(My latest academic piece)

Published April 2014, Vol. 35, No. 4 , Pages 314-315
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Eugene J. Koprowski, MD, MA, LLM
Institute for Psychiatry and Spirituality,
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Address correspondence to Eugene J. Koprowski, Institute for Psychiatry and Spirituality,
P.O. Box 10028, Chicago, IL 60610, USA.
E-mail: genek@alumni.uchicago.edu

ABSTRACT:

Last year, when reading Freud's letters to Jung, I came across a most interesting passage in which Freud claimed that the “talking cure” (i.e., psychoanalysis) was the result of love—not transference, counter-transference, or another neologism of psychiatry. That is, Freud said to Jung, the cure in psychoanalysis is affected by love (McGuire, 1974). I meditated on this for a long while: It is interesting that Freud—whose wife was a bat kohen, daughter of a priest/rabbi—and Jung, the son and grandson of Protestant Christian ministers, would have such a soteriological dialog at the beginning of the psychoanalytic era.
This remark on love was not just a one-off observation, either. The minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society affirm this line of thinking: “Our cures are cures of love” (Haynal, 1994, p. 24). Clearly, Freud and his contemporaries were talking about agape, the kind of love God has for humanity, not eros, a physical desire for another person.

There is much written in contemporary psychiatric literature about fears of boundary crossing in mental health (Gabbard, 1995); Jung's documented erotic relationship with medical student and patient, Sabina Spielrein, may be the causa causans of this concern. But, these fears—correct concerns about untoward involvement in sexual relationships with patients—have obscured the real importance of what Freud and Jung were talking about back in the beginning of their movement. More than 100 years later, it may well be time to revisit the early dialogue of the founders of psychoanalysis and hear them in their own words once again.

Last year, when reading Freud's letters to Jung, I came across a most interesting passage in which Freud claimed that the “talking cure,” that is, psychoanalysis, was the result of love—not transference, counter-transference, or another neologism of psychiatry. That is, Freud said to Jung, the cure in psychoanalysis is affected by love (McGuire, 1974). I meditated on this for a long while: It is interesting that Freud—whose wife was a bat kohen, daughter of a priest/rabbi—and Jung, the son and grandson of Protestant Christian ministers, would have such a soteriological dialog at the beginning of the psychoanalytic era.

This remark on love was not just a one-off observation, either. The minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society affirm this line of thinking: “Our cures are cures of love.” (Haynal, 1994, p. 24). Clearly, Freud and his contemporaries were talking about agape, the kind of love God has for humanity, not eros, a physical desire for another person.

AGAPE, NOT EROS:

There is much written in contemporary psychiatric literature about fears of boundary crossing in mental health (Gabbard, 1995); Jung's documented erotic relationship with medical student and patient, Sabina Spielrein, may be the causa causans of this concern. But, these fears—correct concerns about untoward involvement in sexual relationships with patients—have obscured the real importance of what Freud and Jung were talking about back in the beginning of their movement.

Healing patients that Freud and Jung would have diagnosed as neurotic entails the practice of agapic love—caring enough for patients to let them tell their story on their schedule and letting them heal from their psychic injuries. Letting those with anxiety disorders (as the DSM-5 would categorize their disease state), speak their words in an environment of love is therapeutic. It is like being granted unconditional forgiveness, if you will, in the Christian context.

GABBARD GETS IT WRONG:

Gabbard, and other, modern psychiatrists, have it wrong; Freud had it right. Gabbard has written about concerns within psychoanalysis about therapists being too intimate with patients—and in my analysis he gets it all wrong. He confuses love with sex, and wants to rule out both, when the concern should only be with the latter and not the former. For these patients, love is what you need, primarily. Agapic love is the therapy for anxiety disorders, from what was known in Freud's day as hysteria to the current-day diagnoses of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorders, not otherwise specified.
A little religious context is in order. Mainstream, contemporary Christian soteriology is the study of how God reconciles the separation between God and man due to sin. Individuals are miraculously saved by divine grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and reconciled to God. Humankind is saved from both physical and spiritual destruction, as a result of sin (cf Romans 6:23).

In the New Testament, in the Gospel According to John, the evangelist states, “God is Love” (1:John 14–16). “He who abides in love abides in God.” Deus caritas est. What is more, in the same Gospel, the evangelist writes, “In the beginning was the Word.” (John 1:1) “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Supposed secularists though they were, Freud and Jung unleashed a therapeutic method on the world that is more a modern utilization of the doctrine of salvation in action than it is than a purely medical tool.
The talking cure relies on words. For Christians, the Word is with God and the Word is God. Freud lived in a Christian culture, late nineteenth-century Vienna. His worldview was framed by that, as well as by his own Jewish upbringing and intimate knowledge of Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

By directing what he called psycho-neurotic patients through conversation to reveal their inner pain, to put words to their inner demons, Freud and his contemporaries were, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps wittingly, bringing them back into communion with God.

A LESION ON ONE'S CONSCIOUSNESS:

Freud understood hysteria—neurosis—as a lesion on one's consciousness (Greenberg, 1997). The word “lesion” is derived from the Latin word “laesio” meaning “injury.” That is, Freud understood illness and therapy in the same way that many of the ancients did. Medicine was soul work. When the ancients said that mankind was created in the image of God, it is consciousness, the imagination, that they are talking about, as Pope John Paul II and other theologians have noted.

When dialoging with God, Moses said, “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.” (Exodus 33:13)

By dialoging with these patients, using the talking cure, citing the Word, and by showing them love or compassion, mental health professionals stand in the same position that God took with Moses—they show them the way and lead them to find grace once again.

Knowing this, mental health professionals today can focus on the promotion of mental health and the healing of their patients with anxiety disorders and they can develop interventions for patients who are in spiritual distress, whether they call it that, or not.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

REFERENCES:

1. Gabbard, G. O. (1995). The early history of boundary violations in psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalysis Association, 43(4), 1115–1136.
   ISI
2. Greenberg, V. D. (1997). Freud and his aphasia book: Language and the sources of psychoanalysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
3. Haynal, A. (2002). Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenzi in the History of Psychoanalysis, p. 24.
4. The Hebrew Bible. (1987). Exodus. The New American Bible, World Catholic Press.
5. McGuire, W. (Ed.). (1974). The Freud/Jung letters: The correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
6. The New Testament. (1987). John, Romans. The New American Bible.

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To: genek <genek@alumni.uchicago.edu>
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Dear Eugene J. Koprowski,

Your publication, Freud, Psychoanalysis, and the Therapeutic Effect of Agapic
Love, is now available. You can activate its eprint token
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