Developments in psychoanalysis, 1896-1947

Abstract

Psychoanalysis deals with a part only of the field of psychology, but it contributes a part—dealing with what has been called "depth-psychology"—which cannot be clearly discerned without the use of that method of research and therapy. Psychoanalysis is therefore time consuming both for research and therapy, but, as has been said, no substitute has yet been found to accomplish the same work that it does whether for the body of theory or in the interests of the particular patient. An indispensable addition to psychoanalytic thought was introduced with the notion of cathexis, that is, the concentration or accumulation of mental energy in some particular channel. The indefatigably, almost wearisomely, benevolent people commonly react throughout their life to impulses of great strength, operating at a nodal point in their emotional development, and as the whole process is unconscious, it pursues its course usually unchanged by time and circumstance. The unconscious is not a sort of card-index drawer of photographic images.

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