Psychoanalysis

PSYCHOANALYSIS, one of the schools in modern psychology and psychopathology, differing from other schools in these fields not only by its research methodology but also by its methodology. In the course of the struggle for the right to exist, Psychoanalysis has crystallized into a unique system of views. It is from this that psychoanalysts claim the right to examine a range of phenomena in the light of their method, far beyond the limits of psychopathology, and even beyond psychology proper. Psychoanalysis claims the right to resolve problems of vast cultural-historical scope: from the analysis of so-called neuroses it proceeds to the analysis of the customs and traditions of so-called primitive peoples; from the analysis of dreams as a special type of psychological material it proceeds to the analysis of myths, legends, and sagas as a special type of dream material of entire masses; from the analysis of the mechanism of 'transference' it proceeds to the analysis of mass psychology; from the analysis of obsession it proceeds to the analysis of the mechanism of the birth of religious systems. Psychoanalysis attempts to answer many problems troubling modern capitalist society, to the point that its founder and leader Sigmund Freud (in the work 'The Discomfort of Culture') attempts to make a prognosis about modern capitalist culture. This scope of psychoanalysts' attempts is not accidental. It has grown and is determined by the special conditions of the growth and struggle of Psychoanalysis, in which the latter has crystallized as a certain worldview, outwardly representing a unity. The history of this growth and struggle is full of instructive moments and illustrates with expressiveness the fate of ideologies of class society. The father and leader of classical psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, together with Breuer, in his hypnotic research having come across material that sheds light on the origins of various psychological traumas, turned the attention of his sharp and bold research to the origin and fate of these experiences that traumatize the human psyche. He was not satisfied with the artificial situation of forced contact that is created between doctor and patient in the hypnotic situation; he sought possibilities for 'free,' non-forced communication with the patient, but at the same time such communication that would give him the opportunity to penetrate into the 'secret of secrets' of the patient, to penetrate where the patient himself often does not dare to look, and having penetrated this 'secret of secrets,' to understand the peculiar curve of an individual symptom or symptom-complex and, revealing its regularity together with the patient, free him from this or that pathological trait (hysterical attacks, fear of blushing, fear of space, etc.). 3. Freud, in analyzing the psychological material obtained from his patients in a hypnotic state, saw the possibility of further enriching it, if only the barrier that stands between the hypnotized and the hypnotist is destroyed. This barrier is the commanding authoritarian situation in hypnosis, creating conditions for the patient's delay in the process of liberating his unconscious desires and drives. Freud saw the destruction of this situation in the application of the method of free association, a kind of aimless conversation of the patient with the doctor, the fragmentary utterance by the patient of a series of thoughts not externally connected by any logical structure, but in their internal structure having great significance for the analyst. These fragments of thought, disconnected words, even accidentally dropped by the patient, have the significance of a kind of Ariadne's thread, having which the analyst makes his way through the labyrinths of another's psyche. And all the art of analysis, according to Freud, consists precisely in the analyst observing two basic conditions: 1) external affective disinterest in the material which the patient presents to the doctor, 2) the ability to direct this aimless conversation toward searching for the source of this or that experience that traumatizes the psyche, no matter how far or deeply this source may lie, no matter how this experience that traumatizes the psyche may be veiled and hidden. Freud foresaw such a process and warned his students about it and the necessity of overcoming it. He called it the 'resistance' of the patient, expressed in a wait-and-see negative attitude which the patient adopts toward the analyst in the initial stages of treatment. The 'resistance' of the patient is thus not a simple unwillingness to help the analyst understand his condition, but a painful for both sides game in which the patient finds internal satisfaction and recognition of the right to illness. The initial stages of analytical work proceed under the sign of strengthening the patient in his positions, and for the analyst, overcoming