Freud, “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement” (1914) (I)

Freud’s 1914 account of his “movement” contains pointed expositions of psychoanalytic method and theory. And it is here, too, that Freud infamously describes — or perhaps compels — the “secessions” of Alfred Adler and Carl Jung from that movement. We are asked not to call the activities of these apostates “psychoanalysis” any longer, since they have forfeited their title to it. These two aims — exposition and polemic — are naturally connected: the intelligibility of these secessions presupposes some such account of psychoanalysis. From what, after all, have Adler and Jung seceded? In the opening paragraph, Freud arrogates to himself a unique authority to adjudicate this question:

“Although it is a long time now since I was the only psycho-analyst, I consider myself justified in maintaining that even today no one can know better than I do what psychoanalysis is, how it differs from other ways of investigating the life of the mind, and precisely what should be called psychoanalysis and what would better be described by some other name” (7)

What then is essential to psychoanalysis? — what are its necessary and sufficient “identity conditions,” such that particular “ways of investigating the life of the mind” could qualify, or fail to qualify, as specimens of this type?

In a condensed passage that announces Freud’s considered answer to this question, several possibilities emerge. The passage begins with a statement that appears to represent the “definitive” criterion:

“The theory of repression is the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psycho-analysis rests. It is the most essential part of it” (16)

Were we to stop reading here, we might suppose that only those who accept Freud’s full “theory of repression” are entitled to call their standpoint “psychoanalytic.” But the balance of the passage qualifies this initial impression. For Freud continues that it is not the endorsement of any “theory” per se — his or others' — that distinguishes analytic from non-analytic standpoints. Rather, what marks out psychoanalysis is in the first instance the acknowledgement in clinical contexts of certain “facts” — an acknowledgement that precedes and grounds all theorization. Freud puts his judgment this way:

“[T]he theory of psycho-analysis is an attempt to account for two striking and unexpected facts of observation which emerge whenever an attempt is made to trace the symptoms of a neurotic back to their sources in his past life: the facts of transference and of resistance. Any line of investigation which recognizes these two facts and takes them as the starting-point of its work has a right to call itself psycho-analysis, even though it arrives at results other than my own. But anyone who takes up other sides of the problem while avoiding these two hypotheses will hardly escape a charge of misappropriation of property by attempted impersonation, if he persists in calling himself a psycho-analyst” (16)

Later in the article, Freud subtly amends his formulation, adding a third observable “fact” — amnesia — to the original pair without, however, insisting on its special acknowledgement:

“The first task confronting psycho-analysis was to explain the neuroses; it used the two facts of resistance and transference as starting-points, and, taking into consideration the third fact of amnesia, accounted for them with its theories of repression, of the sexual motive forces in neurosis and of the unconscious” (50)

Thus the reader immediately confronts several dilemmas. The first dilemma is that, though we are initially told that the theory of repression is the “corner-stone” and “most essential part” of the psychoanalytic edifice, it now seems that — strictly speaking, and prior to all theoretical constructions —  two types of empirical observation alone provide our psychoanalytic differentia.

But this constitutes a rather less exacting criterion. At least in principle, after all, we may imagine a theorist who in clinical work both observes and prioritizes a patient’s “transference” and “resistance,” but nonetheless proceeds to explain these phenomena on some theoretical basis other than Freud’s “theory of repression” — say, a different theory of mind, or of development, or of motivation. In the quoted passage, in fact, Freud appears, if not to welcome such theories, at least to recognize their potential legitimacy. Such a hypothetical theory, to repeat, “has a right to call itself psycho-analysis, even though it arrives at results other than my own.”

Yet there is a second dilemma. For even putting to one side the theoretical “explanation” of these observable “facts,” we may ask ourselves: what exactly is Freud demanding of any psychoanalyst vis-à-vis these facts? Is it sufficient for a theory to recognize “resistance” and “transference” in patients — to accept their existence — to qualify as psychoanalysis?

A cursory reading of the quoted passages appears to license such a broad interpretation. But this cannot be right. The mere recognition of resistance and  transference will not be enough for Freud’s purposes since, as we will see, he disqualifies Adler and Jung despite their recognition of these facts. On closer inspection, Freud’s definition includes at least two criteria:

“Any line of investigation which [a] recognizes these two facts and [b] takes them as the starting-point of its work has a right to call itself psycho-analysis, even though it arrives at results other than my own” (bracketed letters mine)

That is to say: not only does a psychoanalytic theory recognize the facts of repression and transference; in addition it necessarily “takes them as the starting-point of its work.” If Adler and Jung no longer qualify, then, it is presumably because they have failed the second, rather than the first, requirement. In the next entry, I will take up the meaning Freud assigns to this “failure.”