a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

TWENTY-SEVENTH LECTURE
GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES
Transference
WE are nearing the close of our discussions, and you probably cherish
certain expectations, which shall not be disappointed. You think, I suppose, that
I have not guided you through thick and thin of psychoanalytic subject matter to
dismiss you without a word about therapy, which furnishes the only possibility of
carrying on psychoanalysis. I cannot possibly omit this subject, for the
observation of some of its aspects will teach you a new fact, without which the
understanding of the diseases we have examined would be most incomplete.
I know that you do not expect any guidance in the technique of practising
analysis for therapeutic purposes. You wish to know only along what general
lines psychoanalytic therapy works and approximately what it accomplishes.
And you have an undeniable right to know this. I shall not actually tell you,
however, but shall insist that you guess it yourselves.
Only think! You know everything essential, from the conditions which
precipitate the illness to all the factors at work within. Where is there room
for therapeutic influence? In the first place, there is hereditary disposition; we
do not speak of it often because it is strongly emphasized from another
quarter, and we have nothing new to say about it. But do not think that we
underestimate it. Just because we are therapeutists, we feel its power
distinctly. At any rate, we cannot change it; it is a given fact which erects a
barrier to our efforts. In the second place, there is the influence of the early
experiences of childhood, which are in the habit of becoming sharply
emphasized under analysis; they belong to the past and we cannot undo
them. And then everything that we include in the term "actual forbearance"—
misfortunes of life out of which privations of love arise, poverty, family
discord, unfortunate choice in marriage, unfavorable social conditions and the
severity of moral claims. These would certainly offer a foothold for very
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