Psychoanalysis and Suggestion
A Contribution Toward a Definition of the
Psychoanalytic Approach
ALso AN ABSTRACT OF “BEHAVIORISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS ‘’
FROM PSYCHE (LoND.) 3: 71–81, JULY, 1922
BY
TELEODORE SCHROEDER
14 WEST TwPLFTH ST.
NEW YORK CITY
FROM THE
PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW
Wol. 10 (no. 1): 26–43
JAN. 1923
To Whom It May Concern:
I desire to organize an institute for the study
of religious psychology, from the psycho-genetic
and psycho-evolutionary viewpoint. That means
an investigation by the use of the psycho-analytic
method. I am quite willing to contribute my time
without any salary. However, I cannot afford to
equip and to pay the running expenses of a suit-
able office, for the doing of such work. It is
therefore necessary that I find some persons with
sufficient money and sufficient scientific curiosity
upon this subject to cooperate with me to the ex-
tent of supplying the necessary funds. Perhaps
you are that person, or can direct me to some
wealthy liberal who might possibly become inter-
ested. If so, I will be glad to hear from you.
Yours for a better world,
THEODORE SCHROEDER,
Cos Cob, Conn.,
U. S. A.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF SCHROEDERIANA
1913
Partial bibliography of the writings of Theodore
Schroeder dealing largely with problems of religion,
of sex, and of freedom of speech. Free speech
league. (New York) April 1913, 8p., 84 titles.
1919
Authorship of the book of Mormon. Psychologic tests
of W. F. Prince, critically reviewed by Theodore
Schroeder * * * to which is now added a bibli-
ography of Schroeder on Mormonism. Reprint [ex-
cept bibliography]. American Journal of Psychol-
ogy. (Worcester, Mass.) XXX pp. 66-72. January,
1919. 18p.
Bibliography pp. Io-18, lists 65 titles, some of which
duplicate material as by revision, republication or transla-
tion.
Sankey-Jones, Nancy Eleanor, 1862–
Theodore Schroeder on free speech, a bibliography
by Nancy E. Sankey-Jones. (New York.) Free
speech league. 1919. 24p.
Lists 149 titles, some of which duplicate material by
republication or translation.
1920-2
Sankey-Jones, Nancy Eleanor, 1862–
Theodore Schroeder's use of the psychologic ap-
proach to problems of religion, law, criminology and
philosophy. A bibliography by Nancy E. Sankey-
Jones. (Cos Cob, Conn.) 1920. 16p.
Revised ed., Jan. 1922. I8p.
Lists 92 titles, some of which duplicate material
because of revisions, republications or translations.
1922
Sankey-Jones, Nancy Eleanor, 1862–
unique heathen, to which is now added: Theo-
dore Schroeder on the erotogenesis of religion. a bib-
liography “. * * republishing in combination two es-
says from : The Freethinker, London, Eng. Apr. 17,
1921; The Truth-seeker, New York, N. Y. Jan. 7,
1922. Cos Cob, Conn. January 1922. 13-H14pp. ,
Lists 50 titles, mostly selected from the last list.
130 Periodicals (in 4 languages) have each published
some of Mr. Schroeder's literary product, part of
which is listed in the above bibliographies. N.E.S-j
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION
BY THEODORE SCHROEDER
NEW YORK CITY
Is psychoanalysis “nothing but " a new name for suggestive
therapeutics? Or, is psychoanalytic therapy something “wholly
different” from suggestive therapeutics? These issues are being
frequently raised, and yet, so far as I know, have never been dis-
cussed by psychanalysts. The fact that these and similar issues
can be seriously raised by specialists in psychology, shows the need
for a more accurate definition of the psychoanalytic approach, in its
relation to suggestion. The need for such a better definition is
specially urgent, because, even among some professional “psych-
analysts,” there is an apparent lack of understanding concerning the
difference and the relations existing between psychoanalysis and
suggestion. These issues will be made evident by quoting and
criticizing an apostate psychanalyst, a superpsychanalyst or “post-
Freudian,” and an accredited leader among professional psych-
analysts. Following these quotations and some criticism of them,
there will come an exposition of the elements of unity and of
differences between suggestion and psychoanalysis.
