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Ferenczi, S. (1930) - The Principle of Relaxation and Neocatharsis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal
Ferenczi, S. (1930) - The Principle of Relaxation and Neocatharsis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal
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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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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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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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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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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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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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