this 'resistance' represents enormous difficulty. Only after its overcoming does the true analytical work begin. The patient remains as if alone with himself. And this is the entire uniqueness of the psychoanalytic situation, different from any other. The patient no longer knows that the analyst is sitting beside him; he reveals himself to himself, sometimes not even knowing that the material he is reporting could ever have been present in his consciousness. And it is at this stage that the analyst gets the opportunity from fragments, remnants, incoherences, reprocessed remains of dreams, errors, unfinished sentences to reconstruct the pattern of the patient's psychic life, gradually introducing the latter to the course of his own inner life, bringing him to the necessity of realizing for himself this or that desire that has become for the patient throughout his life nothing other than a form, already devoid of content. The analyst tries to into this form (e.g., the ritual of neurotic formation in the nature of the obsessive desire to knock three times with a finger on the table) the content once associated with it, in order to give the patient the possibility to comprehend it, to introduce it into his active consciousness and thereby to overcome it completely. Where then does the analyst look for this content? He looks for it at different stages of the patient's life and, gradually going deeper, finds it, according to Freud, in the early childhood of the patient, at those stages of his life when the entire surrounding world in the child's consciousness was full of special symbols, when the primary and naked desires of the child distributed all things and relationships according to the principle of pleasure-displeasure. The analyst reaches this moment through the change in the analytical situation, through the mechanism of 'transference,' i.e., the fixation by the patient of his aspirations ('ideal') on the doctor. The peculiarity of this new situation is that the patient, liberating all his subconscious desires, unconscious thoughts, reveries and dreams, gradually immerses himself in this material, which is vague to him, and in this process repeats in reverse order his ascent along the age stages. The situation is thus in the present stage of analysis analogous to the childhood situation of communication of a child with one of the favorite and intimately close persons. And just as the child in the process of forming his feeling of detachment from the surrounding world, simultaneously with the feeling of unity with the surrounding, builds for himself the image of his 'I,' taking features either from the mother or the father, similarly the person being analyzed is rebuilt in the process of analysis along the line of borrowing for himself traits of the analyst, with however the proviso that these traits are old acquaintances, these traits belong to the father or mother. Such is the mechanism of 'transference' in schematic depiction, called by analysts 'identification' (equating). In a number of 'neuroses,' according to the view of psychoanalysts, the mechanism of 'transference,' i.e., 'identification,' plays an essential and fundamental role. But what does the analyst encounter on the path from 'resistance' to 'transference'? It turned out that Psychoanalysis, with this research methodology, stumbled upon a completely unknown world until now. The psychic life of man proved to be by no means as fortunate as it had previously seemed. Especially unfortunate and far from idyllic it appeared in the eyes of psychoanalysts at its early stages. Innocent childhood, with its tranquility, playfulness, tenderness—this is only the shell, the surface of phenomena. In the depths, however, at these early stages, a stormy life of passions is already boiling, which, according to the conviction of analysts, begins already at the stage of sucking at the mother's breast. Here the foundation of future collisions and conflicts is laid, here the plan of future neurosis development is born. The harmless sitting on the potty, according to psychoanalysts, is at the same time an act of self-enjoyment, a manifestation of the 'anal' phase of such characterological formation as stinginess, if only this sitting on the potty lasts too long. According to psychoanalysts, early childhood is filled with conflicts, leaving their indelible mark on the entire future life. And the most important conflict is jealousy toward the father or mother, the so-called Oedipus complex. This 'Oedipus complex' is nothing other than the struggle of a young son with the father for the right to undivided possession of the mother. The life of childhood, according to Freud, is permeated with an erotic struggle from self-enjoyment to the imaginary, cherished by the child, competitive struggle of the son with the father over the mother and in a weakened degree—the daughter with the mother over the father.

