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ically less interesting, for their central purpose is getting well, not
understanding. The ideological patient on the other hand makes a
much larger demand-he must understand how he will get well.
In nonideological cases there is no apparent relationship between
the source of the problem as it is described to the patients by the
healer and the question of whether they will get well. What is im–
portant is the relationship with the healer. Since all healing explana–
tions do not apply to all patients, there must be an overlap between
the vocabulary of motives of the sufferer and the vocabulary of
motives of the healer. A member of an evangelical primitive Christian
cult will certainly not be prepared to ascribe his problems to the
Oedipus complex and neither will his suffering counterpart at a
university clinic be prepared to have the devil exorcised. What is im–
portant is that the vocabularies overlap sufficiently so that the patient
is not entirely put off by the healer's interpretations. Historically there
has been an important change which has made the psychoanalytic
vocabulary of motives more believable and credible. In the early days
of Freudian theory and therapy its proponents and patients were
viewed as dangerous subversives. To ascribe all of one's problems to
disturbances in the sexual sphere arising out of early familial mal–
function was an extreme and socially disruptive position. The voca–
bulary of motives that the healer used was strange to the sufferer,
and it is difficult to assess its role in the increased well-being of those
early patients. Even at that time probably only a minority were con–
verted to the Freudian vocabulary of motives; the majority probably
responded not to the manifest statements, but to the very process
of treatment.
However, a number of people-and these cases are of great cul–
tural interest-did become enmeshed in the forms of explanation that
were made available through analysis, and some of these were the
next generation of analysts begat by Freud. Freudian ideas were
disseminated in our society partially through the treatment of certain
patients who were the new analysts and the analyzed avant-garde of
the American intellectual community. It should be clear that patients
in analysis have not been drawn equally from all sections of American
life but mainly from elite groups-from writers and other intellectuals,
and people in the mass media and publishing-from the urban cen–
ters of the country. Since World War II the mass media have popular-
