You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It little serves to elucidate and discuss concepts where there intervene desires and fears that direct matters towards ends of their own. This fact, discovered with its full implications by psycho-analysis, also holds good for analytical concepts, their interpretation and use, and for those persons who interpret and use them. Nevertheless, such a discussion must be carried out if the ambiguity or vagueness of the concepts serve as a refuge and disguise for these desires and fears. I do not, therefore, aim here to say anything new; only to reopen discussion of some concepts and the use we make of them.2
In the first place I should like to consider the concepts ‘independence’ and ‘dependence’. A marked tendency prevails to regard independence as something frankly positive and dependence as something frankly negative, from the point of view of psychological cure or evolution. The positive aspect of independence seems to lead one to overlook the negative one and thus it is apt to mask neurotic ends. In the same way, the negative aspect of dependence seems to lead to a concealment of the positive one and the criticism of dependence may equally serve to cover pathological tendencies or defences. The positive aspect of independence may be described as the state of being free of neurotic anxiety in object relations; its negative aspect is the rejection of libidinal and emotional surrender. In other words, what is called ‘independence’ may well be a reaction-formation to neurotic dependence, the former in such a case being just as neurotic as the latter (or even more so). The negative aspect of dependence is love with neurotic fear and hatred.