The principle of pleasure-unpleasure, from the very first steps of human life, is clothed in an erotic veil. Eros is the driving force of all desires and impulses of the child. Eros constitutes the mechanism of tension, intention (according to Vertelo), libido, which at different age stages is fixed in various ways, transforming, overflowing with colorful garments, sometimes remaining at the infantile stage, sometimes 'sublimating' into the most valuable human activity—creativity. Eros constitutes the essence of the movement of psychic life, clothed now in masochistic, now in sadistic garments. Eros is not only the form but also the content of all the wealth of psychic dynamics, its constant disturbance, inner unrest, collisions, dramatic situations, conflicts, and frustrations. It is precisely the early stages of eros that play an outstanding role in the further fate of a person, because these early stages determine, according to Freud, the very foundations of psychic life, because these early stages are impulses, somato-psychic feelings, which come from within the organism, spontaneously, pressing upon all conscious activity, breaking through the latter from time to time, and by the fact of this breakthrough creating the so-called neurotic situation. The fate of these impulses thus constitutes the fate of the 'neurosis.' From this, Psychoanalysis arrives at the position that it is necessary to consider—with the most careful and scrupulous attention—the fate of the impulse. The impulse is by no means harmless; it, according to Freud, possesses erotic tension. Even in their games, the child realizes such impulses. In them, he acts by the method of substitution. In imagination, a situation is constructed that humiliates, crushes his adult rival. In the game, this is realized. What is not permitted in reality, and the child already receives lessons on what is not permitted, becomes permitted in the game, in an imaginary, and therefore uncontrolled by outsiders, situation. Unsatisfied desire finds an outlet in fantasy. In the adult, this path finds its realization in dreams, in everyday errors, slips of the tongue, and in more severe cases—in neurosis, where the material of these unconscious, unsatisfied desires is constructed. Here, according to Freud, is revealed the mechanism playing one of the central roles in the dynamics of psychic life, the mechanism of 'repression.' All that is forbidden is expelled from the circle of consciousness, but it does not disappear completely and forever; however, for consciousness it is anonymous. There is no desire itself, but only its tension. And this tension makes itself known in the most unexpected ways: sometimes in the special symbolism of dreams, where every thing, according to psychoanalysts, has its sexual meaning (e.g. stick-penis, hat, well-vulva, etc.), sometimes in a chance encounter on the street when two people cannot part ways, which must again signify sexual tension, and finally in conversion, a special hysterical symptom having the same hidden sexual meaning, but expressing itself in translating the content of experience into the language of somatics. Life is thus filled with revenge for the 'repressed' desire, which at every step lies in wait for a person. The mechanism of 'repression' also deserves attention. This is by no means a single moment, but a whole chain of changes that extends from the 'top of the personality' to its 'deep' roots. It turns out that our consciousness is guarded by some guard, more powerful than we ourselves. This guard is the so-called 'censor.' At the very earliest stages of our life, this 'censor' acts in the direction of not allowing forbidden desires into the sphere of consciousness, it cuts off the impulse's possibility of realizing itself in its primary form, it forces the child to submit to the family-authoritarian way of life, despite the fact that his impulses dictate to him the opposite line of behavior. The 'censor' is that instance which creates for consciousness the conditions of 'economy of thinking.' To bypass it in every possible way—such is the task of the impulse. The 'censor' is especially strict where we have the state of waking consciousness. In order for it to really perform its role as a guard, the 'censor' is positioned as a cordon between the so-called unconscious system and the 'preconscious.' In this way, the 'conscious' is protected from the 'unconscious' not only by the 'censor' but also by the 'preconscious,' while classical Psychoanalysis does not make a fundamental difference between the 'preconscious' and the 'conscious.' A fundamental line is drawn, forming the basis for the division of the 'unconscious' from everything else lying above it. And it is here that the 'censor' plays essentially a compromising role. It is a kind of instance that selects from the forbidden everything suitable for tension and action, discarding into the depths of the 'unconscious' the rest that interferes with real life. This selection is made along the line of distinguishing individual stages of the 'ego.' The 'acting ego' is the product of such compromising selections, the 'deep ego' remains hidden, retaining the tendency for realization, and finally the 'ideal ego,' or 'superego,' is the realization in perspective of the 'deep ego' on the basis of the 'acting ego.' Here impulses receive certain rights in a symbolically distorted form for their realization. Any possibility of weakening the 'censor' is immediately used by the 'deep ego' in the sense of breaking through into consciousness of impulses and temporarily dormant desires. But the path of their pushing to the surface of psychic life is extremely capricious. Even in dreams, where the 'censor' is sharply weakened, this path is winding, veiled, so that the fabric of the dream acquires the character of deliberate confusion and requires the most complex analysis, as shown by Freud's work on dreams, to uncover the true motives of the dream. Often, secondary motives distort the main tendency in the dream to such an extent that it is impossible to reach the leitmotif. In 'neurosis,' this path is realized through a complicated game of individual symptoms, far removed from their primary sources. Thus, psychoanalysts especially eagerly describe cases of patients throwing off their wedding rings during hysterical attacks. And usually they 'interpret' the motives