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.
Freud, S. Analysis Finished and Unfinished.
Morgenstern, S. Symbolism and its Psychoanalytic Value in Childrens' Drawings.
Bychowski, S. The Relations Between the Ego and the Superego.
Bonaparte, Marie. The Unconscious and Time.
Pichon, Edward. The Family according to Monsieur Lacan.
1. Freud, S. Analysis Finished and Unfinished.—An analytic treatment takes a lot of time. This has been regretted by many analysts, and a few have attempted to shorten the period. For instance, Otto Rank by concentrating upon the primitive attachment to the mother attempted by analyzing and liquidating the birth trauma to shorten analytic period to two months. (Freud compares this method to that of putting out a fire caused from an exploded lamp by simply removing the lamp and envisions and deplores possible injurious results.) He himself has in a few cases shortened the period by fixing ahead of time a definite date for terminating the analysis. From his own experience and that of other analysts, he concludes that this practice is up to a certain point efficacious but warns that it offers no guaranty of a complete analysis and counsels that an analysis should never be continued beyond the date fixed. As a general rule, tact of analyst decides whether or not this method should be used.
A more interesting and pertinent problem than shortening the period of analysis, Freud thinks, is whether there is a natural term to an analysis and whether it is possible to carry it through to this natural end. The terminology of most analysts leads one to conclude there is. What, asks Freud, does the end of an analysis mean? In the main, that the patient should no longer suffer from his symptoms and should have surmounted his anxieties. In turn the analyst should know that a great part of what was repressed has been made conscious and that many incomprehensible things have been elucidated as well as many interior resistances surmounted. But when this is accomplished does it mean that a level