Read in abstract before the First Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, 2nd May 1910.

Published
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1910, Vol V, p219

It seems to have also been published in Rev, of Neurol, and Psychiat. Vol. VIII. 11 pp. 641-672 Nov., 1910.

Note : “The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy” – first published in 1910 in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 5 – is Chapter 12 of the fourth edition, January 1938, of Jones’ Papers on Psycho-analysis, p241-82; the paper was not included in the fifth edition. P411 of Bruce Fink’s translation, Translator’s Endnotes, Chapter XII – Transference in the Present, 2015

In Jacques Lacan’s texts
Warning. Lacan was probably using the version to be found in the 1938 print of Jones’ Essays. Attached is the full paper as published in 1910. An abstract of this paper was read at the May 1910 conference and it may be this abstract which is published in the 1938 Essays.

1st March 1961, Seminar VIII, p173 of Bruce Fink’s translation. : The topic has been discussed and rehashed at length by the most qualified authors in the field. Let me mention to you in particular an article by Ernest Jones in his Papers on Psycho-Analysis, “The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy” but there are countless others.

1st March 1961 Seminar VIII, See Seminar VIII Transference (1960-1961) : From 16th November 1960 : Jacques Lacan on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19601116 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts), p148 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, At the same time as transference is discovered it is discovered that, if the word has an effect as it had an effect up to then before it was perceived, it is because transference exists.
So that up to the present, in the final analysis – and the subject was treated and re-treated at length by the most qualified authors in analysis – I signal very particularly the article by Jones, in his Papers on psychoanalysis**; ” The action of suggestion in psychotherapy”, but there are innumerable others. The question remaining on the agenda is that of the ambiguity which still remains, which in the present state of things nothing can reduce. This is that transference, however interpreted it may be, preserves in itself as a kind of irreducible limit, the following, the fact is that in the central, normal conditions of analysis, in neuroses, it will be interpreted on the basis and with the instrument of transference itself, which could not be done except with that accent; it is from the position that transference gives him that the analyst analyses, interprets and intervenes on the transference itself.

**The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy : 2nd May 1910 : Ernest Jones See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Jones)

Quotation from Sigmund Freud’s ‘Dora’ (See below) & link to Jacques Lacan

Psycho-analytic treatment does not create transferences, it merely brings them to light, like so many other hidden psychical factors. SE VII p117

It is possible that Jacques Lacan when giving ‘Intervention on the Transference (Paris), Seminar on ‘Dora’ (1950-1951) : 16th October 1951 : Jacques Lacan’ knew of this text by Jones. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19511016 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts).

Ernest Jones’ references
– Quote from Janet
Le traitement moral n’existera qu’au moment ou sera fondee une science morale qui donnera la raison de Vemploi de tel ou tel procede, qui expliquera ses succès et ses insuccès.— Janet.Internet translation : Moral treatment will not exist until a moral science has been founded, which will explain why a particular procedure is used, and why it succeeds or fails.

– p218 There is no doubt that Freud is right in his remark that the eager readiness of the medical profession to employ the term ” suggestion ” is due, not so much to the propagandism of the Nancy school, as to the alleviating discovery that a great economy of thought could thereby be effected.* *Freud. Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen. 1909. Bd. I. S.77.

Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschung was first published in 1909 at the initiative of Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler. Its publication was entrusted to Carl Gustav Jung, who was Editor-in-Chief for almost five years. Due to disagreements with Freud, Jung resigned from his position in October 1914, ending the publication of the journal.
Editor-in-Chief Carl Gustav Jung, Founding Editors Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud. It is available from https://archive.org/details/JahrbuchFuumlrPsychoanalytischeUndPsychopathologischeForschungenIv_509/page/n9/mode/2up

P219 This view accords with that held by most modern writers, and is contained in Bleuler’s statement, ” Die Suggestion istein affektiverVorgang.” (Internet translation Suggestion is an affective process.)* * Bleuler. Affektivitat, Suggestibilitat, Paranoia. 1906. S.S3.

P221 … is most frequently seen in cases of pronounced hysteria, and the resemblance of these to the spontaneous symptoms of hysteria is in general so striking that in the eighties Charcot and the Salpetriere school did not hesitate to pronounce hypnosis to be only one of the typical hysterical syndromes. I have long thought that there is in this view more truth than is now commonly believed, and that the triumph of the opposing conception held by the Nancy school is destined to pass away. It is therefore a matter of gratification to me to find that Ferenczi, in a recent illuminating essay,* to which we shall several times have to refer, expresses a similar opinion. *Ferenczi. Introjektion und Ubertragung. Jahrb. f. psyehoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forsch. 1910. Bd.I. S.4S1. See Sándor Ferenczi : Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi)

& p222 Ferenczi, in remarking the resemblance between the two processes,|| relates a case where a noctambulic stereotypy could be traced to a certain command which had been given to the patient in his childhood by a harsh father, … || Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 447.

