Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 17, 1961. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND MORAL VALUES. Heinz Hartmann, M.D., Chairman.

This panel discussion was based on Heinz Hartmann's book, Psychoanalysis and Moral Values.1 In his opening remarks, Dr. Hartmann stated that psychoanalysis, as an empirical science, can only investigate moral issues in terms of their origins and dynamics, and that this requires a renunciation of our personal thoughts about such issues. We can study the vicissitudes of various moral problems but must constantly distinguish what we think and believe in as individuals from what we learn from analysis.

Dr. Samuel Atkin suggested that the delay in the psychoanalytic study of moral problems can be understood in terms of group resistance to the subject. Freud wrote that 'morals are self-evident', and in fact our deepest moral values are rooted in the 'givens' and involved in character development, as described by Hartmann. In treatment of patients we find that the bringing of these to consciousness is therapeutic, and that the moral values of the analyst must be conscious in order to govern the countertransference. Hence the question arises whether the moral values of the analyst can be kept out of the analytic setting. While the distinctive scientific feature of analysis is its objectivity in the exploratory sphere, is this the greatest component of its therapeutic effectiveness? The analytic relationship at any moment is composed of three aspects: an analyzable component, a not yet analyzable component, and a silent or unanalyzable component. The latter is in large part derived from anaclitic sources, and is worked with intuitively as well as conceptually. In his work as a physician the analyst is both scientific observer and healer. A true picture of the analyst includes a reality-oriented ego and a moral system, and denial of these attributes becomes a distortion. The therapeutic aspect of the analytic process, particularly in the narcissistic neuroses, can be compared with t