The now discussion of the technical question of how to accelerate the slow process of analysis leads us to another, more profound question, namely, whether the analysis can end naturally and whether it can be carried out to the end. The language used by analysts seems to help establish such a premise, for it is often heard that the person who recognizes his own shortcomings expresses regretfully or apologetically that his analysis is not complete or that he has not been analyzed.
First, we must unify our opinions on the following question: What does the polysemantic idiomatic phrase "end of analysis" refer to? It's actually easy to say, when analysts and patients no longer meet during analytics clinic hours, and the analysis ends. They do so only if two conditions are basically met, one, the patient is no longer afflicted by the pathology, overcoming fear and obstacles. Second, the analyst makes a judgment: the patient has been made aware of so many repressed things, so many things that are not understood have been explained, and so many inner impedances have been eliminated that there is no need to worry about the duplication of the relevant course. If external difficulties hinder the achievement of this objective, it is better to say that the analysis is incomplete than that the analysis is not complete.
Another implication of the end of the analysis is even more ambitious. In its name, ask: Is the impact on the patient large enough that it will not change if it is analyzed further? That is to say, it seems that through analysis, it can reach the level of absolute psychological normality, and it can be believed that this level has the ability to maintain stability, such as when all the repression that occurs can be successfully dissolved and all the gaps in memory can be filled. One has to ask first whether such a thing is possible in practice, and then ask the theory whether this is possible.
Every analyst may have treated some cases with gratifying results, successfully ruled out existing neurotic disorders, did not recur the disease, and did not have other disorders. It is not a condition that did not see this effect. The patient's ego has not changed significantly, and the source of the distress is basically traumatic. The etiology of all neurotic disorders is mixed, either super-strong, the instinct to resist without self-restraint, or earlier, the effects of premature trauma, in which the immature self is unable to control them, and generally two factors— physical and accidental. The stronger the former, the sooner the trauma will lead to fixation, leaving developmental disorders; the greater the trauma, the more certain it will be that there will be damage even in normal instinctive relationships. Needless to say, traumatic sources offer a much more favorable opportunity for analysis. Analysis can only be effective in traumatic cases, where the strength of the self can replace early unsatisfactory decisions with the right solutions. Only in this case can it be said that the analysis is finally over, in which the analysis is responsible and there is no need to continue. If such a recovered patient never suffers from disorder and has to analyze and treat again, then people naturally do not know how many components of this immunity are the gifts of fate, so that he can avoid too much of a heavy test.
The strength of the instincts of the constitution and the adverse changes that the ego receives in the course of the defensive war—in the sense of distortion and limitation—are factors that are detrimental to the analysis and can prolong it indefinitely. People want to blame the formation of another factor --—— self-transformation on the first factor, the strength of instinct, but it seems that self-transformation also has its own source, in fact people have to admit that these relationships are not known enough, and now it is the subject of analytical research. I don't think the interest of analysts in this area has led to the right direction. I think it is sufficient to clarify how to heal by analysis, but the question should be what other obstacles affect the healing of analytical treatment.
Next, I would like to talk here about two problems that arise directly in the practice of analysis, which will be illustrated by the following examples. A man who has been successful in his own psychoanalysis concludes that his relationship with men is the same as his relationship with women—men are his competitors, women are his lovers—not completely freed from the neurological obstacles, and therefore leaves him with an analysis by another person who thinks he is stronger than himself. This critical scrutiny of himself allowed him to succeed, marrying the woman he loved and becoming a friend and teacher of an imaginary enemy. Many years have passed, and I still have a good relationship with the analysts of the past. But there was no well-documented external cause that was disrupted again, and the analysts and analysts turned against him, accusing him of not doing a complete analysis for himself. He should have known and considered that empathy could never be just positive, and he should have cared about the possibility of negative empathy. Analysts argue that no negative empathy was found during the analysis period. But even if he ignores the subtle signs of this empathy, which cannot be ruled out at the beginning of the analysis because of the narrow field of vision, there are doubts about whether he has the power to activate a subject that does not appear in a patient, or as people call it, a "complex" just through his guidance. In addition, whether in the analysis or after the analysis, every friendly relationship between the analyst and the analyzed cannot be regarded as empathy, and there is also a truly valid and vital friendship.
I'll move on to the second example, and the problem in this example is the same problem. An old girl who cannot walk because of a serious leg disease has been excluded from life since adolescence, the condition is obviously hysterical in nature, several diagnoses and treatments are ineffective, 9 months of analytical therapy ruled out this condition, and gave a capable and noble person the right to participate in life. In the years after the illness, nothing luck happened: family troubles, property damage, and the loss of any hope of happy love and marriage as I grew older. But this former patient bravely survived everything and was the pillar of the family in the difficult years. I don't know if it was 12 or 14 years after the end of the treatment, she had to have a gynecological examination due to massive bleeding, found it was fibroids, had to have a whole hysterectomy, and from the time of the operation, the girl got sick again. She fell in love with the surgeon, immersed herself in masochist hallucinations, fantasized about terrible changes in her heart, and she overshadowed her romance novels with these hallucinations, proving that she was no longer suitable for analytical treatment attempts, and she was no longer normal until she died. After so many years of successful treatment, it is impossible to ask for it too much. This treatment was in the first few years of my analytical work. Her first illness was fortunately cured, but in any case the second illness may be the same root as the first, a different manifestation of the same suppressed impulses that were not fully addressed in the analysis. But I still believe that neuroses don't recur without new trauma.
These two cases were deliberately selected from a large number of similar cases, which is enough to cause discussion on our subject. Skeptics, optimists, and ambitious people use them in completely different ways. The first two will say that the successful analytical treatment that has been shown does not guarantee that people who have recovered from the current disease will not suffer from other neuroses in the future, or even neuroses with the same root of the same instinctual disease, which is actually a recurrence of the old disease. Others argue that this does not prove this, and they counter that both experiences were from the early days of analysis, 2 or 30 years ago, and since then our understanding has deepened and expanded, our technology has improved in response to new results, and today we can ask and expect the long-term maintenance of the cured after analysis, or at least the new disease is not the resurrection of the previous instinctive disorder in new forms. Experience does not force us to limit the demands placed on our therapy in such a sensitive way.
I naturally chose these two observations because they have been going on for many years. The closer the time of curative effect is to us, the more useless it is to think about us, because we do not have the means to foresee the fate of the future. The optimist's expectations are obviously premised on something, but this does not come naturally, first, it is entirely possible to resolve the instinctive conflict (better expressed as the conflict between the self and the instinct), second, to treat a person's instinctive conflict by making him immune to all other such possible conflicts, and third, to have the right to awaken such a pathogenic conflict for the purpose of preventive therapy, which currently shows no signs, and people are very clever in this matter. I have asked these questions and do not wish to answer them now, and perhaps the current positive answer is simply not possible for us.
Theoretical thinking is entirely possible to allow us to make a difference in order to draw attention to it, but something else is now clear: the path to meeting higher demands on analytical therapies does not lead to a shortening or transcendence of the course of treatment.