Freud - Complete Works (708 page)

   ‘I might take it amiss that
you tried to keep back all this about infantile sexuality from me.
It seems to me most interesting, particularly on account of its
connection with human prehistory.’

   I was afraid it might take us too
far from our purpose. But perhaps after all it will be of use.

   ‘Now tell me, though, what
certainty can you offer for your analytic findings on the sexual
life of children? Is your conviction based solely on points of
agreement with mythology and history?’

   Oh, by no means. It is based on
direct observation. What happened was this. We had begun by
inferring the content of sexual childhood from the analysis of
adults - that is to say, some twenty to forty years later.
Afterwards, we undertook analyses on children themselves, and it
was no small triumph when we were thus able to confirm in them
everything that we had been able to divine, in spite of the amount
to which it had been overlaid and distorted in the interval.

   ‘What? You have had small
children in analysis? children of less than six years?
Can
that be done? And is it not most risky for the children?’

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4357

   It can be done very well. It is
hardly to be believed what goes on in a child of four or five years
old. Children are very active-minded at that age; their early
sexual period is also a period of intellectual flowering. I have an
impression that with the onset of the latency period they become
mentally inhibited as well, stupider. From that time on, too, many
children lose their physical charm. And, as regards the damage done
by early analysis, I may inform you that the first child on whom
the experiment was ventured, nearly twenty years ago, has since
then grown into a healthy and capable young man, who has passed
through his puberty irreproachably, in spite of some severe
psychical traumas. It may be hoped that things will turn out no
worse for the other ‘victims’ of early analysis. Much
that is of interest attaches to these child analyses; it is
possible that in the future they will become still more important.
From the point of view of theory, their value is beyond question.
They give unambiguous information on problems which remain unsolved
in the analyses of adults; and they thus protect the analyst from
errors that might have momentous consequences for him. One
surprises the factors that lead to the formation of a neurosis
while they are actually at work and one cannot then mistake them.
In the child’s interest, it is true, analytic influence must
be combined with educational measures. The technique has still to
receive its shaping. But practical interest is aroused by the
observation that a very large number of our children pass through a
plainly neurotic phase in the course of their development. Since we
have learnt how to look more sharply, we are tempted to say that
neurosis in children is not the exception but the rule, as though
it could scarcely be avoided on the path from the innate
disposition of infancy to civilized society. In most cases this
neurotic phase in childhood is overcome spontaneously. But may it
not also regularly leave its traces in the average healthy adult?
On the other hand in those who are neurotics in later life we never
fail to find links with the illness in childhood, though at the
time it need not have been very noticeable. In a precisely
analogous way physicians to-day, I believe, hold the view that each
one of us has gone through an attack of tuberculosis in his
childhood. It is true that in the case of the neuroses the factor
of immunization does not operate, but only the factor of
predisposition.

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4358

   Let me return to your question
about certainty. We have become quite generally convinced from the
direct analytic examination of children that we were right in our
interpretation of what adults told us about their childhood. In a
number of cases, however, another sort of confirmation has become
possible. The material of the analysis of some patients has enabled
us to reconstruct certain external happenings, certain impressive
events of their childhood years, of which they have preserved no
conscious memory. Lucky accidents, information from parents or
nurses, have afterwards provided irrefutable evidence that these
occurrences which we had inferred really did take place. This, of
course, has not happened often, but when it has it has made an
overwhelming impression. The correct reconstruction, you must know,
of such forgotten experiences of childhood always has a great
therapeutic effect, whether they permit of objective confirmation
or not. These events owe their importance, of course, to their
having occurred at such an early age, at a time when they could
still produce a traumatic effect on the feeble ego.

   ‘And what sort of events
can these be, that have to be discovered by analysis?’

   Various sorts. In the first
place, impressions capable of permanently influencing the
child’s budding sexual life - such as observations of sexual
activities between adults, or sexual experiences of his own with an
adult or another child (no rare events); or, again, overhearing
conversations, understood either at the time or retrospectively,
from which the child thought it could draw conclusions about
mysterious or uncanny matters; or again, remarks or actions by the
child himself which give evidence of significant attitudes of
affection or enmity towards other people. It is of special
importance in an analysis to induce a memory of the patient’s
own forgotten sexual activity as a child and also of the
intervention by the adults which brought it to an end.

   ‘That gives me an
opportunity of bringing up a question that I have long wanted to
ask. What, then, is the nature of this "sexual activity"
of children at an early age, which, as you say, was overlooked
before the days of analysis?’

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4359

   It is an odd thing that the
regular and essential part of this sexual activity was
not
overlooked. Or rather, it is by no means odd; for it was impossible
to overlook it. Children’s sexual impulses find their main
expressions in self-gratification by friction of their own
genitals, or, more precisely, of the male portion of them. The
extraordinarily wide distribution of this form of childish
‘naughtiness’ was always known to adults, and it was
regarded as a grave sin and severely punished. But please do not
ask me how people could reconcile these observations of the immoral
inclinations of children - for children do it, as they themselves
say, because it gives them pleasure - with the theory of their
innate purity and non-sensuality. You must get our opponents to
solve this riddle.
We
have a more important problem before
us. What attitude should we adopt towards the sexual activity of
early childhood? We know the responsibility we are incurring if we
suppress it; but we do not venture to let it take its course
without restriction. Among races at a low level of civilization,
and among the lower strata of civilized races, the sexuality of
children seems to be given free rein. This probably provides a
powerful protection against the subsequent development of neuroses
in the individual. But does it not at the same time involve an
extraordinary loss of the aptitude for cultural achievements? There
is a good deal to suggest that here we are faced by a new Scylla
and Charybdis.

