The Truth About Freud's Technique

Front matter

THE TRUTH 4 ABOUT FREUD’S TECHNIQUE isi the Real)

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PSYCHOANALYTIC CROSSCURRENTS General Editor: Leo Goldberger

Introduction

I. The True and the Real in Freud

II. The True and the Real in Heidegger

. Heidegger’s Conception of Un-truth . Truth and Science

HI. The Truth about Dora

93 97 xii

12. 13. 14. 15.

18. 19.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25% 26.

Contents

Dreams of Vengeance and Farewell Freud’s Last Word

IV. The Truth about Freud’s Technique

The Employment of Dream Interpretation (“The Handling of Dream-Interpretation in Psycho-analysis,” 1911)

Freud’s “Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis” (1912)

The Concept of Transference (“The Dynamics of Transference,” 1912, and “Observations on Transference-Love,” 1915)

Working-Through (“Remembering, Repeating, and Working-

Through” 1914) V. The Rat Mystery The Cruel Captain The Rat Mystery Guilt and Truth “Classical” Technique—and Freud’s

VI. The End of Analysis Psychoanalysis, Terminable—or Impossible?

The End of Analysis References Index

101 110 115 122

145 155

205 213 219 224 230

241 247 264

275 281

Foreword

The Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series presents selected books and monographs that reveal the growing intellectual ferment within and across the boundaries of psychoanalysis.

Freud’s theories and grand-scale speculative leaps have been found wanting, if not disturbing, from the very beginning and have led to a succession of derisive attacks, shifts in emphasis, revisions, modifications, and extensions. Despite the chronic and, at times, fierce debate that has characterized psychoanalysis, not only as a movement but also as a science, Freud’s genius and transformational impact on the twentieth century have never been seriously questioned. Recent psychoanalytic thought has been subjected to dramatic reassessments under the sway of contemporary currents in the history of ideas, philosophy of science, epistemology, structuralism, critical theory, semantics, and semiology as well as in sociobiology, theology, and neurocognitive science. Not only is Freud’s place in intellectual history being meticulously scrutinized; his texts, too, are being carefully read, explicated, and debated within a variety of conceptual frameworks and sociopolitical contexts.

The legacy of Freud is perhaps most notably evident within the narrow confines of psychoanalysis itself, the “impossible profession” that has served as the central platform for the promulgation of official orthodoxy. But Freud’s contributions—his original radical thrust—reach far beyond the parochial concerns of the clinician psychoanalyst as clinician. His writings touch on a wealth of issues, crossing traditional boundaries—be they situated in the biological, social, or humanistic spheres—that have profoundly altered our conception of the individual and society.

A rich and flowering literature, falling under the rubric of “applied psychoanalysis,” came into being, reached its zenith many decades ago, xili xiv Foreword and then almost vanished. Early contributors to this literature, in addition to Freud himself, came from a wide range of backgrounds both within and outside the medical/psychiatric field, many later becoming psychoanalysts themselves. These early efforts were characteristically reductionistic in their attempt to extrapolate from psychoanalytic theory (often the purely clinical theory) to explanations of phenomena lying at some distance from the clinical. Over the years, academic psychologists, educators, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, jurists, literary critics, art historians, artists, and writers, among others (with or without formal psychoanalytic training), have joined in the proliferation of this literature.

The intent of the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series 1s to apply psychoanalytic ideas to topics that may lie beyond the narrowly clinical, but its essential conception and scope are quite different. The present series eschews the reductionistic tendency to be found in much traditional “applied psychoanalysis.” It acknowledges not only the complexity of psychological phenomena but also the way in which they are embedded in social and scientific contexts that are constantly changing. It calls for a dialectical relationship to earlier theoretical views and conceptions rather than a mechanical repetition of Freud’s dated thoughts. The series affirms the fact that contributions to and about psychoanalysis have come from many directions. It is designed as a forum for the multidisciplinary studies that intersect with psychoanalytic thought but without the requirement that psychoanalysis necessarily be the starting point or, indeed, the center focus. The criteria for inclusion in the series are that the work be significantly informed by psychoanalytic thought or that it be aimed at furthering our understanding of psychoanalysis in its broadest meaning as theory, practice, and sociocultural phenomenon; that it be of current topical interest and that it provide the critical reader with contemporary insights; and, above all, that it be high-quality scholarship, free of absolute dogma, banalization, and empty jargon. The author’s professional identity and particular theoretical orientation matter only to the extent that such facts may serve to frame the work for the reader, alerting him or her to inevitable biases of the author.

The Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series presents an array of works from the multidisciplinary domain in an attempt to capture the ferment of scholarly activities at the core as well as at the boundaries of psychoanalysis. The books and monographs are from a variety of sources: authors

Foreword xv will be psychoanalysts—traditional, neo- and post-Freudian, existential, object relational, Kohutian, Lacanian, etc.—social scientists with quantitative or qualitative orientations to psychoanalytic data, and scholars from the vast diversity of approaches and interests that make up the humanities. The series entertains works on critical comparisons of psychoanalytic theories and concepts as well as philosophical examinations of fundamental assumptions and epistemic claims that furnish the base for psychoanalytic hypotheses. It includes studies of psychoanalysis as literature (discourse and narrative theory) as well as the application of psychoanalytic studies of creativity and the arts. Works in the cognitive and neurosciences will be included to the extent that they address some fundamental psychoanalytic tenet, such as the role of dreaming and other forms of unconscious mental processes.

It should be obvious that an exhaustive enumeration of the types of works that might fit into the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series is pointless. The studies comprise a lively and growing literature as a unique domain; books of this sort are frequently difficult to classify or catalog. Suffice it to say that the overriding aim of the editor of this series is to serve as a conduit for the identification of the outstanding yield of that emergent literature and to foster its further unhampered growth.

LEO GOLDBERGER New York University

Preface

Nothing persuades us more fully of the vitality of psychoanalysis as a supreme intellectual achievement than the fresh insights into Freud’s writings gained by successive generations of students. In them Freud offered far more than he could himself have been aware of. In this way he resembles, for example, Shakespeare and Goethe. For all the massive changes in life and culture that have taken place over the centuries—and perhaps especially during the dark century that has passed since Freud began to write—these writers appear to have anticipated the questions we moderns have to put to them. They speak out of a timeless wisdom, cast in the language of particular times and places, from which new epochs derive nourishment and inspiration. In large measure their greatness resides in their perpetual novelty.

Freud differs from other creative geniuses in a respect we should never lose sight of: he was not only a literary and philosophic creator, but also the founder and chief exponent of a therapeutic method, a method of caring for troubled humans through understanding, with the intention of the alleviation of suffering. As we see in Michael Thompson’s exposition, it is necessary to be very clear to what extent this kind of therapy is analogous to medical care, and to what extent the psychoanalyst must depart from his or her disposition to think medically, for the very purpose of offering help. A similar distinction, to which Thompson has also devoted his thinking, rests in the question whether psychoanalysis is a science. Were it not for the prevailing dogma that equates scientific truth with objective validation, this would not be a question worth pursuing. However, in the constant state of attack by the uncomprehending that has been the fate of psychoanalysis since its inception, such questions and distinctions need to be faced again and again.

xviii Preface

It is here that Thompson’s understanding of Freud brings to light Freud’s own largely implicit replies. We are shown how Freud, ever the biological scientist attempting to look to his patients for substantiation of hypotheses established on biological models, was simultaneously engaged in the pursuit of the inner personal truth that defies objectification. For example, he came to recognize the phenomenon of transference—which is the foundation of all modern psychoanalytic theory and therapy, and to which Thompson directs our attention extensively—in the unexpected ways in which patients entered into their converse with him. In the cliché of our own day, the analyst becomes “a part of the problem,” and the interaction and dialogue between analyst and patient become the arena in which the hidden truths of the patient’s soul are disclosed. This lived transference cannot be grasped in the language of impersonal causality.

Unburdened by the requirement to make psychoanalysis sound like traditional science, Thompson reads Freud in the light of a philosophy of existence that was alive in Freud’s time, but out of direct contact with his thought or that of his followers. Indeed, as we have been taught, Freud rather disdained philosophy, although with bursts of admiration for a few philosophers. Like many natural scientists, he did not usually consider that scientific method itself was grounded in philosophic proportions. The philosophy of existence, of being, found its most eloquent voice in Martin Heidegger. Thompson’s subtitle, “The Encounter with the Real,” summarizes an important aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy in a nutshell, but fortunately Thompson does not leave us modestly equipped, and he expounds it in relevant detail. I must parenthetically remind those who would write off anything connected with Heidegger—Hitler’s unrepentant if ambivalent follower—that the fundamental principles of the philosophy of existence were developed independently by among others Karl Jaspers, a man of uncompromised character, although not nearly as exciting a writer.