THE ISSUE RAISED BY DR. X.
“Psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience like palmistry, graphology
and phrenology. . . . As in Christian Science there is a modicum
of truth in it.” These are the published words of Dr. X. He claims
that for nearly ten years he has been a psychanalyst, and has only
recently discovered his error. Now he proclaims his apostacy.
Does it follow that more advanced scientific factors do not exist,
merely because he failed to discover them? My interest in psycho-
analysis compels me to suspect that, like some other opponents,
Dr. X is rationalizing one aspect of an emotional conflict over some
psychanalysts, and that therefore he needs and easily finds solace in
the thought that psychoanalysis is nothing but suggestion; and that
rivals, with position of advantage, are really as unscientific as
palmists, and Christian Scientists.
The psychanalysts, he says, “may use a clever form of sugges-
26
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 27
tion which operates in some cases, but is very unscientific and danger-
ous to scientific psychology.” He does not specify what factor of
scientific psychology, or of the scientific method, is overlooked by
Freud. May there not be in the psychoanalytic approach some-
thing more than he was permitted to discover, during his ten years
of effort? It seems clear to me that Dr. X never understood the
Freudian theory of the origin and nature of the emotional conflict,
nor of the behavior of human energy, in the course of the develop-
ment of the subjective conflict; nor of the process of the reintegra-
tion of irreconcilable urges above the level of the conflict. That is
the very core of Freudian psychoanalytic theory and therapy, at least
as I have come to understand it. Had Dr. X correctly understood
the Freudian concept of the emotional conflict, and its great impor-
tance in psychoanalytic theory, he could scarcely have published
several long articles against psychoanalysis without even mentioning
the theory of the conflict. In the absence of all discussion of the
Freudian concept of the conflict, it seems to me that adverse criticism
of its theoretic implications, when considered as dissociated from the
concept of the conflict, is likely to be a mere quarrel about the
acquired meaning of words, or about nonessentials, such as an inquiry
as to whether or not the facts of Freud’s observations, correspond to
the critic's conception of what they logically ought to be. Further-
more, without an understanding of the Freudian concept of the con-
flict it is quite impossible to know the difference between the best
psychoanalytic treatment and the therapy of naked suggestion;
between a treatment of the subjective conflict and a treatment of
some of its symptoms; or, between a mere social recovery and a
psychologic recovery. It is these matters that I wish to elucidate.
Other impending apostacies from the psychanalytic group are
rumored. Many opponents, who were never deluded into believing
themselves psychanalysts, as well as some professional “psych-
analysts’’ who have not yet recanted, have shown themselves equally
unfamiliar with the relationship of psychoanalysis to suggestion. I
will offer only two more illustrations.
THE ISSUE PRESENTED BY DR. Y
Dr. Y still claims to be a psychanalyst, perhaps I should say, a
super-Freudian, or “post-Freudian * psychanalyst. Yet he pub-
lished this: “I find that subconscious health cannot be obtained in a
patient who has lost faith in immortality.” Here Dr. Y illustrates
*
28 THEODORE SCHROEDER
the mystic's infantile confidence in the omnipotence of thought.
