The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson
Introduction
We speak of psychoanalytic “schools” in a rough and ready way. In the early days its schools were identified with the cities where they were located. Over time, some of Freud’s followers introduced ideas that competed with his (Adler, Jung, Rank, Klein). Subsequently, analytic schools became identified with the work of specific analysts and only vaguely with the city where they resided. Yet, even now psychoanalysis is essentially identified with Freud. How far can analysts stray from the Master and still call themselves a “psychoanalyst”?
Increasingly, analytic schools are recognizable in the ways that they disagree with Freud. Some schools still emulate him (New York, Vienna) and others are critical (Kleinian, Kohutian). The vast array of schools and the respective theories they promote are so complicated that one’s position in relation to the others isn’t so easy to determine. For example, one needs to distinguish between the American Freudians, on the one hand, and the French, on the other; or between the British object relationists and the Latin Americans. There is so much to choose from, one envisions the possibility of “menus” comprised of endless variations and nuance, selecting what one likes and rejecting the rest: a little bit of this, a dash of that, a spoonful of the other.
When we invoke Freud, to which Freud do we refer? We talk about “the Freudians” as though they’re apart from the rest; as though they agree amongst themselves; as though we could spot one if we saw one. We typically say there isn’t one Freud, but many. There’s the Freud of Hartmann and Arlow and Brenner, and the Freud of Rappaport, Gill, and Schafer. And then there’s the Freud of George Klein, Hans Loewald, and Stan Leavy. And those are only some of the Americans. What about the Freud of Jones, Strachey, and Freud’s own daughter? And that of Lacan, Mannoni (Octave), or Brown (Norman O.)? Or the Freud of Laing, Binswanger, and Sartre? Then there’s Freud himself and his output: all twenty-three volumes. Who has read them all? There’s the Freud of the structural model, which many believe is the “best,” and the Freud of the “technical papers,” who analyzed Dora and the Rat Man. The earlier Freud was wild and in his prime, humanistic and personal. He made all the “mistakes.” He talked—and acted—like an outlaw, a “conquistador of the mind.”
Later he gave us the “death drive,” a theory about life’s enigma, existential to the core. It’s been rejected by almost every one of the Freudians I just mentioned. In fact, this brief inventory of Freud’s interpreters shows how extensively his influence has transcended the selfenclosed boundaries of conventional analytic institutions. His reach is legion. The impact is still too immediate, too close to our age to assess. It’s too much to take in. When we speak of the school of Freud, we speak of a “university”—a universe even—of possibilities. He is the source of a point of view so basic to our era and culture that we grasp at the wind to contain it. How does one go about separating it from the other schools of analysis when they, in turn, are a part of it?
Will the real Freud please stand up? Is there a true Freud? If so, is he good or rotten? Of all the Freuds that are said to exist, is there an essential Freud that they all share in common? Or was Freud hopelessly eclectic, a tinkerer whose thoughts were too restless to pin down? The fact is, there was only one Freud. He was the man who wrote all those works, who lived his life and gave us psychoanalysis. We meet him on every page that we read. He was, and still is, just human. We love him—and hate him—for the person he was. We talk about the man and his ideas. We aspire to separate the two. Surely, if we want to understand his ideas we should come to terms with the man.
The Freud I want to discuss is no stranger. We all know him. You accept him or reject him for who he is, but who he is isn’t in dispute. He’s the one, with increasing frequency, we disparage and attack. We say he was too personal with his patients. He was “excessively involved” and out of control. He never understood countertransference—a concept he invented. This was the Freud who, for many, was too real. Yet, this is the same Freud we continue to hold up as the primogenitor—in fact, the epitome—of “classical” technique, a term whose implied definition is as far from his behavior as the moon. What explains this contradiction? How can the same man embody the two views we have of him: the exemplar of neutrality, on the one hand, and the most brazen psychoanalyst ever, on the other?
The Freud I am going to discuss in these pages may come as a shock to those who have reduced him to the epitome of the aloof, controlled, inscrutable depth behind a mask of implacability; the man who introduced neutrality so he could keep his thoughts to himself. Freud never acted that way and we know it. They say that Freud should have been neutral but wasn’t. Freud was involved. There’s no denying that. His views are classical, but not because they’re recognizable in the style of analysis that has evolved since his death. His views are classical because they’re his. There’s so much confusion about this issue that it is now impossible to depict Freud’s clinical behavior as at all “classical.” For this reason I prefer to call it existential. In this book I explain why.
About this issue—Freud’s classical status and his alleged betrayal of it—there are some who claim there are two Freuds: the one who wrote the technical papers (between 1911 and 1915), where the technique of classical analysis was established, and the Freud of his famous cases (Dora, the Rat Man, the Wolf Man), the clinician we accuse of disregarding his recommendations and who failed to apply them correctly. This is a picture of a Freud who said one thing and did another, who failed to practice what he preached. Yet, when I read Freud I see no contradiction. I see a man who did what he set out to do; a man who was true to his word, whose behavior was the measure of his words. When I read Freud, I see a man whose rules are not etched in stone. His recommendations about the practice of analysis were uncommonly flexible by today’s standards. Many of his rules simply reflected his personality, and he told us why. We, in turn, are invited to do the same. But at the same time, we are admonished to use our heads. To whatever degree we do so, however successfully or not, we’re on our own. Ultimately, we’re the measure of what we are and who. At the end of each day, we answer to ourselves.
The very nature of analytic “rules” requires that they be flexible. We mold them to our personalities, as Freud molded them to his. Those who take rules too literally deny the spontaneous nature of analysis and its purpose: the freedom to be oneself and become oneself in the presence of another human being. In fact, it’s only in the presence of another that we can be ourselves and find ourselves when we’re lost. According to Freud, analysis seeks no other purpose than to allow two human beings to meet, in privacy and in truth. Yet, being honest isn’t so easy. That’s why Freud believed that the only rule that was indispensable—in fact, fundamental—was the one about candor: say what you must and don’t hide it.
Freud’s ideas about the rules for analysis and the way he treated them himself were profoundly personal. The relationship between the two participants is personal too. That’s why his conception of technique was essentially existential. The situation they encounter together is real. How could its technique be anything else? His rules were elastic. Their application with each of his patients were adapted accordingly. He was prudent. Those who wish to refine rules, who seek the “right” rule for every occasion—to be applied en masse—don’t understand this. They perceive Freud’s flexibility as his downfall and his humanity as a failure.
The Freud I want to talk about was concerned about the nature of truth and its accomplice—the secrets we endeavor to conceal. The truth about Freud’s technique is that it is essentially about truth. Freud was only peripherally concerned about mechanisms and psychology. He recognized the enormous ambiguity contained in the phenomenon of phantasy, its latent truths, and its potential for denying reality. Freud realized that our denial of reality inspires every form of psychopathology, that the only way of overcoming the suffering we conspire to evade is to know the reality we deny, and face it. This task is not as abstract—as “intellectual”—as we sometimes make it out to be. It is inherently practical, in the Socratic sense: Know your own mind and be your own person, and the truth will make you free.
We’re not that accustomed to thinking about psychoanalysis, in general, and Freud, in particular, in terms of truth, so I have decided to risk including a section in this book on Heidegger’s conception of truth and showing its facility for Freud’s