The Mechanism of Sexual Deviation

We are familiar to-day with the methods and the results of that process of psychoanalysis which the genius of Freud first reduced to a definite technique. We must not forget, however, that both the method of psychoanalysis and its alleviating results have in a less clearly formulated and less deliberately conscious form long been abroad in the world. To recognize that fact is not to diminish, but rather to increase, the importance of psychoanalysis. As Freud and all who follow him rightly insist, the need for a careful attention to technique largely depends on the intensity of the resistance offered by the subject of psychoanalysis and the rigidity of the internal censorship which has to be overcome. When the subject is highly intelligent and fairly unprejudiced, not hysterical or otherwise definitely morbid, and able to feel confidence in the judgment and good opinion, if not actual sympathy, of the investigator, and, not least, is in possession of an adequate medium of self-expression, it may come about that, though the task still needs time and patience, the resistance is less even from the outset, and the censorship relaxed. It is not indeed abolished. In the present case I was careful to play as passive a part as possible, and to avoid the risks of suggestion; but it was sometimes necessary to throw out a question, which was always put in a casual way as regarding some quite innocent and harmless subject. It might then happen that the subject, without the slightest embarrassment or violence, quietly put the question aside as though it were of no concern to her, that I refrained from any comment, and that subsequently she spontaneously showed that the subject thus put aside was of vital bearing