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

effectual therapy. But it would have to be the kind of therapy which,
according to the Viennese folk-tale, Emperor Joseph practiced: the beneficial
interference of a potentate, before whose will men bow and difficulties vanish.
But who are we, to include such charity in the methods of our therapy? Poor
as we are, powerless in society, forced to earn our living by practicing
medicine, we are not even in a position to treat free of charge those patients
who are unable to pay, as physicians who employ other methods of treatment
can do. Our therapy is too long drawn-out, too extended for that. But perhaps
you are still holding to one of the factors already mentioned, and think that
you have found a factor through which our influence may be effective. If the
restrictions of morality which are imposed by society have a share in the
privation forced upon the patient, treatment might give him the courage, or
possibly even the prescription itself, to cross these barriers, might tell him
how gratification and health can be secured in the renunciation of that ideal
which society has held up to us but often disregards. One grows healthy then,
by giving one's sexuality full reign. Such analytic treatment, however, would
be darkened by a shadow; it does not serve our recognized morality. The gain
to the individual is a loss to society.
But, ladies and gentlemen, who has misinformed you to this degree? It is
inconceivable that the advice to give one's sexuality full reign can play a part
in analytic therapy, if only from the circumstance we have ourselves
described, that there is going on within the patient a bitter conflict between
libidinous impulse and sexual suppression, between sensual and ascetic
tendencies. This conflict is not abolished by giving one of these tendencies
the victory over its opponent. We see that in the case of the nervous,
asceticism has retained the upper hand. The consequence of this is that the
suppressed sexual desire gains breathing space by the development of
symptoms. If, on the other hand, we were to give the victory to sexuality,
symptoms would have to replace the sexual suppression, which has been
pushed aside. Neither of the two decisions can end the inner conflict, one part
always remains unsatisfied. There are only a few cases wherein the conflict is
so labile, that a factor such as the intervention of the physician could be
decisive, and these cases really require no analytic treatment. Persons who
can be so much influenced by a physician would have found some solution
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