ON PSYCHOANALYSIS
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ized the Freudian vocabulary of motives. The vulgar use of analytic
terminology is heard everywhere, and this ideological penetration of
the potential patients has both positive and negative aspects.
For the future analyst and for the intellectual, unlike the gen–
eral run of patients, the vocabulary of motives assumes a primary role
in the treatment process. For the intellectuals with their concern
with communication and words, the healing situation alone is not
enough; the persuasive part is the language and the descriptions flow–
ing out of the theory. Through access to analytic literature the need
to confirm the value of the therapeutic experience is satisfied, since
the Freudian metapsychology provides a system of ordered relation–
ships for the interpretation of literature, history, politics and inter–
personal relations. Much that was not explained in the thirties by
vulgarized Marx was explained by vulgarized Freud. Seldom have
the contributions of great men been so rapidly devalued. With the
depoliticalization of American intellectuals, Freud replaced Marx.
The question of the truth of the vocabulary of motives is most
relevant to the healer's role. Just as the intensity of the witch doctor's
belief in his treatment played a role in the healing process, so today
the splintering of the psychoanalytic movement into schools and sub–
schools-Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, Kleinian- is functional. What
appear to outsiders as doctrinal quibbles are really measures of the
intensity of the therapists' belief. The analyst is trained at the analytic
institute, and his primary experience is his "didactic" analysis. The
training for analysis is like a religious conversion. Kenneth Burke
has pointed out that patients' descriptions of the moment when they
come to believe in the reality of the unconscious have exactly this
religious tonality; there is a falling together, a way has been found,
there is a moment of insight- all of which adds up to a revelation.
The neophyte analyst, armed with commonsensical explanations of
behavior, is supplied in a highly charged emotional situation with
new explanations of the behavior (often better than the ones he had
before) of both others and himself. Given the ambiguities of the
analytic situation, the analyst must be sure of himself, for if he is not
the patient quickly senses it and will be more resistant.
If
in the
process of his practice the analyst becomes less sure of himself, it
is
necessary either that he be reanalyzed or that he retreat into dog–
matism. Failures can then be described as unanalyzable.