With him the possibility of health and cure depends on our opinion
of immortality, as for others it depends upon their opinion of
“Science and Health,” or of the Mormon priesthood. Dr. Y also
published this: “Those who have lost their belief in a personal God
will not be able to free themselves to the happiest development of
their energies, until they find some substitute, some spiritual or moral
law [such as the ten commandments, Joseph Smith's Doctrine and
Covenants, or Mrs. Eddy’s ‘allness of mind and the nothingness of
matter’?] if you please, in which they can place their trust and to
which they may do their fealty.” Again, faithful belief in some
phantasm is an essential part of the omnipotent cure-all. Such
“psychoanalysis” differs from other faith-cures chiefly by its
jargon. Thus Dr. Y seems to find mental therapy to depend upon
substituting the rationalization of a comforting phantasm for the
error of a depressing phantasm. Evidently, Dr. Y was too
ignorant of the Freudian mechanism of psychologic maturing, and
of the psychology of the subjective conflict, to offer his patients an
unmoral and spiritless evolutionary concept of natural law in the
psychic realm, not as a cure, but as a plan of life, through whose
discipline all moral values and subjective conflicts can be outgrown,
and the better social adjustments and functional mental health inci-
dentally secured. Instead of having an empathic understanding,
and without aiding a psychologic maturing and a wholesome psychic
living, Dr. Y evidently demands an humble prostration of intellect
before the fictions of a theologic morality, or a phantasmal immor-
tality. No matter what cultural or verbal differences may exist,
Dr. Y's therapy is, in its psychologic essence and procedure, obviously
a near kin to Christian Science suggestion. Dr. Y, like Mrs. Eddy,
would help a patient to escape unpleasant realities by encouraging a
delusive leaning on a phantasmal god and by promoting a concen-
tration upon anticipatory feeling-compensations, to be found in a
phantasmal immortality. Real psychanalysts cure the patient's ills
by educating them to a better understanding of psychologic deter-
minants and mechanisms, a more complete acceptance of an adjust-
ment to the realities, which adjustment is secured by an ever greater
dependence upon natural law. Dr. Y and Christian Scientists help
the patient to evade hard facts, and natural law, by supplying
delusive substitutes. Psychanalysts help their patients to reject
ever more of the delusional props of religious moral values and to
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 29
achieve an ever more joyous emotional acceptance of all realities.
This insures one a better adjustment to natural law in the social
realm, by the facing of one's problems and actually solving them,
and not by finding an imaginary escape from the realities to
phantasms, and this escape rationalized by a different metaphysics.
Of course, in such ignorance of what Freudianism may mean,
Dr. Y must misinform his readers about it. In this case he illus-
trates the hysterical mechanism by which the psychoneurotic projects
his own folly into others. Accordingly he says: “They [the
Freudians] have tried to compose the old conflict between good and
evil by the correction of the false opinion.” Dr. Y cures the patients
by merely inducing them to act unquestioningly on the demands of
our moron civilization. That is to say: he cures a symptom by
rationalizing one aspect of the subjective conflict in terms of popular
moral and religious superstition, and by recommending (suggesting)
rather blind conformity. In his ignorance he here shows that he
believes Freudians to do the same thing, namely, to contend that a
psychologic recovery depends on the mere change of opinion, rather
than upon a psychologic maturing which solves an emotional con-
flict of immaturity, by developing the patient above the possible recur-
rent influence of its inhibitions or compulsions. No wonder that
Dr. Y could not get results with intelligent atheists. Had Dr. Y
been a psychologist instead of a mere logician, he would have known
that true Freudians do not deal with the opinions of the patient, but
with the affective determinants of opinion and of conduct and with
the affect-values implicit in existing inhibitions, compulsions, etc.,
and in their rationalizations.
Again, he says: “In adolescence it [our unconscious power]
takes on the form of self-sacrifice and fulfills the ethics of Christ.”
This he obviously considers as a fortunate sublimation. For a
psychanalyst to think of self-sacrifice as a sublimation or moral
virtue per se, and without considering its relation to the sado-
masochist conflict, or without exhibiting any consciousness that there
are varying degrees of maturity in the human desires that might
lead to self-sacrifice, and varying degrees of pathology that may
express themselves in varying kinds of self-sacrifice, and all this
with varying intensity and varying psychologic harm or help to the
patient, or to society, is a strange manifestation of ignorance on the
part of one who professes to be a specialist in the new psychology.
