Chapter 2 Introduction to Lecture 1

Introduction to Lecture 1 I do not know what you may have learned about psychoanalysis from reading or hearsay.However, the title of my lecture is "Introduction to Psychoanalysis", and as the name suggests, I have to assume that you are ignorant of the subject and ask me to start from the beginning. There is at least one thing I can assume you know - and that is: psychoanalysis is a cure for neurotic disorders.This approach is not only different from that of other medicines, but often the opposite.Often when a patient is to be treated with a new method, the physician exaggerates the ease of the method in order to convince the patient of its efficacy.In my opinion, this approach is very right, we can increase the efficacy of this.But when it comes to treating neurotics psychoanalytically, our procedure is different.We have to tell him how difficult this method is, how it takes a long time, and how it requires his own efforts and sacrifices; as for the curative effect, we tell him not to predetermine, and all success depends on his own efforts, understanding, adaptation and patience.We have, of course, good reasons for adopting this seemingly perverse attitude, which you will naturally understand later on.

Please forgive me for treating you like a neurotic at the beginning of my speech. I would like to advise you not to come to the lecture next time.I want to tell you that I can only give you a partial knowledge of psychoanalysis, and that it is not easy for you to form an independent judgment on psychoanalysis.Because your education, your habits of thought, compel you to oppose psychoanalysis, you have to work hard in your heart before you can overcome this instinctive resistance.How much my lectures will enable you to understand psychoanalysis is of course impossible to predict; but I must at least tell you that after listening to the lectures, you will not be able to learn how to conduct psychoanalytic research, nor will you be able to practice psychoanalytic treatment.And I not only discourage but actually warn any of you who are not content with superficial acquaintances but want to enter into a permanent relationship with psychoanalysis.Because right now, if he chooses this profession, he will be deprived of the opportunity to succeed academically, and when he officially opens the business, he will find that the whole society cannot understand his purpose and intention, will be hostile to him, and let everything Hidden sinful impulses were vented upon him.You may infer, from the present venomousness of the war in Europe, that the troubles he has to deal with must be incalculable.

Often, however, a new knowledge is enough to attract some people beyond all considerations.If any of you come to the lecture a second time despite being warned, that is certainly very welcome.But you all have a right to know the inherent difficulties of psychoanalysis which I am about to point out. The first is the problem of teaching and explaining psychoanalysis.When you do medical research, you are accustomed to use your eyes. You see the dissected specimens, the deposits of chemical reactions, and the contraction of all muscles after nerve stimulation.Later, when you come into contact with the patient, you use your senses to understand the patient's symptoms, observe the results of the pathological action, and sometimes analyze the cause of the disease.As far as surgery is concerned, you can see and try it yourself.Even in the case of psychiatric therapy, the patient's symptoms, abnormal manifestations, speech and behavior provide a series of phenomena that leave a deep impression on your mind.So medical professors are mostly explaining and guiding, as if guiding you to visit a museum, and you can have a direct relationship with the objects you observe. From your own personal experience, you can be sure of the existence of new facts.

Unfortunately, however, psychoanalysis is different. In psychoanalytic treatment there is nothing other than the doctor talking to the patient.The patient tells his past experiences, present impressions, complains, and expresses his wishes and emotions.The doctor can only listen quietly, try to guide the patient's thoughts, force him to pay attention to certain aspects, give him some explanations, and observe the approval or denial reactions he thus arouses.The relatives and friends of the patients would only believe what they saw, touched, or the kind of actions they saw in the movies. Now they all express doubts when they hear that "talking can cure the disease".Their reasons are of course contradictory and illogical.For they also believe that the pain of the neurotic is purely imaginative.Speech and witchcraft were originally the same thing, and today we use words to make people happy or to bring them down.Teachers use words to impart knowledge to students, and speakers use words to move audiences and influence their judgments.Words can arouse emotions, and we often think of them as tools for communicating with each other.So let's not take psychotherapy talk lightly.You, too, should be satisfied to hear the psychoanalyst talking on the phone with the patient.

