Chapter 10. Commentary. Second Thoughts

[PEP Editor’s Note: A PDF Original is available for this article for use of reference with the preceding chapters.]

The distortions in “The Imaginary Twin” of the patient's past are designed to prevent him or anyone who knew him from thinking it referred to him. Such aims underestimate the power of rumour and suspicion.

If the distortions are judged effective, the narrative must be regarded as fiction. If the narrative were a work of art it might be reasonable to regard it as more nearly representative of truth than any literal transcription; but this psychoanalyst is not an artist. Expectations that the record represents what actually took place must be dismissed as vain.

The first paragraph is evocative; the reader is invited to appreciate the serious nature of the illness of the patient, the state of mind of one who has been advised to consider a severe brain operation, the pessimism and despair of one who has had so many years of unsuccessful treatment. The reader is prepared for the triumph of psychoanalysis in contrast with the patient's previous misfortunes under psychotherapy.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 are factually inaccurate;1 the statements in the two paragraphs are representations of facts to which the realization did approximate closely. I thought this was true then; I think it is true now. What importance should be ascribed to these statements, one in the paper, made within months of the experience; the other in this book, made twenty years after?

It is usual to think that a report written within an hour or so of the events it is supposed to describe has a special ‘built-in’ validity and superiority over the account written many months or even years

later. I shall suppose simply that they are two different accounts of the same event without any implication that one is superior to the other. A technique is needed which will reveal the nature of the contrasting stories and of the contrasting element