Even the efficient application of suggestive therapeutics requires more
30 THEODORE SCHROEDER
understanding of the psychology of the subjective conflict, than
Dr. Y. appears to possess.
It is therefore not surprising that he says: “The cure and
restoration of a defective personality is not possible, in my experi-
ence, if the patient has lost his belief in immortality of the soul. As
soon as the process of the mental analysis shows me that the patient
has a fixed atheism, I drop the case. I have learned from my
failures that I have here no foundation on which to build [because
unacquainted with Freudian psychology]; that I am working in
quicksand. I do not mean that I have any scientific proof that man
has a soul, or that it is immortal.” Real psychanalysts do not find
that “cures and restoration ” are impossible for atheists, merely
because antiquated methods of pious suggestion cannot be made
effective on intelligent atheists.
To my mind it is very clear that Dr. Y never achieved an under-
standing of the psychoanalytic approach, such as I acquired from
my acquaintance with Freudianism. According to my concept, both
the religious and the secularized mysticism of the sick are to be out-
grown, and not merely so rationalized as to induce the victim to
conform blindly and submissively to the conventions. It is equally
clear to my mind that Dr. Y can be using only suggestion, perhaps
administered with a little psychoanalytic jargon. He is not using
psychoanalysis as a means of helping the patient to understand and
to outgrow his conflict of impulses, which is involved in every psycho-
neurosis. Neither is he curing, by developing the patient's psyche
to an evolutionary level of desire and of mental processes, above the
level on which the conflict arose. This process of maturing is under-
stood only by those who go beyond suggestion, and who have a clear
view of the mechanism of past psychic evolution, and see something
of psychologic growth beyond our present average man. Such a
thesis, and such blindness, as that of Dr. Y also makes this essay
necessary.
THE UNSEEN Issue FROM DR. Z
Dr. Z is even better known as a “psychanalyst” than those
medical men already quoted. He has a background of large experi-
ence in clinical psychiatry, and later has been widely accepted as a
leader in the psychoanalytic movement. His published essays show
considerable of subconsciously developed “instinctive ’’ insight
which he formulates with much show of logical connection. But he
gives to me no sign of ever seeing or describing psychologic'
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 31
processes, as these can be seen and described, by only those who have
achieved an empathic understanding of the mental mechanism
involved in the process of developing and of outgrowing an emo-
tional conflict. In so far as this approaches a fair statement of the
limitations of his psychologic equipment, he also must fall short of
always having a clear vision, as to the difference between mere con-
crete suggestion, specifically directed against a patient's symptoms,
and the psychologic enlightenment and discipline of the more dis-
tinctively psychoanalytic procedure. The purer psychoanalytic
procedure deals with psycho-evolutionary processes and utilizes these
against the irreconcilable impulses, that express themselves in symp-
toms of the functional disorders of the nervous system. Where
suggestion attacks the symptoms quite directly, psychoanalysis deals
primarily with the affects of the underlying conflict of impulse, and
effects the symptoms only by indirections.
That my inference as to Dr. Z's limitations is at least partly
correct is shown, I think, by the following published statement.
Dr. Z said: “Some cases of chronic excessive alcoholism I have
been able to cure by psychoanalytic methods. But here is the
astonishing part—since their cures their behavior has been such that
their relatives and their physicians regret that they are not
alcoholics.” (All italics are mine.)
Be he ever so eminent as a psychanalyst and psychiatrist, I can-
not believe that Dr. Z was, at the moment of writing the above
sentences, conscious of the distinguishing characteristics of the
psychoanalytic approach; or the difference between mere naked sug-
gestion and the psychologically maturing discipline of psychoanalytic
procedure; between treating a symptom and treating the underlying
conflict; between a logical understanding of psychoanalytic theory,
and an empathic insight into the psychogenetics and into the emo-
tional mechanism of the subjective conflict; or between a mere change
of symptoms and a cure; or between a social recovery and a psycho-
logical recovery. From this situation I conclude that it is important
to clarify the vision even of professional “psychanalysts’ and that
to this end, more discussion is needed as to the relationship between
suggestion and psychoanalysis.
