have the shattering effects of a
shock. To-day I am returning to the view that, beside the great importance of the
Oedipus complex in children, a great significance must also be attached to the
repressed incestuous affection of adults, which masquerades as tenderness. On
the other hand, I am bound to confess that children themselves manifest a
readiness to engage in genital eroticism more vehemently and far earlier than we
used to suppose. Many of the perversions children practise probably indicate not
simply fixation to a pregenital level but regression from an early genital level. In
many cases the trauma of punishment falls upon children in the midst of some
erotic activity, and the result may be a permanent disturbance of what Reich calls
'orgastic potency.' But the premature forcing of genital sensations has a no less
terrifying effect on children; what they really want, even in their sexual life, is
simply play and tenderness, not the violent ebullition of passion.
Observation of cases treated by the neocathartic method gave further food for
thought; one realized something of the psychic process in the traumatic primal
repression and gained a glimpse into the

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nature of repression in general. The first reaction to a shock seems to be always a

transitory psychosis, i.e. a turning-away from reality. Sometimes this takes the
form of negative hallucination (hysterical loss of consciousness—fainting or
vertigo), often of a positive hallucinatory compensation, which makes itself felt
immediately as an illusory pleasure. In every case of neurotic amnesia, and
possibly also in the ordinary childhood-amnesia, it seems likely that a psychotic
dissociation of a part of the personality occurs under the influence of shock. The
dissociated part, however, lives on in hiding, ceaselessly endeavouring to make
itself felt, without finding any outlet except in neurotic symptoms. For this notion I
am partly indebted to discoveries made by our colleague, Elisabeth Severn, which
she personally communicated to me.
Sometimes, as I said, we achieve direct contact with the repressed part of the
personality and persuade it to engage in what I might almost call an infantile
conversation. Under the method of relaxation the hysterical physical symptoms
have at times led us back to phases of development in which, since the organ of
thought was not yet completely developed, physical memories alone were
registered.
In conclusion, there is one more point I must mention, namely, that more
importance than we hitherto supposed must be attached to the anxiety aroused
by menstruation, the impression made by which has only been properly
emphasized by C. D. Daly; together with the threat of castration it ranks with the
traumatic factors.
Why should I weary you, in a discourse which is surely mainly concerned with
technique, with this long and not even complete list of half-worked-out theoretical
arguments? Certainly not in order that you may whole-heartedly espouse these
views, about which I myself am not as yet quite clear. I am content if I have
conveyed to you the impression that more consideration of the long neglected
traumatic genetic factor promises to be fruitful, not only for practical therapy but
for the theory of our science.

V
In a conversation with Anna Freud in which we discussed certain points in my
technique she made the following pregnant remark: 'You really treat your patients
as I treat the children whom I analyse'. I had to admit that she was right and I
would remind you that in my most recent publication, a short paper on the
psychology of unwanted children who later become subjects for analysis, I stated
that the real analysis of resistances must be prefaced by a kind of comforting
preliminary

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treatment. The relaxation-technique which I am suggesting to you assuredly

obliterates even more completely the distinction between the analysis of children
and that of adults—a distinction hitherto too sharply drawn. In making the two
types of treatment more like one another I was undoubtedly influenced by what I
saw of the work of Georg Groddeck, the courageous champion of the
psychoanalysis of organic diseases, when I consulted him about an organic illness.
I felt that he was right in trying to encourage his patients to a childlike naïveté
and I saw the success thus achieved. But, for my own part, I have remained
faithful to the well-tried analytical method of frustration as well, and I try to attain
my aim by the tactful and understanding application of both forms of technique.
Now let me try to give a reassuring answer to the probable objections to these
tactics. What motive will patients have to turn away from analysis to the hard
reality of life if they can enjoy with the analyst the irresponsible freedom of
childhood in a measure which is assuredly denied them in actuality? My answer is
that even in analysis by the method of relaxation, as in child-analysis, we take
care that performance does not outrun discretion. However great the relaxation,
the analysis will not gratify the patient's actively aggressive and sexual wishes or
many of their other exaggerated demands. There will be abundant opportunity to
learn renunciation and adaptation. Our friendly and benevolent attitude may
indeed satisfy that childlike part of the personality which hungers for tenderness,
but not the part which has succeeded in escaping from the inhibitions in its
development and becoming adult. For it is no mere poetic licence to compare the
mind of the neurotic to a double malformation, something like the so-called
teratoma which harbours in a hidden part of its body fragments of a twin-being
which has never developed. No reasonable person would refuse to surrender such
a teratoma to the surgeon's knife, if the existence of the whole individual were
threatened.
Another discovery that I made was that repressed hate often operates more
strongly in the direction of fixation and arrest than openly confessed tenderness. I
think I have never had this point more clearly put than by a patient whose
confidence, after nearly two years of hard struggle with resistance, I won by the
method of indulgence. 'Now I like you and now I can let you go', was her first
spontaneous remark on the emergence of a positive affective attitude towards
me. I believe it was in analysis of the same patient that I was able to prove that
relaxation lends itself particularly well to the

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conversion of the repetition-tendency into recollection. So long as she identified

me with her hard-hearted parents, she incessantly repeated the reactions of
defiance. But when I deprived her of all occasion for this attitude, she began to
discriminate the present from the past and, after some hysterical outbreaks of
feeling, to remember the psychic shocks of her childhood. We see then that, while
the similarity of the analytical to the infantile situation impels patients to
repetition, the contrast between the two encourages recollection.
I am of course conscious that this twofold method of frustration and
indulgence requires from the analyst himself an even greater control than before
of counter-transference and counter-resistance. It is no uncommon thing for even
those teachers and parents who take their task seriously to be led by imperfectly
mastered instincts into excess in either direction. Nothing is easier than to use the
principle of frustration in one's relation with patients and children as a cloak for
the indulgence of one's own unconfessed sadistic inclinations. On the other hand,
exaggerated forms and quantities of tenderness may subserve rather one's own,
possibly unconscious, libidinal tendencies than the ultimate good of the individual
in one's care. These new and difficult conditions are an even stronger argument in
support of the view often and urgently put forward by me, namely, that it is
essential for the analyst himself to go through an analysis reaching to the very
deepest depths and putting him into control of his own charactertraits.
I can picture cases of neurosis, in fact I have often met with them in which
(possibly as a result of unusually profound shocks in infancy) the greater part of
the personality becomes, as it were, a teratoma, the task of adaptation to reality
being shouldered by the fragment of personality which has been spared. Such
persons have actually remained almost entirely at the child-level, and for them
the usual methods of analytical therapy are not enough. What such neurotics
need is really to be adopted and to partake for the first time in their lives of the
advantages of a normal nursery. Possibly the analytic sanatorium-treatment
recommended by Simmel might be developed with special reference to these
cases.
If even part of the relaxation-technique and the findings of neocatharsis
should prove correct, it would mean that we should substantially enlarge our
theoretical knowledge and the scope of our practical work. Modern psycho-
analysis, by dint of laborious effort, can restore the interrupted harmony and
adjust the abnormal distribution

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of energy amongst the intropsychic forces, thus increasing the patient's capacity
for achievement. But these forces are but the representatives of the conflict
originally waged between the individual and the outside world. After
reconstructing the evolution of the id, the ego and super-ego many patients
repeat in the neocathartic experience the primal battle with reality, and it may be
that the transformation of this last repetition into recollection may provide a yet
firmer basis for the subject's future existence. His situation may be compared with
that of the playwright whom pressure of public opinion forces to convert the
tragedy he has planned into a drama with a 'happy ending'. With this expression
of optimism I will conclude.
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