But hearing the conversation was also difficult; for the analytical dialogue was closed; its progress could not be made public.Of course, when we teach psychiatry, we can introduce neurasthenic or hysterical patients to students, but patients will only describe their own illness and symptoms and will not refer to others.Only when you have special feelings for the doctor, you are willing to talk freely, so as to meet the needs of analysis.If there is a third person who has nothing to do with him, he will be silent again.Because what they want to say during the analysis are their secret thoughts and emotions, not only they don't want to tell others, but they even try to hide them from themselves.

Therefore, you cannot visit the treatment of psychoanalysis. If you want to learn psychoanalysis, you have to rely on hearsay.This indirect knowledge makes it extremely difficult for you to form your own judgments on the subject of psychoanalysis.Therefore, you should basically trust the reliability of the reporter. Now assume for a moment that you are listening to history instead of psychiatry, and assume that the lecturer is talking about the life and success of Alexander the Great.What reason do you have to believe what he told you?As the case may be, his deeds seem to be more unreliable than psychiatry, since the professor of history, like you, has not participated in the battle of Alexandria; and the psychoanalyst can at least tell you the fact that he himself participated.But on what evidence does the historian have a basis?He can refer you to the records of Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, etc., who were all contemporary with Alexander, or later than him.He can also invite you to see the stone statue and coins of Alexander preserved by him in Pompeii, and show the photos of the mosaics of the Issos war.But strictly speaking, these evidences are only enough to prove that the ancients believed in the existence of Alexander and the authenticity of his exploits.Your criticism may have started again.You may feel that the records about Alexander are not very reliable, and some details are not well supported.But when you leave the classroom, I dare say you will never doubt the existence of Alexander.why?First, the teacher will never force you to believe the historical facts that he doubts, because it is not good for him; second, the ancient historians have rarely contradicted the records of these historical facts.If you want to doubt their records, you can use two tests: first, to see whether they have a possible motive for falsification, and second, to see whether their records are consistent.The result of this test will show that Alexander is beyond doubt, and that Moses and Neroth may be less so.Later you will see what doubts there are in psycho-analysis.

You now have the right to ask the following question: If psychoanalysis has neither objective evidence nor the possibility of public viewing, how can it be studied and believed to be true?It is certainly not an easy task to study psychoanalysis, and there are very few people who have done in-depth research on it; but there are still ways to learn.The study of the personality of the ego can be an introduction to psychoanalysis.The so-called "self-study" is not exactly introspection, but for want of a better term, that is how it is described.If you already have some knowledge of self-analysis, there are many common psychological phenomena which can be used as material for such self-analysis.In this way you may be sure that what psychoanalysis describes is no lie, although progress in this direction is not without limit; Opportunities can be used to observe the subtleties of the analyst's craft.Although this learning method is very good, it can only be used for individuals, not for the whole class.

The second difficulty with psychoanalysis is not inherent in it, but comes after you have been influenced by medical research.An attitude of mind which you have acquired through your medical training is very different from the attitude of psychoanalysis.You often base the functions and disorders of the body on the basis of anatomy, explain it with physical chemistry, and explain it further with a biological point of view, but never pay any attention to spiritual life. Mental life is the final development of a complex organism.Your view of psychoanalysis is therefore foreign, and you have often doubted it, denied its scientific value, and left it to poets, philosophers, metaphysicians, and laymen.This defect of yours prevents you from being a good doctor; because the first thing you come into contact with when treating a patient is the spiritual life of the patient. You originally despised those charlatans and wizards, but because you neglected the spiritual life, you may have to worry about it. Let the warlocks and wizards receive part of the healing effect.

This defect in your previous education, I know, is justifiable.You do not have a subsidiary subject of philosophy in your schools to aid in medicine.Neither speculative philosophy nor descriptive psychology, nor so-called experimental psychology, which is studied in conjunction with the physiology of the senses, can help you understand the mind-body relationship or the disorders of the mental life.Although there is a kind of psychiatry in medicine that specializes in various mental disorders and is collected into various clinical books, even psychiatrists themselves doubt whether their purely descriptive formulas are worthy of being called science.How the symptoms represented by these pictures arise, how they are composed, and how they are connected is unknown: they are either not connected to the changes in the brain, or they are connected but cannot be explained.Treatment is possible only after these mental disturbances have been judged to be the indirect result of organic disease.This gap is what psychoanalysis seeks to fill.Psychoanalysis, to provide psychiatry with a psychological basis, requires a common rationale for explaining physical and mental disturbances.To this end it is necessary to abandon all prejudices, whether anatomical, chemical, or physiological, and to apply purely psychological concepts thoroughly.This may seem strange to you at first.

