Everybody knows today that Sigmund Freud, the famous Viennese neurologist, is the
founder of psychoanalysis. But because of the influences of the nowadays psychoanalytical expression and culture, few still know what Freud thought about the psychoanalysis he had created, what opinion he had
regarding the task of psychoanalysis.To Freud psychoanalysis was a scientific method for the investigation of our mental life and a psychotherapeutic method.
Being scientific, it
borrows from the exigencies of science two fundamental aspects:
- the requirement of observing the studied facts. Unlike religion, which derives its truths from revelations, psychoanalysis extracts them
from direct observation;
- the description and the integration into a theory, the formulation of the rules that contribute to the occurrence and manifestation of the observed facts.
We
must remember that psychoanalysis hadn't been revealed to Freud, as a mystical act, but it was based on his (and others') clinical observations, in a step-by-step process.
To Freud psychoanalysis
never stopped to be a therapeutical method. Although it often gave birth to some speculations concerning the cultural, religious facts, etc., in Freud's view psychoanalysis should be restricted to the theory of
neuroses. And to its task to cure mental disorders.
To this we must add the following detail: in Freud's view, the necessity to understand the mysteries of he human behavior was considered the first
and foremost in the psychoanalytical act. More than once Freud stated that is more important to understand than to treat. Of course this vision is shocking for us but it emphasized what is essential
regarding the spirit of psychoanalysis: the fact of interrogating the psychical observed phenomena in order to understand the enigma of the human behavior and, therefore, to cure of, where it is meet and proper.
The emphasis on understanding, on knowledge represents the unmistakable mark of the spirit of psychoanalysis...
