COMMENTS
453
patient is reasonably free from inhibitions and anxieties and is able to
work and to love. Society's intrusion often makes it difficult to reach
these goals. To give a few illustrations of such problems: A young
married woman, brought up in a rather strict environment, seeks
analysis because of sexual frigidity . The treatment is successful in the
analysis of her Oedipal problems and in curing her of her frigidity. But
this healthy release of her drives leads her into an environment where
liberation means empty promiscuity and indulgence in drugs. Achiev–
ing a mature development of her love life in such a climate is difficult.
The analyst cannot think without some concern about the future of
this successfully treated young woman.
A man comes for help because he suffers from severe pressure
symptoms in his head during sexual relations and is always afraid of
getting a stroke during intercourse. His relations with women always
end unsatisfactorily. He continually acts out certain infantile fantasies,
letting himself be seduced by strong women, the wife or secretary of his
boss, or other women in similar situations. In analysis, he gradually
understood that he was frightened by his devouring mother and felt he
deserved to die in the forbidden love affairs or to turn into the weak,
impaired man he had thought his father had been. In the progress of
his treatment, the physical symptoms and the fear of a stroke subsided,
as he realized that these women were not really his mother-why
should he feel guilty? Thus he was cured of his somatic and anxiety
symptoms, but the shallowness of his sexual life persisted. The easy
victories over parental figures were pleasurable enough so that he was
reluctant to give them up. This acting out dilutes the libido, which is
needed in analysis to overcome resistances for a thorough working
through of the acquired insights. Suggesting a period of sexual
abstinence appears simply "old-fashioned" to a present-day patient
and almost impossible.
Psychoanalysis has given the inspiration for many branches of
psychotherapy. Unfortunately most people find it impossible to distin–
guish between serious developments in psychotherapy and irresponsi–
ble exploitations of human needs. Group therapy, conducted by
trained professionals, fulfills a need and seems to help many people; it
is another result of the desire for peer groups at the present time. Other
psychotherapies-encounter groups, scream therapy, and so on–
mostly conducted by self-styled healers, have produced a commercially
successful vulgarization of psychology. All such "treatments" exploit
(consciously or unconsciously) the "transference" which people in
emotional need develop towards a "healer." Any child in trouble turns
to a parent, expecting
to
find comfort, and this expectation is trans-
