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Reports on personal experiences with self-analysis are scarce in psychoanalytic literature. This is not astonishing in view of the intimate nature of the subject as well as insufficient work in this area.
I had the following experience before I had begun psychoanalytic treatment. In 1940 I was in London when the blitz began. As a foreigner I was not permitted to work as a doctor and had lost my nursing position. Under the circumstances I wanted to reach a neutral country not only to find work, but to help friends escape from Nazi-occupied territory and join me eventually in South America.
Ours was the only large house in that part of London. People from the neighborhood would bring their mattresses to spend the night on our basement floor. Raids began at 6 P.M. with considerable regularity. One single plane would circle all night, and all night we heard the noise of that plane and of the bombs that it dropped. In the morning we would find that the house next to ours or opposite ours was gone and the people inside probably buried there.
No one could help being frightened. For a while I was as frightened as everyone else. Then I realized the importance of overcoming my fears, to avoid endangering my plans to leave the country as well as to assist my neighbors. As one woman expressed it, “We feel safe here because you are a doctor.” It became imperative for me to hide my own fears.
The desire to help myself was a strong and not entirely new experience for me, since it had served me well in previous difficult situations. At the time I was not aware that a person's feelings for himself with their implications constitute the most important basis for his ability to deal with others. My strongest conscious motive for helping myself was the desire