Address at the Second Congress of Psycho-Analysts, held in Nuremburg in 1910, when the author proposed the formation of an International Association of Psycho-Analysts
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS is still a young science, but its history is already rich enough in events to justify a momentary pause to survey the results attained and to weigh up its failures and successes. Such a survey should help us to apply our efforts more economically in future by abandoning ineffective methods for more fruitful ones. Drawing up such balance-sheets from time to time is as necessary in scientific workshops as it is in trade and industry. Congresses are generally nothing but Vanity Fairs, providing opportunities for self-display and the theatrical first production of scientific novelties, though their real task should be the solution of such problems of scientific policy.
Like all innovators and pioneers, we have had not only to work for our cause, but also to fight for it. Psycho-analysis, looked at objectively, is a pure science, the object of which is to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the laws that determine mental events. This purely scientific question, however, touches so much on the raw the vital foundations of daily life, certain ideals that have grown dear to us, and dogmas of family life, school and church—incidentally disturbing so uncomfortably the contemplative ease of the nerve specialists and psychiatrists who ought to be the impartial judges of our work—that it is not surprising that we are met with empty invective instead of with arguments and facts.
We were thus, very much against our will, involved in a war, and it is well known that in war the muses are silent; but the passions rage all the more vociferously for that, and it is held to be legitimate to use weapons not taken from the armoury of science. We suffered the same fate as the prophets of peace, who find themselves compelled to wage war for the sake of their ideals.
The first, what I should like to call the heroic, age of psychoanalysis was the ten years in which Freud had to meet entirely alone the attacks on psycho-analysis that were directed at him from all quarters and with no holds barred. He was first met with the well-tested method of complete silence; then came derision, contempt, and even slander. His only friend and his original fellow-worker abandoned him, and the only kind of praise that he earned was expression of regret that he should waste his talent on such bewildering aberrations.
It would be hypocritical to refrain from expressing our admiration of the fashion in which Freud, without troubling himself overmuch about the attacks on his reputation, and in spite of the deep disappointments caused him even by his friends, continued firmly to advance along the road that he had recognized to be the right one. He could say to himself, with the bitter humour of a Leonidas, that the shadow of being ignored and misunderstood at any rate gave him quiet in which to go on with his work; and so it came about that for him these were years in which imperishable ideas matured and books of consummate importance were written. What an irreplaceable loss it would have been if he had devoted himself to sterile controversy instead! The attacks made on psycho-analysis have in the great majority of cases not been worthy of notice…. The policy of non-reaction to unscientific criticism, the avoidance of sterile controversy, thus justified itself in the first defensive battles of psycho-analysis.
The second period was heralded by the appearance of Jung and the ‘Zürichers’, who associated Freud’s ideas with the methods of experimental psychology and thus made them accessible to those who, though honourable seekers after truth, because of the awe in which they held scientific ‘exactness’, shrank back in horror from Freud’s methods of investigation, which broke with all the traditional methods of psychological research. I know that kind of mentality from personal experience. I too came only later to see that the ‘exactness’ of pre-Freudian psychology was only a kind of self-deception, a cloak to hide one’s own emptiness. It is true that experimental psychology is ‘exact’, but it can teach us little. Psycho-analysis is ‘inexact’, but it discloses unsuspected inter-relations and opens up layers of the mind hitherto inaccessible to research.1
New workers streamed into the new scientific field discovered by Freud just as they streamed in the wake of Amerigo to the new continent discovered by Columbus, and they too had to, and still have to, conduct guerrilla warfare, just as the pioneers in the New World did…. The lack of authority, discipline and leading strings served only to increase the independence essential in serving in such outposts. There was actually one type of human being who was won over by this ‘irregular’ type of work; I refer to people of artistic gifts, who were led into our camp partly because of their intuitive understanding of the problems with which we were concerned, but were also attracted by our rebellion against scientific scholasticism, and contributed not inconsiderably to the dissemination of Freud’s ideas.
Disadvantages as well as advantages, however, gradually emerged from this guerrilla warfare. The complete lack of any central direction meant that in some cases particular scientific and personal interests got the better of and acted detrimentally to the common interest, what I should like to call the ‘central idea’…. But psycho-analysis and analytic self-criticism might have convinced us all that only an exceptional individual can, without friends to help and check him, correctly recognize his own sometimes inopportune tendencies and inclinations and restrain them in the general interest; and that even in the scientific field a certain amount of mutual control can be only beneficial…. Another consideration is that, while a very valuable and talented section of society is attracted to us precisely because of our lack of organization, the majority, who are accustomed to order and discipline, draw from our irregularity only new material for resistance…. The name of Freud inscribed on our banner is only a name, and gives no idea of the number of those who now concern themselves with the ideas which originated with him and of the work which psychoanalysis has already accomplished. Thus we lose even that measure of ‘mass-effect’ to which our numbers alone entitle us, even leaving out of account the specific gravity of individual personalities and their ideas. No wonder, then, that this new branch of science is still, so to speak, unknown to-day to laymen, to physicians untrained in psychology and, in a number of countries, even to professional psychologists; and that, when we are called into consultation by physicians, we generally have to lecture them about even the most elementary conceptions of psycho-analysis….
