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

amount of work of the patient as well as of the physician. This therapy fits in
perfectly with the estimation of neuroses to which the majority of physicians
subscribe. The physician says to the neurotic, "There is nothing the matter
with you; you are only nervous, and so I can blow away all your difficulties
with a few words in a few minutes." But it is contrary to our dynamic
conceptions that we should be able to move a great weight by an
inconsiderable force, by attacking it directly and without the aid of appropriate
preparations. So far as conditions are comparable, experience shows us that
this performance does not succeed with the neurotic. But I know this
argument is not unassailable; there are also "redeeming features."
In the light of the knowledge we have gained from psychoanalysis we can
describe the difference between hypnotic and psychoanalytic suggestion as
follows: Hypnotic therapy seeks to hide something in psychic life, and to gloss
it over; analytic therapy seeks to lay it bare and to remove it. The first
method works cosmetically, the other surgically. The first uses suggestion in
order to prevent the appearance of the symptoms, it strengthens suppression,
but leaves unchanged all other processes that have led to symptom
development. Analytic therapy attacks the illness closer to its sources, namely
in the conflicts out of which the symptoms have emerged, it makes use of
suggestion to change the solution of these conflicts. Hypnotic therapy leaves
the patient inactive and unchanged, and therefore without resistance to every
new occasion for disease. Analytic treatment places upon the physician, as
well as upon the patient, a difficult responsibility; the inner resistance of the
patient must be abolished. The psychic life of the patient is permanently
changed by overcoming these resistances, it is lifted upon a higher plane of
development and remains protected against new possibilities of disease. The
work of overcoming resistance is the fundamental task of the analytic cure.
The patient, however, must take it on himself to accomplish this, while the
physician, with the aid of suggestion, makes it possible for him to do so. The
suggestion works in the nature of an education. We are therefore justified in
saying that analytic treatment is a sort of after-education.
I hope I have made it clear to you wherein our technique of using suggestion
differs therapeutically from the only use possible in hypnotic therapy. With
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