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Every psychotherapist—whatever his method of treatment of neuroses might be—is confronted with a suffering human being, consciously and in good faith frantically calling for help. Unconsciously, the situation is quite different, and exactly at that point the real difficulty starts.
Fifty years of psychoanalysis have proven conclusively that every neurotic enjoys unconsciously repressed fantasies in his various symptoms. He pays an exorbitant price for these symbolically materialized unconscious wishes, a price visible in his depressions, feeling of guilt, self-damaging tendencies.
In my opinion the subjective suffering which every neurosis produces is not the real reason why a neurotic consults the psychotherapist. Only if the inner balance between inner wishes and inner punishment for exactly these wishes is disturbed does the neurotic seek help. This assumption explains why not all neurotics who have enough money, knowledge of existence of psychotherapy, and the necessary time and opportunity do consult us. This, by the way, sheds a strange light on the problem of statistics in our specialty of medicine: they are always too favorable. Even if we are absolutely truthful about our successes and failures, we must give a distorted picture: our figures are too optimistic. This is simply the result of the material of our observation; we deal only with relatively favorable and selected cases. The simple fact that a patient consults us at all means that his inner balance is disturbed and, therefore, amenable to therapy. To express it differently: let's assume that a statistic