The Problem of Motivation in the Educator's Vocational Choice

Starting from an examination of Freud's concept of sublimation, I found Hartmann's views and Kris's distinction of reservoir and flux, that is, of neutralized and little neutralized sublimation fruitful for my subject. Moser's concept of safety-valve operotropism also proved valuable for this investigation. It describes the socialization of instinctual currents which had been forced to regress by unsolved conflicts. A review of relevant literature showed that several authors arrived at similar conclusions in spite of their greatly varying points of view. They found that the vocation of an educator attracts those people who have a particular relation to the child on the basis of their psychoinfantilism and who repeat unsolved conflict situations within the educational process. Investigating the motivation of three well-known educators, I could confirm that unsolved conflicts represent an essential motive in their professional choice and activity. However, the specific constellation found was not a mere repetition of conflict, within the educational process, but rather a positive outcome of a traumatic situation, an outcome equally acceptable to ego and superego. The degree of participation of free energy deriving from unsolved instinctual conflicts endows the educational activity with its particular impetus and specific coloring; at the same time, however, it restricts the activity and entails the danger of pedagogical

transgressions. The psychoanalytic treatment of a number of successful educators elucidated the distinction between these teachers' egobuilding identifications on the one hand and their unsolved conflicts with their own parents, which exert a regressive pull on the other hand. The former put neutralized energy at the pedagogue's disposal and are part of the permanent reservoir out of which energy is channeled into educationally useful activity. The unsolved conflicts, on the other hand, urge him on in a specific direction toward extraordinary performances and find solution, respectively discharge, in a life shared with the child. Finally, I examined the question of help for the educator whose motivation for his professional activity always carries dangers of regressive attitudes. In my view, a comprehensive psychoanalytic help contains a certain problematic aspect which merits basic investigation because it might lead to the elimination of the conflict factor in motivation. Supervision offers a possible solution, because it could take up problems and involvements of the educator without interfering too much with his deeper motivations.