& p224 From this point of view, as Ferenczi has clearly shown,* the phenomena of suggestion in the neuroses are seen to constitute only one variety of a group of processes to which Freud has given the name of Transference (Übertragung),^ and these in their turn are only examples of the still more general mechanism known as Displacement {Verschiehung). *Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 424 et seq. See Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909 : Sándor Ferenczi On this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi)
^Freud. Bruchstiick einer Hysterie-Analyse. (“Dora” case study) Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. (Collection of Short Studies on the Neuroses) 2″ Folge. 1909. S. 104. Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (‘Dora’) : 1901 [1905] : Sigmund Freud, SE VII p7-114. Available, bilingual, from www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA, 1905 (Bruchstűck einer Hysterie-Analyse) (Dora))

P223 As Jung puts it, we have all had to fight with the same complexes that cause the sufferings of hysterics, and scarcely anyone gets off scot free from the “abnormal ” effects of them.

P223 Freud has produced abundant evidence* to show that the same unconscious, dissociated trends operative in hysteria come to expression in the normal by means of mechanisms psychologically closely akin to those that generate hysterical symptoms. * Freud. Traumdeutung. 2 Aufl. 1909. (The Interpretation of Dreams : 6th November 1899 (published as 1900) : Sigmund Freud SE IV & V, See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (November 1899 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts) Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens. 3 Aufl. 1910. (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life : 1901 : Sigmund Freud, SE VI p1-310 : Published bilingual by www.Freud2Lacan.com /Homepage (THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens))

P224 ” Displacement ” in psychology denotes the transpo- sition of an affect from one conception to another less inacceptable one.^ Its function is to evade a painful complex; ^See Freud’s Theory of Dreams. AMERICAN JOURNAL or PSYCHOLOGY. April, 1910, and Freud’s Psychology, Psychol. Bull. April, 1910.

P225 Ferenczi’s remark is very much to the point when he says:§ ” The tendency of hysterical patients to use exaggeration in the expression of their emotions has long been known and often ridiculed. Freud has taught us to realize that it is rather we doctors who deserve the ridicule, because failing to understand the symbolism of hysterical symptoms, the language of hysteria, one might say, we have either looked upon these symptoms as implying simulation, or fancied we had settled them by means of abstruse physiological terms.” § Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 423. See Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909 : Sándor Ferenczi On this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi)

P226 To this excessive tendency on the part of the patient to incorporate his environment into his own personality Ferenczi has given the name ” introjection.”* *Ferenczi. Op. cit S. 429.

P226-227 As Ferenczi tersely puts it,§ “The psycho-neurotic suffers from a widening, the paranoic from a shrinking of his ego.” § Ibid. loc. cit.

P228 The whole process can be experimentally estimated, for, as Jung has shown,* certain characteristics in the word-reaction association test, namely, the desire to add to the response something explanatory or supplementary (sentiment d’incomplétud), signify that the subject has a tendency constantly to give to others more feeling than is required and expected; Jung interprets this as a compensation for an inner unsatisfiedness and voidness of feeling.

*Jung. The Association Method. Amer. Journ. of Psychol. April,1910. p.228.

P228 As in most cases the incestuous relation of the patient to his parents, particularly to his father,§ lies at the very centre of his malady, it will be seen that the type of transference here indicated is of especial importance. §See Jung. Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal des Ein- zelnen. Jahrb. f. psychoanal. u. psychopath. Forsch. Bd. T. S. 155.

P229 It was one of Freud’s most important discoveries* that these deeper and more ultimate trends are invariably components or derivatives of the primary psycho-sexual system of activities.§ *Freud. Sammlung Kleiner Schriften, zur Neurosenlehre, (Collection of Short Studies on the Neuroses – possibly Dora) 2′ Folge. 1909. §For a description of Freud’s conception of sexuality see a paper in the Psychol. Bull. April, 1910. pp. 118-122. (The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.)

P230 … and it is the attachment of these to the idea of the physician that constitutes the process called ” transference.” Freud’s definition of it runs thus:* ” During the course of a psycho-analysis the development of new symptoms ceases as a rule. The productivity of the neurosis, however, is not extinguished, but occupies itself with the creation of peculiar sorts of unconscious mental states which may be designated as ‘ transferences.’