Heidegger’s influence on psychoanalysis appeared in the important work of Jacques Lacan, and Thompson is also indebted to that eccentric innovator, as he has shown more fully in his earlier book The Death of Desire. Lacan too took exception early in his career to the aspirations of psychoanalysts towards affiliation with biological science. One may also see in Lacan’s therapeutic approaches, including his highly controversial sessions of variable length, ways of putting into practice the idea of psychoanalysis as a human encounter in pursuit of “the real.” The ultimate

Preface xix blunder of organized psychoanalysis in its quest for purity of doctrine occurred in 1963, when the International Psychoanalytical Association pronounced its anathema on Lacan—admittedly not without provocation—thereby helping to sequestrate his school into a cult barely tangential to the mainstream. Happily, Thompson has not followed Lacan in employing mystification as a presumed way of exposing the mysteries of the unconscious; he presents his insights in an exceptionally lively and accessible language.

Thompson persistently questions the technological stratification that has in too many hands deadened psychoanalytic theory and practice since Freud. Freud’s own disposition toward systematizing was there all the time, but it was literally concretized in the English translation, the Standard Edition of his works, as Darius Ornston and others have amply demonstrated. Thompson does not offer a new language or a new allencompassing system as a substitute. He does not dispute essential Freudian theory of the unconscious. Rather the other side of Freud comes into focus here: the side that was implied from the start in Freud’s greatest technical invention, the fundamental rule of free association. If the rest of Freud’s teachings were lost through some misguided censorship of psychoanalytic instruction, we could still reconstruct all that we needed for a great rediscovery, so long as we were permitted to listen to the unguarded discourses of our patients, and to respond to them out of the parallel mental processes of our own minds. For, as Thompson insists, this unique form of discourse moves of its own momentum toward the revelation of personal truth, which is the reality of one’s own being.

In this regard, Thompson has done us a service in pointing out the affliation—direct or not—of Michel de Montaigne with Freud. The sixteenth-century essayist had discovered that allowing his thoughts to run on would bring him to insight into motivations as unexpected to himself as to his readers, and at a long remove from his ostensible subject. We need not assume that Montaigne’s essays were spontaneous products of his free associations, knowing that they were subjected to his careful editing, but we remain astonished and delighted at this candor and conscientiousness in allowing so many unorthodox expressions to persist, and so doing to produce, as Didier Anzieu noted, “an awareness of universal mental processes.”

Thompson tells us that some of the implications of Heidegger’s philosophy for psychoanalysis were developed by the late Hans Loewald, who xx Preface was in his youth a student of Heidegger’s. Being reminded of that, I want to put in a word here in the defense of traditional psychoanalytic institutes and their training programs. It is true that the often excessive length of both training analyses and training programs may inhibit independent thought among young analysts, and that years of confinement to the teachings of a faculty limited in numbers, if not in talent, may narrow openness to new ideas. Nevertheless, I was a colleague of Loewald’s in one of those schools for over twenty years, where his influential presence attested to a latitude of psychoanalytic theory that has been not only permitted but encouraged. Anyone with an ear to hear with could discern that Loewald’s traditional psychoanalytic vocabulary, and his close following of Freud, delivered a message profoundly different from the mechanistic or “behavioral” prejudices of other formulations. In my career as a training and supervising psychoanalyst, I did not find that the sometimes oppressive structure of the training program kept down native ingenuity, spontaneity or personal responsiveness among candidates who possessed those qualities. Psychoanalysis, despite sometimes heavy-handed theorizing in the institutes, still liberates and enlightens. The ironist Karl Kraus wrote, with malice aforethought, that psychoanalysis cures the neuroses that it creates; we might paraphrase the aphorism to say that the psychoanalytic experience ought to make us impatient with the theories supposed to explain it.

Michael Thompson has earned our thanks in producing a book that qualifies as what Heidegger called a “Lichtung,” that is, a “clearing” in the woods that opens the way for further exploration.

STANLEY A. Leavy, M.D.