of this throwing off as stemming from the desire to demonstrate 'infidelity' to the husband, converted in the hysterical attack. Thus the impulse and its fate are inextricably linked with the formation of the 'ego' in its various instances, while the mechanism of fixation of the impulse is libido itself, i.e., primarily erotic tension, that intention which constitutes the dynamics of psychic life. Hence for Psychoanalysis it is important to imagine the development of this libido. One of the talented representatives of this direction, K. Abraham, proposes to divide the process of development of libido into 7 stages, starting with the fixation of libido on oneself or a part of oneself (auto-erotism according to Freud), characteristic of the earliest childhood age and later developing into 'narcissism,' and ending with the setting of libido on a specific object through intermediate stages of sadomasochistic fixation. The undifferentiation of libido, according to Abraham, Freud, Ferenczi, and others, often serves as a moment revealing the homosexual orientation, the so-called castration complex in girls, etc. Here the characteristic feature is the connection of the fate of libido with the process of character formation. On this last point Reich particularly insists. From what has been said, it is clear that Psychoanalysis, starting from the area of studying the mechanism of neuroses, has gone far beyond this question, taking upon itself the task of resolving the dynamics of psychic life of a healthy person. It is characteristic of Psychoanalysis in this respect to erase any boundaries between the so-called 'neurotic' and healthy people. The regularities, supposedly studied on the material of 'neurotics,' are transferred without any reservations to healthy people. They become universal regularities. Moreover, these regularities are not a property of a given individual, but of entire masses and collectives. In this respect, it is sufficient to recall Freud's two fundamental works 'Totem and Taboo' and 'The Ego and the Id' and mass psychology to be convinced of what has been said. The mechanisms of neurotic formations, according to Freud, lie at the foundation of cultural-historical phenomena. The most complex relationships in primitive society, growing on the basis of a certain socio-economic structure, are interpreted as manifestations of neurotic mechanisms, as something biological in its very essence. Furthermore, the relationships of the mass and the leader are represented as a moment of mass 'transference' of the leader's image onto oneself and hence submission to him. At the same time, these relationships are represented as slave-like submission, as finding that 'ideal ego' which the Freudian neurotic longs for. Finally, the child is equated with the same neurotic. This is one line of objections of a very substantial nature, against which Psychoanalysis has nothing to answer. Another line of objections, no less substantial, proceeds as follows: can one really consider those mechanisms about which Psychoanalysis speaks as truly established. Are they not a kind of artifact, the origin of which lies in a completely different plane?

If this is so, then the following question arises: can one so rationally rationalize the entire psychic activity, as P. does, expelling from it all chance, first, and secondly—can one imagine the entire dynamics of psychic life as the development of a mystical eros, as a modification of various drives and their struggle among themselves, is not the entire wealth of psychic life as social life impoverished by this laying of all its diversity in the Procrustean bed of biological drives, does not the so-called dynamics of psychic life in P.'s interpretation become an empty game with tawdry concepts, does not P. plant both feet firmly on the path of panpsychism? Answers to these questions can be found by tracing the further fate of psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and the new conditions of its development, on the other. The emergence of P. dates back to the 1890s, the first period of its flourishing to the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century. P. grew and took shape in Vienna (Austria-Hungary) in a small circle of devoted neophites who gathered at Freud's for intimate conversations, then spread the remnants of these conversations in the cafes and restaurants of the noisy and bohemian Vienna, which set the tone for new trends and fashions. P. grew in conditions when, on the one hand, traditional psychology (mainly Wundtian) was turning into petrified positions of a formal nature, and on the other hand, when psychopathology began to lose faith in the search for the direct anatomical correlate of mental processes. The time for sobriety from 'brain mythology,' as Nissl expressed it, was coming. Along with this, idealistic trends were reviving in a number of fields, imperialist philosophy was trying to expand its influence. On a new basis, the ideas of Schopenhauer, Hartmann were revived. Nietzsche's philosophy found its living and direct response. The expansion of German imperialism with its cult of the aristocratic personality, which was allowed everything, conquered the mind and imagination of the petty bourgeois, official, writer, scientist, conquered by the illusion of the 'self' of the personality, by the illusion of its exceptional role in the historical process. In new attire, the old ideas of the bourgeoisie of the merchant capital period appeared on the historical stage. The motifs of individuality, isolation, proud contempt for others, along with this, painful self-flagellation, sounded again. In literature, this found its reflection in Schnitzler, Wedekind, Peter Altenberg. We mention this precisely because the same motifs had to sound and indeed did sound in psychology as well. A certain ideology, dressing in certain images, in accordance with the specific material it uses, remains essentially one in its basic and determining unity. An illustration of this is precisely the consonance of motifs permeating P. with the motifs determining the face of seemingly far from P. areas, such as literature. The kinship of motifs here is not accidental; it is born from the same source. But at the same time, in the development of P. there were its own specific aspects. If what has been said above determined the direction of research itself, so