” What are these transferences ? They are reimpressions and reproductions of the emotions and fancies, which are awakened and brought into consciousness during the progress of the analysis, the person that had previously been their object being replaced by the physician.’ ** In a recent lecture§ he re-states this in the following words: “He (the patient) applies to the person of the physician a great amount of tender emotion, often mixed with enmity, which has no foundation in any real relation, and must be derived in every respect from the old wish-fancies of the patient which have become unconscious. Every fragment of his emotive life, which can no longer be called back into memory, is accordingly lived over by the patient in his relations to the physician.” This subject of transference will presently occupy us further in relation to its therapeutic effect.

*Freud. Bruchstiick, ((“Dora” case study. Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (‘Dora’) : 1901 [1905] : Sigmund Freud, SE VII p7-114. Available, bilingual, from www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA, 1905 (Bruchstűck einer Hysterie-Analyse) (Dora))) etc. S. 103,104.

** SE VII p117, Some people may feel inclined to look upon it as a serious objection to a method which is in any case troublesome enough that it itself should multiply the labours of the physician by creating a new species of pathological mental products. They may even be tempted to infer from the existence of transferences that the patient will be injured by analytic treatment. Both these suppositions would be mistaken. The physician’s labours are not multiplied by transference; it need make no difference to him whether he has to overcome any particular impulse of the patients in connection with himself or with someone else. Nor does the treatment force upon the patient, in the shape of transference, any new task which he would not otherwise have performed. It is true that neuroses may be cured in institutions from which psychoanalytic treatment is excluded, that hysteria may be said to be cured not by the method but by the physician, and that there is usually a sort of blind dependence and a permanent bond between a patient and the physician who has removed his symptoms by hypnotic suggestion; but the scientific explanation of all these facts is to be found in the existence of ‘transferences’ such as are regularly directed by patients on to their physicians.

  • Freud. The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. April, 1910. P. 215. )

P231 is to continue the present theme, for these pro- cesses are merely instances of transference. Five years ago Freud ventured the following remark concerning hypnotism :* “Ich kann mir nicht versagen, hierbei an die glaubige Gefiigigkeit der Hypnotisierten gegen ihren Hypnotiseur zu erinnern, welche mich vermuten lasst, dass das Wesen der Hypnose in die unbewusste Fixierung der Libido auf die Person des Hypnotiseurs (vermittels der masochistischen Komponente des Sexualtriebes) zu verlegen ist.” [Internet translation : I cannot resist remembering the faithful compliance of the hypnotised towards their hypnotist, which leads me to suspect that the essence of hypnosis lies in the unconscious fixation of the libido on the person of the hypnotist (through the masochistic component of the sexual drive) is.] Ferenczi, in developing this observation,^ adds two very important corollaries, which, however, directly follow from the considerations adduced above. In the first place, agreeing with Bernheim that suggestion is the essence of hypnotism, he generalises Freud’s observation so as to include under it suggestion as well as hypnotism. He points out that sympathy, respect, antipathy, and other affective processes, which have long been known to play a decisive part in favouring or hindering suggestion, are elaborate constructions which are accessible to a dissection that separates them into their elements. “Bei der Zerlegung findet man in lhnen die primaren unbewussten libidinösen Wunschregungen als Unterlage und darüber einen unbewussten und vorbewussten psychischen Überbau.” [From an internet translation : When dissected, one finds within you the primary unconscious libidinal desire impulses as a base and above that an unconscious and preconscious psychological superstructure.] These primary elements are, as was pointed out in connection with the complexes of hysteria, always of a sexual nature. In the second place, recognizing with Freud that repressed affects take their earliest origin in the child’s reactions towards his parents, Ferenczi attributes to the ” parental complexes ” the predominating part in the process of suggestion. He summarizes his thesis in the statement§ that ” Die Hypnotisierbarkeit und suggestive Beeinflussbarkeit eines Menschen hangt also von der Moglichkeit der ‘ Übertragung ‘ oder, offener gesagt, der positiven wenn auch unbewussten sexuellen Stellung- nahme des zu Hypnotisierenden dem Hypnotiseur gegenüber ab; die Übertragung aber, wie jede ‘ Objektliebe,’ hat ihre letzte Wurzel in dem verdrängten Elternkomplex.” [From internet translation : A person’s ability to be hypnotized and influenced by suggestion depends on the possibility of ‘transference’ or, more frankly, the positive, albeit unconscious, sexual attitude of the person being hypnotized towards the hypnotist; But the transference, like all ‘object love’, has its ultimate root in the repressed parent complex.]

*Ibid. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. 1905. S. 81. Ann. I I . 2e Aufl. 1910. S. IS. (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality : 1905d : Sigmund Freud, SE VII p123-245. Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (THREE ESSAYS ON SEXUALITY (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie))

^Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 439. §Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 441.

P232 Ferenczi calls these two types [of suggestability] the “paternal” and the “maternal” methods,* * Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 443.