To me it seems extremely probable that even Dr. Z is using
mainly a disguised form of suggestion, with superficial psycho-
analytic enlightenment; not a reductive analysis that makes the
patient familiar with the difference between childish and mature
32 THEODORE SCHROEDER
desires or mental mechanisms, as a means to a psychologic discipline
for the development of his patients above the level of the conflict.
All this suggestive procedure is probably made approximately exclu-
sive and necessary for Dr. Z, because he lacked an empathic under-
standing of the mechanism and growth of the subjective conflict, and
of the conditions and psychologic processes of outgrowing it.
Because he is something of an accredited leader in the psychoanalytic
movement, and can be guilty of such a crudity as the quoted sentences,
it seems to me highly important to start some discussion for making
even “psychanalysts’ more conscious as to the nature of the
relationship between suggestion and psychoanalysis.
• SUGGESTION witH PSYCHOANALYSIS
First let us be frank and admit that there is always an element of
suggestion accompanying even the better psychoanalytic procedure,
as that is practically applied. It is this in part which makes the
“transference" of importance. In many cases, of severe depression
for example, the beginning of the treatment may require much sug-
gestion. Temporarily it may even require exclusive suggestion, as
a condition precedent to the inspiring of such hope and confidence
as must exist, before the patient can acquire an adequate, conscious
motive for giving the coöperation which is necessary for an efficient
reductive analysis, and for a submission to the desirable and necessary
developmental education and discipline. This latter is especially
necessary in cases of immature fixation, as distinguished from cases
of regression. Often, time limits preclude anything but suggestive
procedure, but this is not psychoanalysis. Even suggestion may pro-
duce socially useful and sometimes a quite permanent removal of
troublesome symptoms. This is especially true in cases of relatively
pure regression, as distinguished from immature fixation. With the
constant accumulation of the data of the reductive analysis, always
portrayed with emphasis upon the subjective contribution to the
determinants of each disturbing affect, and upon the actual mental
mechanisms, and, these again always portrayed in relation to an
evolutionary setting, the subject will receive constant and effective
instruction as to the psychologic process of growing up and a method
of discipline for maturing of the desires and mental mechanisms
involved therein.
Some knowledge of psychologic mechanisms may furnish one
with new conceptions of what is concretely expedient. Merely to
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 33
rationalize this new expediency, with the help of a little psycho-
analytic jargon and insight, is a considerable advance over the old
naked and bald suggestion of the earlier followers of Mesmer, and
of all faith healers. But this new special plea, for conformity to
concrete propositions of conduct, is very far away from the scientific
ideal, which is merely to induce conformity to nature's processes
including the psychologic ones. These processes must be clearly
seen in the minute detail of their mental mechanisms, and the under-
lying desires and mental processes must also be seen by distinction,
as in the longer ranges of evolutionary change and tendency. From
the simplest concrete observation of mental mechanisms, these
explanations will grow to a portrayal of the more complex processes
and conditions, all of which taken collectively constitute the theory
of the maturing of the impulses and mental mechanisms. In so far
as we approach a fully conscious and perfect adjustment to psycho-
evolutionary processes, as the chief therapeutic means, so far do we
also approach perfection in being scientists of the mind. Now an
effort will be made to clarify these generalizations by the use of more
detail.
NAKED SUGGESTIONS AND AFTER
In the more naked forms of effective suggestion, it can be said
to be any process for impressing the mind of the recipient, so as to
produce the acceptance of some quite concrete proposition, charged
with sufficient dynamics to induce some corresponding action, but
which proposition is accepted with a minimum of appreciation of the
how and why of the subject’s conduct, and a like inadequate appre-
ciation, or coördination, of any of the objective data by which such
proposition or conduct might be logically rationalized, checked or
justified. In its simplest form the effort is to impose very concrete
propositions, such as: “Your pain does not exist; your sins are
forgiven; you will act so and thus.” In suitable cases a simple
suggestion that a morbid symptom will disappear is followed by the
disappearance of that symptom. In all cases of mere suggestion the
efficacy of the suggestion depends mainly upon the affect-value and
mental attitude which the patient entertains, either to the source of
the suggestion or to the concrete remedial proposition that is
communicated.
