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.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
Fundamental to the classic psychoanalytic theory of the neuroses is the assumption that our irrational thoughts and actions in the present are motivated by unconscious infantile wishes from the past, and that these wishes continue to dominate our current life until their hidden meanings can be understood and reappropriated by conscious thought. From this hypothesis follows the psychoanalytic “talking cure” that proposes to emancipate the patient from the control of unconscious wishes by clarifying their meanings in the transforming dialogue.
If the talking cure were content to confront patients with the irrationality and self-destructive character of their present actions but made no attempt to relate these to their origins in