54 definitions
The book's index
Analysis Terminable and Interminable
45 concepts · 54 definitions
- after-repression1
- analysis3
- analyst3
- birth trauma1
- character1
- civilization1
- complex1
- conflict1
- cryptomnesia1
- cure1
- deadline1
- defence3
- defence mechanism1
- domestication1
- ego2
- femininity1
- friendship1
- frustration1
- health1
- impossible profession1
- inertia1
- knowledge1
- libido1
- masculine protest1
- metapsychology1
- negative therapeutic reaction1
- neurosis1
- normality1
- past1
- progress1
- psychoanalysis1
- quantity1
- recovery1
- repression3
- resistance1
- sex education1
- shortcut1
- strife1
- success1
- termination1
- training analysis1
- trauma1
- truth1
- vaccination1
- virtue1
Defence (n.) edits the mind like a censor edits a manuscript: repression strikes passages out, the other defences distort the text so that no gap shows.
A Defence (n.) kept after its usefulness becomes an infantilism, like an institution that keeps itself alive after its purpose has passed.
Defence (n.) against inner danger cannot be flight, since one cannot flee from oneself; it must falsify one's own perception instead.
An Analyst (n.) cannot keep his own flaws out of the work: a doctor with bad lungs can still treat lungs, but an analyst with blind spots cannot see his patient's.
An Analyst (n.) handles repressed material as a radiologist handles X-rays, and without care it stirs up his own instincts.
An Analyst (n.) should return to analysis every five years or so, without shame, so that his own analysis becomes interminable too.
Analysis (n.) swings like a pendulum between the id and the ego: making something conscious, then correcting something in the self.
Analysis (n.) becomes interminable when a strong instinctual constitution meets an ego bent out of shape by its own defensive struggle.
Analysis (n.) aims not at a passionless, conflict-free normality but at the best possible working conditions for the ego.
Repression (n.) has psychological causes, Freud insisted against Fliess, not a biological origin in the antithesis of the sexes.
Repression (n.) is what analysis revises: the grown ego pulls down some of the child's dams and rebuilds others more solidly.
Repression (n.) is a dam against water; when the drives swell, as at puberty, the old dams can burst.
The Ego (n.) holds its victories over instinct only at a given strength; when illness or fatigue weakens it, tamed drives come back.
The Ego (n.) lies, in each patient, somewhere between normal and psychotic, and how far it has drifted decides what analysis can do.
An Impossible profession (n.) is one you can be sure in advance of doing unsatisfyingly: analysis, education and government.
Normality (n.) is an ideal fiction; everyone is normal only on the average.
The Past (n.) clings: what has once come to life holds on to its existence, and one may doubt whether the old dragons are ever truly extinct.
Cryptomnesia (n.) is hidden memory dressed as invention; Freud wondered whether his own death instinct was something he had once read and forgotten.
Knowledge (n.) about a conflict one is not living changes nothing: the reader has learned something and is altered not at all.