Thirty years ago, before I ever heard of reëducation, and when
I was making amateurish experiments with hypnotism, I found that
34 THEODORE SCHROEDER
I was more efficient in producing post-hypnotic illusions if I also
suggested, even very indirectly, a rationalization for the appearance
of the desired prospective illusions. The essential advantage of the
reéducational method of Du Bois is that the waking suggestion, in
support of concrete solutions for troublesome problems, is accom-
panied by such a rationalization, which, however, must not conflict
with any consciously entertained and organized body of the subject's
knowledge of objectives, which the subject has no adequate motive
for ignoring. The dynamics of an existing inadequate urge can be
reinforced by a special plea based upon objective data, emphasizing
the advantage of conforming to the suggestion. This rationalization
is still further improved if it includes an education as to some of the
antecedent psychologic conditions for past failures in adjustment.
Psychoanalytic jargon may add to its impressiveness. Such rational-
ized suggestion is also made more effective by a little increased
psychologic insight, such as can be supplied by some acquaintance
with the Freudian mechanisms. I fear that this is all there is to
“psychoanalysis” as some “psychanalysts’ understand it. I am
unhappily convinced that these small aids to simple suggestions are
too often palmed off on the unsuspecting public as being all there is
to psychoanalysis. From my viewpoint, this procedure does exhibit
considerable advance on the methods of the revivalist, the father
confessor, and the faith healer. The advantage consists mainly in
that the better rationalizations of such “psychanalysts * is a little
bit nearer to the realities than the more bare, or more pious, sugges-
tion of the faith healer, with his “spiritual" rewards. These healers
can each contribute toward a social recovery, which revivalists,
Christian Scientists and unenlightened “psychanalysts’ may mistake
for a psychologic cure.
BETTER RATIONALIZATION NoT PSYCHOANALYSIs
It will be observed that all this is little else than a better rational-
ized reinforcement of the sentimental appeal to “be ‘good' and
you will be happy.” The reinforcement, if it does not go beyond
a special plea for post mortem or immediate expediency, does not
remove the treatment from the category of mere suggestive thera-
peutics, no matter how much nonpsychologic erudition may be used
in the process of such rationalizations. It still appeals to, and seeks
to reinforce, subconsciously determined moral valuations, even when
the “moral ” mandates are not reinforced nor rationalized in terms
FSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 35
of god and hell-fire. All this can be done without and devotion to
or understanding of the usefulness of a detailed acquaintance with
psychologic evolutionary processes, as a means of outgrowing a sub-
jective conflict, and its emotional valuations. The suggestive
method, with its concrete propositions and their rationalization, can
be called “education ” only in the unpsychologic and poetic sense
in which our Sunday schools and public schools are said to supply
“moral education.” All this is mere suggestion, accompanied by a
little infantile or childish sentimentalism, designed to induce unques-
tioning conformity to something other than natural psycho-evolution-
ary processes, of which such teachers are usually quite ignorant.
This kind of “moral education ” intensifies feeling without enlighten-
ing the understanding or maturing the desires. It therefore is
a detrimental contribution to every psychoneurosis. It has no
resemblance to an education in the sense of maturing the psychologic
aspect of human desires and mental processes, according to the
natural law of their evolution. Neither is it concerned with develop-
ing these above the evolutionary level of the moral-emotional con-
flict. In other words, it is not psychoanalytic therapeutics in its
only true scientific sense.
