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Easy Lessons in Psychoanalysis
Easy Lessons in Psychoanalysis
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An excerpt from the first chapter:
LESSON I
The Psychoanalytic Viewpoint
"I must have said it unconsciously." "I must have done it unconsciously." This is usually your lame excuse for doing or saying things which were absolutely out of keeping with a certain situation. And after offering that explanation you feel you should not be held to account for some curious mistakes you made.
But the psychoanalyst will not let you go as easily as that. If John, while making love to Ethel, should call her Evelyn, Ethel, the psychoanalyst says, would be perfectly justified in resenting the part Evelyn plays in John's thoughts. Maybe John does not actually love Evelyn, but Evelyn was "on his mind" when he made that "incomprehensible mistake."
There are no "mistakes," the psychoanalyst says. The things that "escape" us are the things we unconsciously wish to say. And, on the other hand, the things we cannot say, , because apparently we have "forgotten" them, or which we vainly try to say, as when we are stammering, are things we do not wish to say.
It is distressing, is it not ? For years I laughed at the theory. Now that I have mastered it, however, its application stares me in the face every day of my life.
A few months ago I was invited to a dinner at which I was to meet stodgy,, uninteresting folks, strong on conventionalities. I entered the date in my engagement book for the 25th and on the morning of the 25th was asked over the 'phone what had kept me from the dinner the night before. I had to humiliate myself before my hostess and apologize for that rude breach of etiquette. How could I have made such a mistake about the date?
I had made that mistake because, while I really intended to go to that dinner, something in me held me back and did not wish to go.
A few weeks ago my wife and I stood perplexed in front of a house where we had gone at about 10 o'clock in the evening, all dressed up for a very gay party, quite the opposite of the one I missed. Our hosts were out and the only thing for us to do was to smile and go home, for we had come 24 hours too soon. "Our unconscious couldn't wait" and had "made a mistake" which would have been flattering to our hosts.
How easily we forget to pay our bills! How hard it is for us to forget what others owe us!
This is, roughly speaking, the import of the new science, psychoanalysis, the psychology of the wish. There are many systems of psychology, some of them very ingenious indeed, but their appeal is slight, except to sentimental scholars who make a living by teaching them.
Platonism, Bergsonism or Hegelism are interesting hypotheses, but neither a teacher nor a banker nor a physician could apply them in the conduct of their business or profession. And the world is tired of theories which cannot be put into practice in the daily life of the average man.
When Freud,, on the other hand, after making a slow, painstaking study of thousands of dreams and after noting carefully the striking relationship existing between the dreams of neurotics and their ailments, formulated his wish fulfilment theory, the world acquired at last a decidedly practical system of psychological research.
An inner force or urge, which Freud calls the libido, is constantly striving to express itself thru overt acts. The primitive brute which is in us is trying to act as freely as the caveman of ten thousand years ago did before civilisation placed a restraint upon human actions. If that force cannot express itself normally, it will express itself abnormally. If steam in a boiler does not find a natural outlet thru a safety valve, the pressure thus generated will explode the boiler and thereby create an unnatural outlet.
When the desire for normal sexual gratification,, for instance, has been repressed long enough, it attains its end in a way which is not exactly abnormal but which is not absolutely natural either, thru erotic dreams.
Repressed cravings seeking gratification are the cause of every nervous disturbance, be it apparently mental or apparently physical or both mental and physical.
In order to understand clearly morbid psychological phenomena translating themselves at times into physical symptoms, we must first determine, thru many tests, what are the repressed cravings responsible for them.
When we find that out we can then gradually help the neurotic to see the actual motives back of his faulty actions, the unconscious reasons for his morbid states or his morbid behavior.
We can also,, in the great majority of cases, suggest an acceptable safety valve for the pent-up force which, if repressed any longer, would probably disrupt the human boiler.
Without going into any more details of that procedure, we may point out several simple and practical applications of the analytic point of view in every-day psychology.
LESSON I
The Psychoanalytic Viewpoint
"I must have said it unconsciously." "I must have done it unconsciously." This is usually your lame excuse for doing or saying things which were absolutely out of keeping with a certain situation. And after offering that explanation you feel you should not be held to account for some curious mistakes you made.
But the psychoanalyst will not let you go as easily as that. If John, while making love to Ethel, should call her Evelyn, Ethel, the psychoanalyst says, would be perfectly justified in resenting the part Evelyn plays in John's thoughts. Maybe John does not actually love Evelyn, but Evelyn was "on his mind" when he made that "incomprehensible mistake."
There are no "mistakes," the psychoanalyst says. The things that "escape" us are the things we unconsciously wish to say. And, on the other hand, the things we cannot say, , because apparently we have "forgotten" them, or which we vainly try to say, as when we are stammering, are things we do not wish to say.
It is distressing, is it not ? For years I laughed at the theory. Now that I have mastered it, however, its application stares me in the face every day of my life.
A few months ago I was invited to a dinner at which I was to meet stodgy,, uninteresting folks, strong on conventionalities. I entered the date in my engagement book for the 25th and on the morning of the 25th was asked over the 'phone what had kept me from the dinner the night before. I had to humiliate myself before my hostess and apologize for that rude breach of etiquette. How could I have made such a mistake about the date?
I had made that mistake because, while I really intended to go to that dinner, something in me held me back and did not wish to go.
A few weeks ago my wife and I stood perplexed in front of a house where we had gone at about 10 o'clock in the evening, all dressed up for a very gay party, quite the opposite of the one I missed. Our hosts were out and the only thing for us to do was to smile and go home, for we had come 24 hours too soon. "Our unconscious couldn't wait" and had "made a mistake" which would have been flattering to our hosts.
How easily we forget to pay our bills! How hard it is for us to forget what others owe us!
This is, roughly speaking, the import of the new science, psychoanalysis, the psychology of the wish. There are many systems of psychology, some of them very ingenious indeed, but their appeal is slight, except to sentimental scholars who make a living by teaching them.
Platonism, Bergsonism or Hegelism are interesting hypotheses, but neither a teacher nor a banker nor a physician could apply them in the conduct of their business or profession. And the world is tired of theories which cannot be put into practice in the daily life of the average man.
When Freud,, on the other hand, after making a slow, painstaking study of thousands of dreams and after noting carefully the striking relationship existing between the dreams of neurotics and their ailments, formulated his wish fulfilment theory, the world acquired at last a decidedly practical system of psychological research.
An inner force or urge, which Freud calls the libido, is constantly striving to express itself thru overt acts. The primitive brute which is in us is trying to act as freely as the caveman of ten thousand years ago did before civilisation placed a restraint upon human actions. If that force cannot express itself normally, it will express itself abnormally. If steam in a boiler does not find a natural outlet thru a safety valve, the pressure thus generated will explode the boiler and thereby create an unnatural outlet.
When the desire for normal sexual gratification,, for instance, has been repressed long enough, it attains its end in a way which is not exactly abnormal but which is not absolutely natural either, thru erotic dreams.
Repressed cravings seeking gratification are the cause of every nervous disturbance, be it apparently mental or apparently physical or both mental and physical.
In order to understand clearly morbid psychological phenomena translating themselves at times into physical symptoms, we must first determine, thru many tests, what are the repressed cravings responsible for them.
When we find that out we can then gradually help the neurotic to see the actual motives back of his faulty actions, the unconscious reasons for his morbid states or his morbid behavior.
We can also,, in the great majority of cases, suggest an acceptable safety valve for the pent-up force which, if repressed any longer, would probably disrupt the human boiler.
Without going into any more details of that procedure, we may point out several simple and practical applications of the analytic point of view in every-day psychology.
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