The question I now wish to put is whether the advantages of our guerrilla warfare outweigh the disadvantages. Are we justified in expecting that these disadvantages will disappear of themselves without appropriate intervention? If not, are we strong and numerous enough to be able to organize ourselves? And, finally, what measures would be possible and advisable to make our organization useful, strong, and enduring?
I can answer the first question without hesitation by hazarding the opinion that our work would gain more than it would lose by the formation of an organization.
I know the excrescences that grow from organized groups, and I am aware that in most political, social, and scientific organizations childish megalomania, vanity, admiration of empty formalities, blind obedience, or personal egoism prevail instead of quiet, honest work in the general interest.
The characteristics of family life are repeated in the structure and the very nature of all organizations. The president is the father, whose pronouncements and authority are incontrovertible and sacrosanct; the other officials are the older children, who treat their juniors with superiority and flatter the father-figure, but wish at the earliest suitable moment to push him from his throne in order to reign in his stead. The great mass of members, in so far as they do not follow their leader with no will of their own, listen now to one agitator, now to another, follow the successes of their seniors with hatred and envy, and would like to oust them from the father-figure’s favour. Organizations are the field in which sublimated homosexuality can live itself out in the form of admiration and hatred. Thus it seems that man can never rid himself of his family habits, and that he really is the gregarious animal, the ζώον πολίτικον described by the Greek philosopher. However far he may roam both in time and space from his own family origins, he constantly and inevitably seeks to re-establish the old order, and to find his father again in an admired hero, a party leader, or a person in a position of authority over him; to find his mother over again in his wife; and to find his toys again in his children. Even in the case of us unorganized analysts, as I have been able to establish both in myself and in numerous colleagues, our intellectual leader is apt in dreams to condense with the father-figure. In our dreams we are all inclined in more or less concealed form to outsoar, to overthrow, our intellectual father, whom we esteem highly, but whom it is difficult inwardly to tolerate precisely because of his intellectual superiority.
Thus it would be doing violence to human nature were we to drive the principle of liberty too far and seek to evade the ‘family organization’. For, though we analysts are now formally unorganized, we already live in a kind of family community, and in my opinion it would be right to give outward recognition to the fact.
Not only would it be right, it would also be expedient, for self-seeking tendencies are better kept in check by mutual control. The psycho-analytically trained are surely the best adapted to found an association which would combine the greatest possible personal liberty with the advantages of family organization. It would be a family in which the father enjoyed no dogmatic authority, but only that to which he was entitled by reason of his abilities and labours. His pronouncements would not be followed blindly, as if they were divine revelations, but, like everything else, would be subject to thoroughgoing criticism, which he would accept, not with the absurd superiority of the paterfamilias, but with the attention that it deserved.
Moreover, the older and younger children united in this association would accept being told the truth to their face, however bitter and sobering it might be, without childish sensitivity and vindictiveness. In the present state of civilization, i.e. in the second century of surgical anaesthesia, it can be taken for granted that we should endeavour to tell the truth without causing unnecessary pain….
Such an association, which would be able to reach this ideal level only after a considerable time, would have excellent prospects of profitable work. In an association in which people can tell each other the truth, in which people’s real capacities can be recognized without envy, or, more correctly, with natural envy held in check, in which no attention need be paid to the sensitiveness of the conceited, it will be impossible, for instance, for a man with a fine sense for details but ungifted in abstract matters to take it into his head to undertake the reform of scientific theory; or for another to wish to use as the background for the whole of science his perhaps valuable but entirely subjective trends; while a third will come to realize that the unnecessarily aggressive note in his writings serves only to increase resistance without advancing the cause; and a fourth will be convinced by the free exchange of opinions that it is absurd immediately to react to something new in a spirit of knowing better already.
These are more or less the types who appear in organizations in general, and also appear among ourselves; but in an organization of psycho-analysts it would be more easily possible, if not to eradicate them altogether, at least to hold them in check. The auto-erotic period of an organization’s life would gradually give way to the more advanced stage of object-love, which would cease seeking and finding satisfaction in the titillation of intellectual erotogenic zones (vanity, ambition), and would seek and find it in observation of the object itself.
