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This paper is written in consequence of some important considerations brought forward by William McDougall in his paper an 'The Revival of Emotional Memories and its Therapeutic Value'. McDougall's article appeared in the Medical Section of the British Journal of Psychology, Vol. I, Part I, and has previously been abstracted.
After pointing out that the traumatic origin of the neurosis is generally an artifact of medical phantasy, Jung proceeds to discuss certain cases in which the trauma is actually causative in the sense of causa efficiens. He agrees with McDougall's statement that in some cases abreaction is not only inadequate but actually harmful. Also he concurs with the view that the essential factor is dissociation, and that the integration of this dissociation is more important than the abreaction. Jung has found that a traumatic complex creates a dissociated condition of the psyche which is removed from control and is in a condition of psychical autonomy. Abreaction is an attempt to re-integrate this autonomous complex. Jung then explains, according to his own views, the importance of transference in the abreaction. This transference he considers to be the result of the human interest and personal devotion of the physician: these are moral qualities. The therapeutic effect depends upon the amount of labour the physician employs to enter into the patient's psycho. The author endeavours to point out the error of the exclusively sexual interpretation of dreams and phantasies and states that the patient in his wilderness of sexual phantasy, ends by clinging to the physician with a convulsive erotic transference which means spiritual devastation.
The article continues in this strain of eulogy for the author's mystical and somewhat religious ideals, the Freudian analytic technique being severely criticised. Transference is dealt with in some detail and the importance of the individual relationship between physician and patient is emphasised. This, the