New Haven, Connecticut

Introduction

We speak of psychoanalytic “schools” in a rough and ready way. In the early days its schools were identified with the cities where they were located. Over time, some of Freud’s followers introduced ideas that competed with his (Adler, Jung, Rank, Klein). Subsequently, analytic schools became identified with the work of specific analysts and only vaguely with the city where they resided. Yet, even now psychoanalysis is essentially identified with Freud. How far can analysts stray from the Master and still call themselves a “psychoanalyst”?

Increasingly, analytic schools are recognizable in the ways that they disagree with Freud. Some schools still emulate him (New York, Vienna) and others are critical (Kleinian, Kohutian). The vast array of schools and the respective theories they promote are so complicated that one’s position in relation to the others isn’t so easy to determine. For example, one needs to distinguish between the American Freudians, on the one hand, and the French, on the other; or between the British object relationists and the Latin Americans. There is so much to choose from, one envisions the possibility of “menus” comprised of endless variations and nuance, selecting what one likes and rejecting the rest: a little bit of this, a dash of that, a spoonful of the other.

When we invoke Freud, to which Freud do we refer? We talk about “the Freudians” as though theyre apart from the rest; as though they agree amongst themselves; as though we could spot one if we saw one. We typically say there isn’t one Freud, but many. There’s the Freud of Hartmann and Arlow and Brenner, and the Freud of Rappaport, Gill, and Schafer. And then there’s the Freud of George Klein, Hans Loewald, and Stan Leavy. And those are only some of the Americans. What about the Freud of Jones, Strachey, and Freud’s own daughter? And that of xxi xxi Introduction

Lacan, Mannoni (Octave), or Brown (Norman O.)? Or the Freud of Laing, Binswanger, and Sartre? Then there’s Freud himself and his output: all twenty-three volumes. Who has read them all? There’s the Freud of the structural model, which many believe is the “best,” and the Freud of the “technical papers,” who analyzed Dora and the Rat Man. The earlier Freud was wild and in his prime, humanistic and personal. He made all the “mistakes.” He talked—and acted—like an outlaw, a “conguistador of the mind.”

Later he gave us the “death drive,” a theory about life’s enigma, existential to the core. Its been rejected by almost every one of the Freudians I just mentioned. In fact, this brief inventory of Freud’s interpreters shows how extensively his influence has transcended the selfenclosed boundaries of conventional analytic institutions. His reach is legion. The impact is still too immediate, too close to our age to assess. It’s too much to take in. When we speak of the school of Freud, we speak of a “university”—a universe even—of possibilities. He is the source of a point of view so basic to our era and culture that we grasp at the wind to contain it. How does one go about separating it from the other schools of analysis when they, in turn, are a part of it?

Will the real Freud please stand up? Is there a true Freud? If so, is he good or rotten? Of all the Freuds that are said to exist, is there an essential Freud that they all share in common? Or was Freud hopelessly eclectic, a tinkerer whose thoughts were too restless to pin down? The fact is, there was only one Freud. He was the man who wrote all those works, who lived his life and gave us psychoanalysis. We meet him on every page that we read. He was, and still is, just human. We love him—and hate him— for the person he was. We talk about the man and his ideas. We aspire to separate the two. Surely, if we want to understand his ideas we should come to terms with the man.

The Freud I want to discuss is no stranger. We all know him. You accept him or reject him for who he is, but who he is isn’t in dispute. He’s the one, with increasing frequency, we disparage and attack. We say he was too personal with his patients. He was “excessively involved” and out of control. He never understood countertransference—a concept he invented. This was the Freud who, for many, was too real. Yet, this is the same Freud we continue to hold up as the primogenitor—in fact, the epitome—of “classical” technique, a term whose implied definition is as

Introduction xxiii far from his behavior as the moon. What explains this contradiction? How can the same man embody the two views we have of him: the exemplar of neutrality, on the one hand, and the most brazen psychoanalyst ever, on the other?

The Freud I am going to discuss in these pages may come as a shock to those who have reduced him to the epitome of the aloof, controlled, inscrutable depth behind a mask of implacability; the man who introduced neutrality so he could keep his thoughts to himself. Freud never acted that way and we know it. They say that Freud should have been neutral but wasn’t. Freud was involved. There’s no denying that. His views are classical, but not because theyre recognizable in the style of analysis that has evolved since his death. His views are classical because theyre his. There’s so much confusion about this issue that it is now impossible to depict Freud’s clinical behavior as at all “classical.” For this reason I prefer to call it existential. In this book I explain why.

