“Working Through” in Psychoanalysis*

The phenomenon of “working through” was introduced by this term for the first time in our literature by Freud in 1914, in his paper, “Recollection, Repetition, Working Through.”1 It belongs to the least-explored chapters in psychoanalysis despite the fact that in practice we are applying it during nearly every analytic hour. In the same way that we switch on the electric current without giving much thought to the problem of the theory of electricity, we are using in analytic therapy the working-through process without wasting much time on the theoretic basis of that phenomenon. Experience simply teaches us that we have to apply the interpretations of resistances to acceptance and renunciation of unconscious wishes, feeling of guilt, unconscious repetitiveness, and defence mechanisms often and chronically in the transference neurosis on varying or repetitious material until those interpretations finally work—and that is enough. Why this is so remains a riddle. In general the every-day analytic contribution to the theory of that phenomenon is, in beginners, a rather sterile feeling of impatience, which diminishes gradually as the analyst grows older, until finally he can bear the process of working through of resistances without inner rebellion as a part of his daily routine. When that time comes he really becomes something like an “experienced” analyst, and that gradually and painfully-acquired quality of not being impatient any longer during the working-through process is even more revealing of his being an “experienced” analyst than many other more conspicuous symptoms and signs of analytic maturity.

Interestingly enough, the feeling of impatience has been from the beginning associated with the phenomenon of working through, as Freud specifically mentions in his introductory paper. Freud relates that he was often asked for advice by analysts who complained that they had shown to their patients their specific resistances with no