Freud, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” (1914) (I)

Freud begins this 1914 piece by “reminding students of the far-reaching changes which psycho-analytic technique has undergone since its first beginnings” (147). More concretely, he rehearses in overview three “phases” of psychoanalysis, each of which — while sharing essentially the same “end” — takes rather distinct “means” to achieving it. Let us consider these phases in turn.

Phase 1

“In its first phase — that of Breuer's catharsis — it consisted in bringing directly into focus the moment at which the symptom was formed, and in persistently endeavouring to reproduce the mental processes involved in that situation, in order to direct their discharge along the path of conscious activity. Remembering and abreacting, with the help of the hypnotic state, were what was at that time aimed at” (147)

Hence this first method — the so-called “cathartic discharge” model — involved several ingredients:

1. It takes as its sole object the “moment” of symptom-formation.  The patient must be brought, especially via hypnosis, to recall the “situation” in which the illness began — paradigmatically conversion-hysteria. So, to take one of the best-known cases: Anna O, unable to drink water, must recollect the peculiar circumstances under which the aversion began — as it happens, she recalled seeing her nanny’s dog drink from her glass of water and feeling compelled to suppress her spontaneous reaction of disgust.

2. The scene must be recollected, however, not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as an affect-laden experience — one that “reproduce[s] the mental processes involved in that situation.” In this way, the originally-strangulated emotion is discharged or “abreacted.”

Phase 2

Freud describes the second “phase” as follows:

“Next, when hypnosis had been given up, the task became one of discovering from the patient's free associations what he failed to remember. The resistance was to be circumvented by the work of interpretation and by making its results known to the patient. The situations which had given rise to the formation of the symptom and the other situations which lay behind the moment at which the illness broke out retained their place as the focus of interest; but the element of abreaction receded into the background and seemed to be replaced by the expenditure of work which the patient had to make in being obliged to overcome his criticism of his free associations, in accordance with the fundamental rule of psycho-analysis” (147)

Here again, we are able to identify a number of aspects to the second “method” which, moreover, help distinguish it from its predecessor form:

1. In place of hypnosis — whose limitations, to be sure, are not recounted here — Freud invites the patient’s free associations.

2. The analyst must receive these associations, not directly and passively — as hypnotically-inducted recollections presumable were — but through an active “work of interpretation,” only afterwards “making its results known to the patient.”

3. In this way, rather than through hypnosis, analysis discovers “what he [the patient] failed to remember.”

4. Alongside the original scene or scenes of symptom-formation, Freud suggests that “other situations which lay behind the moment at which the illness broke out” were increasingly underscored. (In “Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896), Freud was already arguing that the “root” cause of a neurosis must ultimately be sought, not in the proximate circumstances of its eruption, but in earlier traumatic scenes, also hidden from memory.)

5. These technical innovations have developed in response to the recognition of “resistance” — something which was neither perceived nor, for that reason, addressed in hypnosis.

6. The patient’s "expenditure of work” in overcoming “his criticism of his free associations” now accomplished the function — so Freud tells us — formerly assigned to cathartic emotional discharge, or “abreaction.”

7. In fact, Freud’s language is ambiguous here: “the element of abreaction…seemed [scheinen] to be replaced by the expenditure of work [Arbeitsaufwand] which the patient had to make…to overcome his criticism of his free associations” (my italics). Was “abreaction” really replaced during this phase by “work,” then, or was the substitution only “seeming”? Perhaps abreaction retained a place alongside this new “effort” — even if it came to eclipse the former in importance. We might suppose, indeed, that the distinction between the “cures” of abreaction and effort coincide roughly with that between patients who (1) enter therapy with discrete symptoms, and those who (2) possess “structural” character neuroses. This way of parsing things is imperfect, of course, since for Freud symptom-remission, too, involves circumventing “resistances,” while the arduous path to alterations of character surely runs through profound emotional upheavals. Nonetheless, as a first approximation, the classification may hold.

Phase 3

The third and last phase of analytic technique — at least in 1914, when the piece was published — appears in this way:

“Finally, there was evolved the consistent technique used today, in which the analyst gives up the attempt to bring a particular moment or problem into focus. He contents himself with studying whatever is present for the time being on the surface of the patient's mind, and he employs the art of interpretation mainly for the purpose of recognizing the resistances which appear there, and making them conscious to the patient. From this there results a new sort of division of labour: the doctor uncovers the resistances which are unknown to the patient; when these have been got the better of, the patient often relates the forgotten situations and connections without any difficulty” (147)

What, then, are the specific aspects of this third iteration of analytic technique, and how do these aspects differentiate it from the first and second paradigms?

1. The analyst is no longer immediately interested in the “situations” of symptom-formation — as events either to be deliberately “reproduced”  by the patients under hypnosis, or to be inferred by the analyst interpretively, on the basis of the patient’s associations. On the contrary, “memories” relevant to the treatment can be trusted to “take care of themselves,” eventually, if the new technique is consistently applied — without special attention to any particular “scene,” per se.

2. The analyst turns from these scene to “whatever is present…on the surface of the patient’s mind” — a “surface” still accessible, presumably, in the guise of the patient’s free associations (which, again, are no longer tethered to particular “scenes.”)

3. The analyst’s interpretation is no longer directed at “circumventing” resistances. (This was the substance of the second phase: to get round resistance to the — unconsciously preserved — scenes, awareness of which the patient repels.) Instead, the analyst addresses the resistances themselves. Thus interpretively “recognizing the resistances” in the patient’s associative activity, and “making them conscious to the patient” — rather than identifying the repressed memories concealed behind these resistances — became the priority.

4. In this way, analysis arrives at the same “result” at which the first and second phases aimed: the recover of repressed memories. It does this not, indeed, by immediately (via hypnosis) or even mediately (via interpretive reconstruction) seizing these memories, but simply by “working through,” i.e. defeating, the “resistances” which obstruct the path to these repressed materials. When the resistances holding the repressions in place are dissolved, these materials seem to surface spontaneously, since nothing dynamically prevents it any long.

For this last reason, finally, Freud is able to conclude:

“The aim of these different techniques has, of course, remained the same. Descriptively speaking, it is to fill in gaps in memory; dynamically speaking, it is to overcome resistances due to repression” (147-8).

I will say more about this in the next entries.