ON SOME CRUCIAL POINTS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 236
The dream a means of re-establishing the moral equipoise--The dreamer finds therein the material for reconstruction--Methods discussed--The part played by "faith in the doctor"--Abreaction.
For the patient any method that works is good, though some more valuable than others--The doctor must choose what commends itself to his scientific conscience--Why the author gave up the use of hypnotism--Three cases quoted--Breuer and Freud's method a great advance in psychic treatment--Evolution of author's views--Importance of conception that behind the neurosis lies a moral conflict--Divergence from Freud's sexual theory of neurosis--The doctor's responsibility for the cleanliness of his own hands--Necessity that the psychoanalyst should be analysed--He is successful in so far as he has succeeded in his own moral development.
Opportunism _v._ scientific honour--Psychoanalysis no more than hypnotism gets rid of "transference"--Cases of enuresis nocturna, and of washing-mania treated by hypnosis--On what grounds should such useful treatment be dispensed with?--The difficulty of finding a rational solution for the moral conflict--The doctor's dilemma of the two consciences.
Author's standpoint that of the scientist, not practical physician--The analyst works in spite of the transference--Psychoanalysis not the only way--Sometimes less efficacious than any known method--Cases must be selected--For the author and his patients it is the best way--The real solution of the moral conflict comes from within, and then only because the patient has been brought to a new standpoint.
"What is truth?"--Parable of the prism--All man attains is relative truth--Fanaticism is the enemy to science--Psychoanalysis a method of dealing with basic motives of the human soul--Must not each case be treated individually?--Morals are above all relative.
Definition of psychoanalysis--Technique--So-called chance is the law--Rules well-nigh impossible--The patients' unconscious is the analysts' best confederate--Questions of morality and education find solutions for themselves in later stages of analysis.
Contradictions in psychoanalytic literature--Should the doctor canalise the patient's libido?--Does he not indirectly suggest dreams to patient?