Facs
Transcript
I am now very near to the psychopathological problematic, which we have discussed at the end of the first semester. What the psychoanalysts tried to do – if you take that word in the largest sense – is just this, namely to open up what is cut off by the ideal of personality, as it has developed in Protestantism and humanism, and of course [has] largely grasped, especially in this country, also the Catholic section of this country and, even more than the Protestant, the Jewish section of this country.
Now in all these groups we have a strong development of the ideal of personality, and for this reason something has happened which is characteristic for it: the more the personality ideal was predominant, the more psychoanalysis was needed. It is least needed in Roman Catholic sections; it is most needed, at least statistically, in Jewish groups; and again nearer to it, in Protestant groups. This means that this picture [?], which makes the situation especially clear, cut off from the vital sources of life by the commandments which come from the law, be it humanistic or religious. [??] This is the reason for a large amount of mental disease, or of chaotic explosion which may ruin the personality definitively, if he is not able to overcome the chaos; and very often, after he has gone through the chaos, he returns to another protection by obedience to an even more repressive law.
Now these developments are so frequent that I believe the analyst and the minister and the counselor – who is every Protestant, in Protestantism – should help the other one to find the approach to his vital sources without the tremendous anxiety which is produced if the norms of repression are still alive in a person.