to speak, the general interest in the sense that thought was directed to the search for 'depths' in the psyche, that the researcher was not satisfied with the formal accounting of the surface psychic life, but tried to decompose this life into the intimate elements that constitute it, then the specific was that the material of research was dictated by the conditions in which psychology and psychopathology found themselves. The ideas of Charcot, whose student Freud was to a certain extent, the broad clinical interest in 'mysterious' functional diseases, the growth of these diseases in the conditions of developing and swelling capitalist cities, attempts to pathogenetically understand the meaning of these diseases—this is precisely the specificity with which P. had to confront right from the start of its activity. And the fact that P. overturned all existing canons before it, that it came out with its theory of 'hysterical' and 'neurotic' developments, proves only with what force ideology tries to use this specific field of knowledge for its own purposes. However, this creates a contradiction. If this is so, if P. readily reflected the ideology of the ruling classes, then how to explain the outcry and protest with which P. was met in the first decade of its path, how to explain the furious hatred on the part of representatives of official academic science (Wagner-Jauregg, Kraepelin)? This remains an apparent contradiction, since the resistance and hatred that P. met, mainly from academic science, were dictated by 2 conditions: 1) the danger of a new ideology, as one that universalizes all others; P. tried so broadly to cover a range of questions and phenomena that, if its concept is accepted, nothing remains for the old and traditional view of the dynamics and structure of psychic life; in this respect P. as a method was universal—it could either be accepted or rejected, with P. at the first steps a compromise could not be entered into. 2) P. went too far in the process of exposing the intimate sides of psychic life, too sharply and categorically resolved private problems that could only be fully understood in the context of the clinic, not on the street; P. called from the narrow house of the clinic to the street and was caught up by the latter; even one position of Freud's, that an analyst can be a non-physician, together with mockery caused outrage for the 'profanation' of science. In these 2 planes developed not criticism, but persecution of P., in which the most diverse motives were used—from the strict and in many ways justified academic criticism with the indication of the arbitrariness of P.'s proposed constructions, of their mythical nature and unprovability, to direct hints of an anti-Semitic nature, with the indication that Freud and his school preach 'militant Israelism' (Maag). It is extremely significant that P. won its positions outside of medicine. After Freud's trip to America, recognition of P. began, a wide fascination with it, pilgrimages to Vienna, the organization of a network of psychoanalytic society branches throughout the world, a huge literary production and a corresponding network of journals. The secret of this success lies in the fact that psychoanalysis, by analyzing the 'neurotic,' analyzing the 'hysteric,' in essence gave a legal outlet into illness to those whom the Jagnernaut chariot of capitalism was driving into illness. This right to illness, without pangs of conscience, without the contempt of others, played a decisive role in the development of P., in its huge successes in conquering ever new cadres of neophites. It is not accidental that these last were formed from the ranks of those analyzed. The imperialist war brought sharp and fundamental changes to P. If even earlier a stratification was taking place in the psychoanalytic school (from it Alfred Adler went off to the side of 'individual psychology,' partly Jung and others), then the war not only did not wash away this process of stratification of P., but also posed before it the question of revising its positions. And here P. reflected the basic tendencies of the ideology of capitalist Western society, reflected the dying and decay of the entire system of bourgeois culture. The outwardly unified system of psychoanalysis with its theory of the predominance of erotic drives was recently discarded by its creator Freud and replaced by a dualistic system with the recognition of the tragedy of modern European culture. Along with the life-striving drive, the self-affirming 'ego' through erotic, libidinous tension, another appeared—the drive with a destructive tendency, the 'death drive.' In Freud's works 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle,' 'The Ego and the Id' this destructive tendency is declared the second dominant of the personality, and along with this the 'unconscious' is declared the abode of the blind 'it,' impersonal, dark, elemental, carrying within itself something somatobiological and ready at any moment to seize power over the poor and insignificant 'ego.' Bumke in his criticism of P. precisely relies on this moment in the modification of P., pointing out the impossibility of the blind, elemental 'it' being smarter and more significant than the 'ego' acquired through cultural advancement. This is one of the strongest objections against P., directed against the main position of P. as a reflection of the disintegrating ideology of capitalist society in the era of wars and revolutions. One cannot pass by it, as it represents the central point of psychoanalytic positions, of the entire system of views reflecting the internal contradictions of the capitalist system, which is being drawn by the course of history into non-existence. It is from here that the theory of the 'drive to death,' to destruction, grows. It is quite clear that this destructive tendency is dressed in corresponding empirical material and thereby acquires the appearance of reality. At the same time, Freud and his disciples perform the Sisyphean task of working through the results of analysis, tailoring the material to this theory, viewing it from a biased and deliberate angle of view (for example, considerations about paranoid dementia, about the epileptic character, etc.). This 'splitting' of the supposedly monolithic system of P.'s views serves at the same time as a moment of struggle among the various wings in P.