About this issue—Freud’s classical status and his alleged betrayal of it—there are some who claim there are two Freuds: the one who wrote the technical papers (between 1911 and 1915), where the technique of classical analysis was established, and the Freud of his famous cases (Dora, the Rat Man, the Wolf Man), the clinician we accuse of disregarding his recommendations and who failed to apply them correctly. This is a picture of a Freud who said one thing and did another, who failed to practice what he preached. Yet, when I read Freud I see no contradiction. I see a man who did what he set out to do; a man who was true to his word, whose behavior was the measure of his words. When I read Freud, I see a man whose rules are not etched in stone. His recommendations about the practice of analysis were uncommonly flexible by today’s standards. Many of his rules simply reflected his personality, and he told us why. We, in turn, are invited to do the same. But at the same time, we are admonished to use our heads. To whatever degree we do so, however successfully or not, we’re on our own. Ultimately, we’re the measure of what we are and who. At the end of each day, we answer to ourselves.

The very nature of analytic “rules” requires that they be flexible. We mold them to our personalities, as Freud molded them to his. Those who take rules too literally deny the spontaneous nature of analysis and its purpose: the freedom to be oneself and become oneself in the presence of another human being. In fact, it’s only in the presence of another that we xxiv Introduction can be ourselves and find ourselves when we're lost. According to Freud, analysis seeks no other purpose than to allow two human beings to meet, in privacy and in truth. Yet, being honest isn’t so easy. That’s why Freud believed that the only rule that was indispensable—1in fact, fundamental — was the one about candor: say what you must and don’t hide it.

Freud’s ideas about the rules for analysis and the way he treated them himself were profoundly personal. The relationship between the two participants is personal too. That’s why his conception of technique was essentially existential. The situation they encounter together is real. How could its technique be anything else? His rules were elastic. Their application with each of his patients were adapted accordingly. He was prudent. Those who wish to refine rules, who seek the “right” rule for every occasion—to be applied en masse— don’t understand this. They perceive Freud’s flexibility as his downfall and his humanity as a failure.

The Freud I want to talk about was concerned about the nature of truth and its accomplice—the secrets we endeavor to conceal. The truth about Freud’s technique is that it is essentially about truth. Freud was only peripherally concerned about mechanisms and psychology. He recognized the enormous ambiguity contained in the phenomenon of phantasy, its latent truths, and its potential for denying reality. Freud realized that our denial of reality inspires every form of psychopathology, that the only way of overcoming the suffering we conspire to evade is to know the reality we deny, and face it. This task is not as abstract—as “intellectual”—as we sometimes make it out to be. It is inherently practical, in the Socratic sense: Know your own mind and be your own person, and the truth will make you free.

Were not that accustomed to thinking about psychoanalysis, in general, and Freud, in particular, in terms of truth, so I have decided to risk including a section in this book on Heidegger’s conception of truth and showing its facility for Freud’s thoughts about the nature of repression and the unconscious. It’s risky because the vast majority of people who are involved in psychoanalysis aren’t interested in philosophy. I don’t blame them. Most of what passes for philosophy today is so alienated it’s of practical use to no one. Freud felt the same way about philosophers in his day. Yet, there are philosophers who are the exception. Freud knew some and was influenced by them. Had Heidegger been older, perhaps their paths might have crossed. As it was, they didn’t. I think, however,

Introduction xxv that the risk is worth taking because Heidegger’s thinking is so compatible with Freud’s that Pm surprised this book wasn’t written much earlier, by someone else. You will have to judge for yourselves if I am right and whether including this section (Part Two) is helpful. If not, disregard it. The rest stands on its own.

I am primarily concerned with Freud’s work from the time he analyzed Dora (1900) to the completion of his technical papers on psychoanalysis (1915). A section is devoted to each of these events and a third explores Freud’s treatment of the Rat Man. My aim is to show how his analysis of these two patients—a hysteric and an obsessional—1is entirely consistent with the recommendations he explicated in his technical papers, written subsequent to their respective analyses. I include another section— Part One—devoted to examining some of Freud’s references to the nature of reality throughout his writings, the principal thesis of this work. Freud’s views about truth and reality are intertwined, and sometimes only hazily distinguished. Yet, his thoughts on the matter pervade the technique he had crystallized, once and for all, when the technical papers were completed. Finally, I include in Part Six a discussion of Freud’s paper on termination, published in 1937, to show its fidelity—at this advanced age—to the papers he had written more than twenty years earlier.

