Experiential Innovations within the Psychoanalytic Movement

Freud emphasized the experiential dimension of psychotherapy in two primary ways: through the cathartic method which he used in the beginning of his career and through the interpretation of a patient's infantile conflicts which were relived within the transference relationship. The analysis of the transference became an integral part of psychoanalysis while the cathartic process receded in importance. I believe that this may have been an unfortunate development for psychoanalysis. From an experiential point of view, one can doubt the thoroughness of the manner in which infantile conflicts are relived within the classical psychoanalytic setting. Because of the analytic ambience, the emotional experiences which many patients undergo may not be intense enough to have a significant change-producing effect. Since the value of catharsis has been deemphasized by most psychoanalysts since Freud abandoned hypnosis, one consequence has been that the conventional practice of psychoanalysis may not sufficiently mobilize the emotional dimension of a patient's psychic life.

In the beginning of his career, Freud used a cathartic method within the confines of a hypnotic treatment. He discovered that a patient's symptoms usually would disappear with the “discharge of the strangulated affects” which were attached to the patient's previously repressed memories (1893, p. 17). Freud thought of these affects as being derived from specific traumatic experiences, and he regarded their expression as a discharge phenomenon which did not have any interpersonal meaning in relation to the therapist. For a number of reasons, Freud became “dissatisfied with the therapeutic results of catharsis based on hypnosis” (1924, p. 195). He discovered that (1) not every patient could be hypnotized (1893); the therapeutic results were not