Theory as a defence against the unconscious
Mats Winther
relation with the patient. By theorizing along his beaten track a
therapist can spin himself into a cocoon of theoretical silk-threads,
functioning as a protective mother's womb. To notoriously apply a
ready-made theory of dreams, for instance, is a sign of an underlying
mother complex, when the theory, in itself, functions as protective
shield. The following is an excerpt from an interview with
M-L von Franz in Psychological Perspectives, 1990, issue 22,
pp.102-121.
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NOT KNOWING IN ANALYSIS
PP: Do you feel that analysis can help to facilitate this process? Do
you still have faith in analysis? Or does analysis itself have to
change?
Marie-Louise: I still have faith in analysis how I practice it. But I
don't know how many colleagues practice it in the same way. Some do,
certainly, but not all of them.
PP: Could you say something about the way you practice analysis?
Marie-Louise: To have no rules at all. To be present with your genuine
personality and have no technique and no clinical program to
superimpose - nothing. Permit the unconscious to take the lead! Take a
lot of trouble to understand the dreams instead of flippantly
dismissing them. Teach the patient by your own actions to trust his or
her unconscious.
PP: So you are de-emphasizing technique and clinical concerns and
focusing on trusting the unconscious.
Marie-Louise: I question the defense mechanisms of analysts who do not
trust themselves to meet the patient directly. Such analysts feel
inadequate, or their feeling fails, or they do not like the patient
enough. Then they put up all sorts of theoretical defenses.
PP: They use rationalistic, theoretical ideas to replace being in
touch with feeling?
Marie-Louise: Yes, because it is very difficult to meet the patient
naked.
[...]
Donna: Would you say that many times we unwittingly use our
professional role of "therapist" as a cover?
Marie-Louise: Yes, that is what I call defense mechanisms: pretending
to know instead of admitting, as Jung sometimes admitted in my
analysis with him, "I don't know what that dream means," or "I don't
know how we should proceed." Jung said to me, "I am with you in the
dark - I don't know anything. Let's just wait for the next dream."
Donna: So as a therapist you are modeling a process of "not knowing"
and trusting the unconscious to lead the way through the darkness?
Marie-Louise: You are willing to not know, and to not be in the role
of the one who knows. The difficulty is that the patient always tries
to maneuver the therapist into the role of the one who knows.
PP: That is the primitive transference that Freud talked about: we
look for the great mother or father.
Marie-Louise: The patient wants the therapist to make the "trick" as
quickly and as cheaply as possible. The patient says to me: "I have
been working with you now for half a year and I am still depressed.
You ought to have removed that!" Then I say: "If you continue to lie
to yourself, you will be depressed for another ten years!"
PP: The therapist should admit his lack of knowledge and potency at
times.
Marie-Louise: The therapist must be a friend who shares the trouble
but does not pretend to take the lead.
Donna: Another human being?
Marie-Louise: Yes, another human being who sits in the same soup, and
takes on the conflict, and tries to discover what the unconscious is
leading out of itself. Whatever leads out of the unconscious.
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Mats Winther