I hope the final result is a Freud who, despite the enormous diversity of his output and the ambiguous nature of his conclusions, was consistent to the end. This is a Freud we have systematically rejected and are in danger of losing. Though some would claim that he is merely a historical figure, I believe that Freud’s contribution to analysis is more radical now than ever before. His ideas are no less controversial today than they were in 1900, and for the same reasons. If I have succeeded in encouraging anyone to take a second look at Freud before dismissing him, to really look at him for himself despite the bias against him, then my purpose in writing this book will have been achieved.

Over the last two years I have discussed portions of this book with a number of colleagues and friends. Although I cannot list them all, I would like to thank in particular my colleagues in London, Dr. John Heaton, Mr. Chris Oakley, and Dr. Steven Gans; and, in the United States, Dr. Robert Westfall, Dr. Murray Bilmes, Prof. Wilfried Ver Eecke, Dr. Julius Heuscher, Dr. Randall Weingarten, Prof. Walter Menrath, and Dr. Kirk Schneider. I especially want to thank Dr. Stanley Leavy, who xxvi Introduction contributed many invaluable suggestions; and Dr. Otto Allen Will, Jr., for whose encouragement and support I am eternally grateful. Both have had a profound impact on my thinking. Of course, none of the people who helped me are accountable for the ideas expressed here for which I, alone, am responsible.

Despite Freud’s insistence about his relationship with truth, confessed at an old age on reflection of his life, nowhere in his writings about psychoanalysis is the concept of truth discussed. It isn’t even a basic term in his theory. When Freud admitted his “single motive was the love of truth” and that during his whole life he only “endeavored to uncover truths,” was he talking about his personal relationship with truth, or his professional one? If the search for truth encompassed the entirety of his life, why is its nature neglected in his analytic theories? Why did Freud never talk about truth, as such? The nature of truth is a philosophical question. It isn’t now nor has it ever been a medical or psychological problem. Freud refused to couch psychoanalysis in specifically philosophical terms. Even ethics and epistemology, so central to psychoanalytic aims, were systematically avoided. He condemned philosophers, almost all of whom generally dismissed his work. Instead, Freud identified with science as it was then understood (and even now). Science, in and of itself, isn’t concerned with the question of truth, a speculative meditation concerning one’s experience. The nature of truth is far more encompassing than what we are able to “observe” about it. It is profoundly personal. Instead, science 1s concerned with—grant me this generalization—reality, a reality however, which, when defined by scientific method, is strictly measurable and observable. Yet, Freud rejected this definition of reality. The object of his explorations—the mind—isn’t measurable or observable. It can only be known according to a person’s capacity for thinking. The scientific method — in the social as well as the hard sciences— investigates behavior and the laws in nature that are presumed to govern it. Psychoanalysis is

I concerned with the mind. Though our minds aren’t specifically observable, it 1s possible to become aware of our thoughts through consciousness. Psychoanalysis also aspires to gain access to a so-called unconscious mind, a form of thought that is not only unobservable but is even inaccessible to consciousness.

Freud’s insistence on reporting his findings in scientific terms was one of history’s supreme juggling acts, one that has left everyone (scientists and psychoanalysts alike) dissatisfied, spawning endless arguments about whether or not psychoanalysis 1s a science and, if so, what kind of science it might be if it doesn’t (and we know it doesn’t) meet its traditional standards. Recall the apparent discrepancy between Freud’s statement about truth, on the one hand, and its absence in his “scientific” papers on the other. In fact, Freud’s writings reveal a relentless effort to explore the nature of reality, including his remarkable conception of a so-called psychical reality. Even phantasy enjoyed the status of reality in Freud’s depiction of it. The manner in which Freud explored the nature of reality shows varied meanings in multiple contexts—only occasionally explicitly acknowledged—many of which bear little, if any, resemblance to science. In spite of Freud’s insistence on making his new science appear scientific, he never compromised his avowed endeavor of searching for truth— not fact.