I am convinced that an association working on the basis of these principles will not only create favourable conditions for work among ourselves, but will also be in a position to gain us respect in the outside world. Freud’s theories will always meet with great resistance, but since the second, ‘guerrilla’, period a certain diminution of the obstinate, negative attitude is unmistakable. If we set ourselves the unprofitable and disagreeable task of listening to the various arguments brought against psycho-analysis, we notice that those same writers who a few years ago ignored or excommunicated the whole thing now speak of the ‘catharsis’ of Breuer and Freud as a theory worthy of attention, or even brilliant; naturally they reject everything that has been discovered and described since the ‘abreaction’ period. Some are even so bold as to recognize the unconscious and the methods of investigating it analytically, but shrink back in horror from the problems of sexuality. Decorum as well as prudence keep them from such dangerous matters. Some accept the conclusions drawn by Freud’s younger followers, but are as terrified of the name of Freud as if he were the devil incarnate; they completely forget that thereby they are committing the logical absurdity of filius ante patrem. The most usual and most contemptible way of accepting Freud’s theories is that of rediscovering them and broadcasting them under new names. For what is the ‘expectation neurosis’ but Freud’s anxiety neurosis sailing under false colours? Which of us does not know that the name ‘phrenocardia’, placed on the scientific market by an adroit colleague as his own discovery, is merely a new name given to a few of the symptoms of Freud’s anxiety hysteria? And was it not inevitable that the use of the word ‘analysis’ should lead to the invention of the term ‘psycho-synthesis’, though its author forgot to pay attention to the fact that synthesis must naturally be preceded by analysis? More danger threatens psycho-analysis from such friends than from its enemies. We are threatened with the danger of becoming fashionable, so to speak, which would result in a notable increase in the number of those who call themselves analysts without being analysts.
We cannot take responsibility for all the nonsense that is served up under the name of psycho-analysis, and we therefore need, in addition to our own publications, an association, membership of which would offer some guarantee that Freud’s own psycho-analytic methods were being used, and not methods cooked up for the practitioner’s own purposes. One of the special tasks of the association would be to unmask the scientific looting to which psycho-analysis is subject to-day. Careful sifting of new members would make it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff. The association should be content with a small membership rather than accept or retain people who are not firmly convinced on matters of principle. Profitable work is possible only when agreement prevails on fundamental matters. It is undeniable that at the present time public association with a body such as I have in mind involves a measure of personal courage and a renunciation of academic ambition….
I have already mentioned how wise it was of Freud to ignore the many senseless attacks made upon him at the time. But it would be wrong to adopt this attitude as the watchword of the future association. It is necessary from time to time to draw attention to the poverty of the counter-arguments used against us. This, in view of the weak foundation and the uniformity of the attacks on us, should not be an excessively difficult task.
The same logical, moral, and medical counter-arguments recur again and again, making it possible to draw up a regular catalogue of them. The logicians declare our views to be nonsense and self-deception. All the illogicalities and unintelligibilities produced in the unconscious of neurotics and brought to the surface by their associations are attributed to us.
Moralists shrink back in terror from the sexual subject-matter of our investigations and conduct a crusade against us, generally omitting in the process to recall anything that Freud has written about the taming and sublimation of the instincts laid bare by analysis….
It is also interesting that people, though they habitually talk about the ‘mendacity’ and ‘undependability’ of hysterics, gladly swallow everything about analysis said by uncured patients with a still imperfect knowledge of the subject.
Many hold the view that the therapeutic effect of analysis depends on suggestion. Assuming, but not admitting, that that is the case, is there any reason why an effective method of suggestive therapy should be a priori rejected? The second counterargument is that analysis ‘does not work’. The element of truth in this is that analysis is unable to clear up all forms of neurosis, that it generally does not work quickly, and that putting right the personality of a human being that has developed askew since infancy often takes more time than his patience—and in particular that of his family—is willing to accept. Other critics say that analysis is harmful. By this they obviously mean the patient’s sometimes violent reactions, which are, however, part of his cure, and are generally followed by periods of alleviation.
The final counter-argument is that analysts are out only for money; this obviously springs from the human tendency to fall back on abuse when the supply of objective arguments has been exhausted. This accusation is often brought up by patients, frequently just when they are about to give in to the weight of newly-acquired self-knowledge, in a last, desperate effort to remain ill.
The logical, ethical, and therapeutic outbursts of the medical profession are above all noticeably like the dialectical reactions which resistance produces in our patients. Just as the overcoming of the resistance of individual neurotics requires technical knowledge and steady work, so does group resistance (e.g. the attitude of the medical profession to the theories of analysis) require to be dealt with in a planned and expert manner and not, as in the past, to be left to chance. One of the chief tasks of an association of psycho-analysts, in addition to the development of our own science, would be to deal with the resistance of scientific circles. This task alone might justify the foundation of such a body.
If, gentlemen, you accept in principle my proposal that we should found an International Psycho-Analytical Association, nothing further remains for me … but to make concrete proposals. I propose the setting up of a central executive to support the formation of local groups in all centres of civilization, the organization of international congresses to meet annually, and, in addition to our Jahrbuch, the publication as soon as possible of a new official journal to appear at shorter intervals…. I have the honour to lay before you draft statutes for the association.
1 First published in Hungarian: Gyógyászat (1911), in German: Bausteine I (1926). First English translation (abridged).
1 It cannot be admitted that only ponderable and measurable objects of experience, i.e. the results of observation of the experiments of the natural sciences, are to be regarded as reliable. Inner experiences, i.e. psychic reality (with which all introspective psychology is concerned), can also be the object of legitimate scientific inquiry.