RELAXATION PRINCIPLE AND NEO-CATHARSIS

The relaxation principle and neo-catharsis is an element in analytic technique that complements the principle of frustration and makes it possible to reach moments of self-hypnotic analytic trance. For Ferenczi this represented technical progress because, along with the analysis of the transference, this relaxation made it possible to reach very deep zones of the intrapsychic teratome consequent to precocious traumatisms (he uses a metaphor from embryology, the teratome being a tumor whose appearance evokes the different stages of embryonic development). A laissez-faire principle establishes the relaxation that is already implicit in the notion of free association.

Ferenczi describes how, with the help of this relaxation and this trust, the patient reaches trance states, transitory fits of veritable hysteria that have the great advantage of "giving a feeling of reality and objectivity that is closer to a real memory." Moreover, these states of autohypnosis relate back to the old catharsis "long thought to be buried following the development of such successful theoretical constructions."

In 1929 he read a paper entitled "Progress in Analytic Technique" to the eleventh congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, held in Oxford. The following year he continued in the same vein with "Principle of Relaxation and Neo-Catharsis." In his 1929 paper he referred to the work of Reich, Severn, Groddeck, and Simmel, as well as to treatment projects in clinical psychiatry. He also reported a discussion with Anna Freud, to whom he felt very close because of the techniques she used for psychoanalyzing children.

Dating from early psychoanalytic practice, this concept appears to be quite different from what has since come to be known as relaxation. The new catharsis he speaks about is more, as he wrote: "A confirmation from the Unconscious, a sign of our laborious work of analytic construction, of our technique in relation to the resistance and the transference which have finally succeeded in achieving etiological reality." These two notions deserve their place in modern psychoanalysis, although they imply a new development in traumatic theory in order to explain the grave pathologies observed when prepubescent shock leads to a "passing psychosis," which later results in the adult patient having the equivalent of an "intrapsychic twin" or "teratome." Ferenczi progressively came to perceive the "incestuous tendency of repressed adults who don the mask of tenderness." Two years later he developed these notions in his famous text "The Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child," as well as in his Clinical Diary, which did not appear until fifty years later.

Many of the notions expressed here have been increasingly used by psychoanalysts dealing with patients in great difficulty, although some resist the integration of this dynamic theory. It is worth remembering that a psychoanalyst like Georges Devereux developed the notion of the counter-Oedipus in a comparable vein.

Pierre Sabourin

See also: Active technique; Development of psycho-analysis ; Elasticity.

Bibliography

Ferenczi, Sándor. (1930). The principle of relaxation and neocatharsis. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 11, 428-443.

——. (1949). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child: The language of tenderness and of passion. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 30, 225-230. (Original work published 1933)

Freud, Sigmund. (1912e). Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis. SE, 12: 109-120.

——. (1937d). Constructions in analysis. SE, 23: 255-269.