They group themselves according to political sympathies and antipathies, reflecting in part the cultural-political crisis being experienced by the Western European intelligentsia. On the 'left' wing stands Reich and a small part of the Berlin group, while on the 'right' are Ferenczi and Jones - apologists for classical Psychoanalysis. Freud himself is very cautious. He remains silent in this dispute, although apparently not inclined to listen to the voice from the 'left'. Along with this internal struggle, a struggle continues 'on the external front'. Adler, Stekel, Jung, who long ago parted from classical Psychoanalysis, wage a struggle against the very principles of Psychoanalysis. Stekel, for example, in 1931 came out with a rejection of the theory of the 'unconscious', that is, a rejection of all the material that the analyst uses. Along with this, various groups emerge that take individual positions and research techniques from Psychoanalysis. For example, Lyungwitz uses Adler's concept of 'inferiority', Prinzhorn-Adlerian principle of 'will to power', Ludwig Frank Freudian mechanisms of 'transference', which Frank calls 'psychocathartic', and his entire 'own' method 'psychocatharsis'. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the herald of Psychoanalysis was the group that had united around the journal 'Psychotherapy' (E. Osipov, Feltsman and others). In the USSR, two groups should be distinguished: a) classical analysts (Yermakov, Kogan and others), b) analysts who attempted to revise a number of Freud's positions under the sign of materialist criticism (Kannabikh, Fridman, Zalkind, Vnuk). It must be said directly that overcoming Psychoanalysis is possible only within the framework of overcoming Psychoanalysis as a fragment of bourgeois worldview. One cannot accept one position of Psychoanalysis and reject another. This hopeless work leads to nothing, because, as Freud aptly expressed it, 'give psychoanalysis a finger and you'll lose the whole hand'. This is exactly what happened to those who tried to patch up Psychoanalysis with Marxism: they remained in captivity to Psychoanalysis, substituting social analysis with biological in their work, mixing a number of different phenomena and thereby blurring their essence and significance. This also explains the hopelessness of Reich's attempts, who claims that Psychoanalysis of the 'storm and stress' era is materialistic in its basis. Psychoanalysis has also found its reflection in psychiatry. Bleuler in his teaching on schizophrenia took much from Psychoanalysis in terms of understanding individual pathogenetic moments of this progressive disease. Schilder attempts to apply Psychoanalysis much more broadly to psychiatry, making an unsuccessful attempt to review nosological units in the light of Psychoanalysis. A number of authors (O. Kant, E. Kan, G. Hoffman) partially use Freudian mechanisms to explain delusion formation, character formation, etc. But it must be said that despite all this, in psychopathology there is a completely legitimate struggle against Psychoanalysis along the line of the impossibility of 'reducing' a number of organic forms to merely reactive moments. Here Psychoanalysis undoubtedly contradicts clinical facts. It should also be noted that as a therapeutic method (see Psychotherapy), Psychoanalysis is too complex, its application is not always indicated, and in a significant number of cases is directly contraindicated. Those analyzed for two or more years represent people immersed in themselves, engaged in self-absorption, detached from reality. This is undoubtedly the biggest drawback in psychoanalytic technique, stemming from the viciousness of the entire theory of Psychoanalysis. However, the most necessary critical review of the entire theory of Psychoanalysis should not lead to the fact that a number of facts obtained through experience and indicating the significant, and sometimes exclusive, role of psychotrauma itself and its pathogenetic significance fall out of sight. In particular, for educators, Psychoanalysis's indications regarding a special kind of childhood sexuality and the peculiarities of its development are important. One cannot pass by this, just as a psychopathologist cannot pass by 'free associations'. If Psychoanalysis as a system of views is undoubtedly the product of a certain stage of capitalist society, this does not follow that all facts established by it are entirely vicious. These facts require thorough verification and control, and everything that is thus filtered should enter the iron inventory of our discipline.