   But whether the interests which
are stimulated by the study of the sexual life of neurotics create
an atmosphere favourable to the encouragement of lasciviousness -
that
is a question which I venture to leave to your own
judgement.

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4360

V

   ‘I believe I understand
your purpose. You want to show me what kind of knowledge is needed
in order to practise analysis, so that I may be able to judge
whether only doctors should have a right to do so. Well, so far
very little to do with medicine has turned up: a great deal of
psychology and a little biology or sexual science. But perhaps we
have not got to the end?’

   Decidedly not. There are still
gaps to be filled. May I make a request? Will you describe how you
now picture an analytic treatment? - just as though you had to
undertake one yourself.

   ‘A fine idea, to be sure!
No, I have not the least intention of settling our controversy by
an experiment of that sort. But just to oblige, I will do what you
ask - the responsibility will be yours. Very well. I will suppose
that the patient comes to me and complains of his troubles. I
promise him recovery or improvement if he will follow my
directions. I call on him to tell me with perfect candour
everything that he knows and that occurs to him, and not to be
deterred from that intention even if some things are disagreeable
to say. Have I taken in the rule properly?’

   Yes. You should add: ‘even
if what occurs to him seems unimportant or senseless.’

   ‘I will add that. Thereupon
he begins to talk and I listen. And what then? I infer from what he
tells me the kind of impressions, experiences and wishes which he
has repressed because he came across them at a time when his ego
was still feeble and was afraid of them instead of dealing with
them. When he has learnt this from me, he puts himself back in the
old situations and with my help he manages better. The limitations
to which his ego was tied then disappear, and he is cured. Is that
right?’

   Bravo! bravo! I see that once
again people will be able to accuse me of having made an analyst of
someone who is not a doctor. You have mastered it all
admirably.

   ‘I have done no more than
repeat what I have heard from you - as though it was something I
had learnt by heart. All the same, I cannot form any picture of how
I should do it, and I am quite at a loss to understand why a job
like that should take an hour a day for so many months. After all,
an ordinary person has not as a rule experienced such a lot, and
what was repressed in childhood is probably in every case the
same.’

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4361

   When one really practises
analysis one learns all kinds of things besides. For instance: you
would not find it at all such a simple matter to deduce from what
the patient tells you the experiences he has forgotten and the
instinctual impulses he has repressed. He says something to you
which at first means as little to you as it does to him. You will
have to make up your mind to look at the material which he delivers
to you in obedience to the rule in a quite special way: as though
it were ore, perhaps, from which its content of precious metal has
to be extracted by a particular process. You will be prepared, too,
to work over many tons of ore which may contain but little of the
valuable material you are in search of. Here we should have a first
reason for the prolonged character of the treatment.

   ‘But how does one work over
this raw material - to keep to your simile?’

   By assuming that the
patient’s remarks and associations are only distortions of
what you are looking for - allusions, as it were, from which you
have to guess what is hidden behind them. In a word, this material,
whether it consists of memories, associations or dreams, has first
to be
interpreted
. You will do this, of course, with an eye
to the expectations you have formed as you listened, thanks to your
special knowledge.

   ‘"Interpret!" A
nasty word! I dislike the sound of it; it robs me of all certainty.
If everything depends on my interpretation who can guarantee that I
interpret right? So after all everything
is
left to my
caprice.’

The Question Of Lay Analysis

4362

   Just a moment! Things are not
quite as bad as that. Why do you choose to except your own mental
processes from the rule of law which you recognize in other
people’s? When you have attained some degree of
self-discipline and have certain knowledge at your disposal, your
interpretations will be independent of your personal
characteristics and will hit the mark. I am not saying that the
analyst’s personality is a matter of indifference for this
portion of his task. A kind of sharpness of hearing for what is
unconscious and repressed, which is not possessed equally by
everyone, has a part to play. And here, above all, we are brought
to the analyst’s obligation to make himself capable, by a
deep-going analysis of his own, of the unprejudiced reception of
the analytic material. Something, it is true, still remains over:
something comparable to the ‘personal equation’ in
astronomical observations. This individual factor will always play
a larger part in psycho-analysis than elsewhere. An abnormal person
can become an accurate physicist; as an analyst he will be hampered
by his own abnormality from seeing the pictures of mental life
undistorted. Since it is impossible to demonstrate to anyone his
own abnormality, general agreement in matters of depth-psychology
will be particularly hard to reach. Some psychologists, indeed,
think it is quite impossible and that every fool has an equal right
to give out his folly as wisdom. I confess that I am more of an
optimist about this. After all, our experiences show that fairly
satisfactory agreements can be reached even in psychology. Every
field of research has its particular difficulty which we must try
to eliminate. And, moreover, even in the interpretative art of
analysis there is much that can be learnt like any other material
of study: for instance, in connection with the peculiar method of
indirect representation through symbols.