P233 Freud’s statement that the transference at the basis of hypnosis depends on the feminine component of the sexual instinct Ferenczi explains* by pointing out that the pleasurable obedience characteristic of this component is first exercised in regard to the parents; it is, indeed, the source of the child’s docility and compliancy towards his parents. He further points out§ that the obedience to a parent’s command frequently becomes pleasurable by means of an unconscious identification taking place in the child’s mind between him and the parent, the parent’s will becoming his own and the child becoming in his phantasy endowed with the might and other graces of the parent; * Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 450. §ibid. Op. cit. S. 447.

P241… justly remarks that, like this, it is due not directly to the active agent, but to the absence of this; the significance of this will be evident to those familiar with Abraham’s able paper on alcoholism, § §Abraham. Die psychologischen Beziehungen zwischen Sexualitat und Alkoholismus. [Internet Translation, The psychological relationships between sexuality and alcoholism.] Zeitschr. f. Sexualwtssenschaft. 1908. N . 8.

P241 Since Freud’s important work on the anxiety states (Angstzustande),^ we know that morbid dread is always the expression of repressed sexual desire, i.e. of sexual desire that has been stimulated under circumstances when it cannot reach consciousness. The case just described evidently belongs to Ferenczi’s class of ” paternal hypnosis.” ^Freud. Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. 1906 [The nearest though probably not correct is Draft E How the Angst [Angst mistranslated as Anxiety] Originates [Wie die Angst Entsteht] : Probably 6th June 1894 : Sigmund Freud. See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (18940601).] See Ernest Jones. On the Nightmare. American Journal of Insanity, Jan. 1910. p. 383. [Pathology of the Nightmare (On the Nightmare) : January 1910 : Ernest Jones see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Jones)]

P245 As Freud puts it,* “The symptoms, which, to use a simile from chemistry, are the precipitates of earlier love experiences (in the widest sense), can only be dissolved in the higher temperature of the experience of transfer and transformed into other psychic products. The physician plays in this reaction, to use an excellent expression of S. Ferenczi, the role of a catalytic ferment, which temporarily attracts to itself the affect which has become free in the course of the process.” *Freud. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. 1910 p. 21S. First published in American Journal of Psychology, 21, 181-218. The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1910), Published as Third Lecture. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis : 1909 [1910] : Sigmund Freud SE XI p3-59. Available on the internet.

P246 Freud* and Ferenczi** hold that transference of unconscious sexual affects plays the most important part in all forms of treatment of the psycho-neuroses, with the exception of the psycho-analytic. *Freud. Sammlung, etc. 2 Folge. S. 105. * Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (‘Dora’) : 1901 [1905] : Sigmund Freud, SE VII p7-114. Available, bilingual, from www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA, 1905 (Bruchstűck einer Hysterie-Analyse) (Dora)) **Ferenczi. Op. cit. S. 433,434.

P246 as Freud says,*** ” The psycho-analytic treatment does not create the transference, but simply uncovers it, as it does other hidden mental states.” *** loc. cit., SE VII p117, IV. Postscript, of Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (‘Dora’) : 1901 [1905] : Sigmund Freud, SE VII p7-114. Available, bilingual, from www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA, 1905 (Bruchstűck einer Hysterie-Analyse) (Dora)) James Strachey’s translation : It is true that neuroses may be cured in institutions from which psycho-analytic treatment is excluded, that hysteria may be said to be cured not by the method but by the physician, and that there is usually a sort of blind dependence and a permanent bond between a patient and the physician who has removed his symptoms by hypnotic suggestion; but the scientific explanation of all these facts is to be found in the existence of ‘transferences’ such as are regularly directed by patients on to their physicians. Psycho-analytic treatment does not create transferences, it merely brings them to light, like so many other hidden psychical factors.

P246 Ferenczi pertinently remarks: * ” The critics who look on these transferences as dangerous should condemn the non-analytic modes of treatment more severely than the psycho-analytic method, since the former really intensifies the transference, while the latter strives to uncover them and to resolve them as quickly as it is possible.” * Op. cit p435

P253-254 Ferenczi states the position clearly when he says: ** ” Everything points to the conclusion that a sexual element is at the basis of every sympathetic emotion, and that when two people meet, whether of the same or opposite sex, the unconscious always makes an effort toward transference. When this effort is successful, whether it is in a pure sexual (erotic) or in a sublimated form (respect, gratitude, friendship, assthetic admiration, etc.), a bond of ‘sympathy’ is formed between these two persons. When consciousness refuses to accept the positive unconscious desire, then we get, according to the degree of intensity in each case, antipathy of various degrees up to loathing.” ** Op. Cit. p440