Then there is another difficulty which does not arise from your education or your mental attitude.Psycho-analysis has two tenets that most outrage all men: the first, that it contradicts their rational preconceptions; the second, that it conflicts with their moral or aesthetic preconceptions.These stereotypes cannot be underestimated. They are by-products of human evolution. They are extremely powerful. They have emotional power as their basis, so it is really difficult to break them. The first unpleasant proposition of psychoanalysis is that psychic processes are primarily unconscious, while conscious psychic processes are only discrete parts and actions of the whole mind.We have to remember that we used to think that what is psychological is conscious.Consciousness seemed to characterize mental life, and psychology was considered the science of the contents of consciousness.The perception is so obvious that any objection will be dismissed as nonsense.However, psychoanalysis has to contradict this prejudice and has to deny the statement that "psychological is conscious".Psychoanalysis believes that the mind contains feelings, thoughts, desires, etc., and both thoughts and desires can be subconscious.But psychoanalysis, on account of this assertion, at first lost the sympathy of the sober scientific minds, and was suspected of absurd witchcraft.Why do I refer to the theory of "psychology is consciousness" as a prejudice? Of course, it is not easy for you to understand. If the subconscious mind really exists, how long will it take for human evolution to deny it, or what is the benefit of such denial? It is also something you cannot guess.The debate over whether the psychic life is at the same level as the conscious or beyond it is like a dispute of words rather than practical; but I tell you that the recognition of unconscious psychic processes is a A decisive step towards a groundbreaking new perspective on science.

Now I come to the second proposition of psycho-analysis; it is difficult for you to guess how closely related the first and second propositions are.The second proposition is also one of the original ideas of psychoanalysis. It is believed that sexual impulses, both in a broad sense and in a narrow sense, are the important causes of neurosis and psychosis, which was not realized by the predecessors.What is more, we believe that these sexual impulses have made the greatest contribution to the highest cultural, artistic and social achievements of the human mind. In my opinion, this conclusion is the main reason for the hostility to psychoanalysis.You must want to know the reasons for this conclusion.We believe that under the pressure of the competition for survival, human beings have tried their best to give up the satisfaction of primitive impulses and create culture, and the reason why culture is constantly transformed is that each person who has joined the social life in the past generations has continued to sacrifice his life for the common good. Instinctive pleasure.And the instinctive impulses it uses, especially the sexual instinct, are the most important.Thus the sexual energy is sublimated, that is to say, it is turned away from its sexual aims and directed towards other, higher social ones.But the resulting organization is not very stable, because the sexual impulse is not easily controlled; and everyone involved in the cultural enterprise is in danger of being resisted by sexual forces.Once sexual power is unbridled and returns to its original goal, social culture will suffer the greatest crisis.Therefore, society does not want anyone to point out the relationship between sex and social development; it is even less willing to admit the power of sexual instinct, or discuss the importance of each person's sexual life; in order to train restraint, the issue of sex is completely avoided.Consequently, psychoanalytic theory is to be condemned, to be seen as ugly, immoral, or dangerous.But this kind of refutation is not easy to be effective, because the conclusions of psychoanalysis can be called the objective results of scientific research;It is human nature to regard an undesirable fact as falsity, and then have no trouble finding reasons against it.Society thus declares what it cannot accept as untrue, denigrates the results of psychoanalysis with logical, concrete reasons derived from emotional impulses, and upholds prejudices against our powerful rebuttals. We do not, however, by any means concede to this negative theoretical tendency.We're just acknowledging the facts we've painstakingly researched.We hold that, within the scope of scientific research, it is not necessary to take into account the actual prejudices of individuals, whether they are justified or not. These are some of the difficulties you face when you become interested in psychoanalysis.This may be too much for beginners.If you are not disappointed by this, we will continue.