Word, Authority and Suggestion; Some Questions about Theory of Technique

Abstract

This paper discusses the nature and function of speech, authority and suggestion in Freudian analytic cure and specially, the relevant implications on the theory of psychoanalytical technique. Freudian analytic cure is based on the patient’s supposition that there is something iii him which he does not know and the analyst’s supposition that the patient knows about that which he says he does riot know. Psychoanalysis deals with a particular kind of ignorance, and it introduces into the theory of knowledge the understanding that there is something actively ignored by means of the action of specific psychological mechanisms. In the curing process, analytical or therapeutical work is carried out by opposing resistance with forces in the opposite direction. The composition of the analyst’s power or authority and the power or authority attributed to the analyst is studied. The realm of speech installs itself in the cure. One same word is a territory in conflict, a movable barrier between Desire and psychological defense mechanisms, wherefore it is possible to listen to a broad spectrum of words, all the way from those which spread out, full and stuffed with desire and others which are nothing but hollowed words, sonorous peelings, covers which have been emptied by different means.
This paper studies suggestion and transference in the analytic situation, their nature and the conditions which make them appear. The two conditions pointed out by Freud in his “Mass Psychology” for suggestion to work, are present in the cure: an instinct (drive) restricted in its purposes and the analyst in the place of the Ego Ideal. In a Freudian analytic cure it is possible to open -by means of adequate theoretical knowledge and its corresponding technical adjustement to admit, to find out about, and to detect these elements which in other situations (hypnosis, symptomatic suggestion, etc.) operate with blind compulsion.