In the nonpsychoanalytic therapy there is but a minimum of
approach toward an exclusive dominance by the demands arising
from our dealings with the processes of psychic evolution; that is a
minimum of devotion to accelerating the maturing of the psychologic
aspect of the desires and of the mental mechanisms. When only
evolutionary processes furnish the yardstick, we concern ourselves
almost exclusively with the psychogenetic why and the psychoevo-
lutionary whither, to which mere social recoveries are considered
quite secondary and incidental. Instead of furnishing a new
rationalization for old or suppressed moral values, or for new moral
creeds which are still on the level of the youthful conflict, we supply
an evolutionary concept, with an education and a discipline to evolve
the desires and mental processes toward the complete outgrowing of
moral valuations, and of their inevitable conflicts with natural law.
Only so do we accelerate an increasing intelligence and increasing
devotion to the patient’s dispassionate manipulation of objectives.
Suggestion utilizes the morbidly intense emotions, and by attaching
them to more conventional modes of behavior, it sometimes secures
at least a temporary social recovery. Psychoanalysis eliminates the
morbid emotions, and leaves the patients free to find their own com-
mon sense solution for their problem, in harmony with their own
36 THEODORE SCHROEDER
cultural development. This evolutionary concept, I believe, still
needs an adequate formulation. Although abundant fragments have
been published by psychanalysts, it remains for some one to coördi-
nate the data so as to present a more effective picture of evolution
in the development of the force aspect of that part of the ultimate
unknowable cosmic stuff, which constitutes the psyche of a human
animal.
Psychologic AND SOCIAL RECOVERY
Those who mistake any of the methods of suggestive “educa-
tion ” for psychoanalysis will quite unavoidably have a blurred vision
as to the difference between a social and psychologic recovery from
functional disorders of the nervous system. I will here seek to
clarify the issues as between a mere change of symptoms, which
sometimes means a social recovery, and a cure in the sense of a
psychologic recovery. The best illustration just now at my com-
mand is the case of M. T. H., a professional criminal who, at thirty-
six years of age was converted at a Methodist revival, and who,
nearly forty years after, came under my observation. As a criminal
he was a petty sneakthief, a forger, and a pimp who achieved some
popularity with women largely by his devotion to cunnilingus.
Three times he came near to committing murder.1 Tortured by his
subjective conflict, and, haunted by his self-reproaches, he became
an easy victim to the revivalist's suggestion, and to his offers of
salvation by faith. After a period of great emotional storm, he
emerged a super-righteous religious fanatic, a theomaniac. Now he
became a preacher, but of a different variety than had been designed
by his mother. By being at once super-righteous, and therefore
extra heretical, he effected a compromise with partial satisfaction to
both aspects of his conflicting impulses toward the ideal which his
mother had entertained for him.
The same morbidity which formerly impelled to crime, now com-
pelled also a feverish overcompensation in the matter of doing socially
useful work. Morbid, parasitic, antisocial behavior became an
equally morbid attempt to serve.” The revivalist need not have
been more ignorant than Dr. Z to have called this change of symp-
toms a “cure" of the underlying emotional conflict. This criminal’s
1 See my: Psychogenetics of One Criminal. Jour. of Criminal Law, 1923.
2 Anarchism and the Lord's Farm, Open Court. 32: 589–607; Oct., 1919.
See also: Psychology of One Pantheist. PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEw, 8: 314–328;
July, 1921.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 37
social contribution was much improved by the revivalist's suggestion.
Dr. Z's patients changed their symptoms for the worse, and yet he
called it a “cure.”
The social recovery of M. T. H. was effective, from the ma-
terialistic point of view, and might have been produced equally well
by some “psychanalyst” like Dr. Y, who was merely using pious
suggestion. Indeed, the psychology of some conversions is quite
identical with the psychologic processes of some miscalled psycho-
analytic cures. A description of Protestant Evangelical revival
conversion by a Roman Catholicº gives a good portrayal of the
surface mechanisms of what actually occurs to the patient under
some “psychoanalytic ’’ treatment.
CURE OR CHANGE of SYMPTOMs P
How do I know that M. T. H. remained psychologically a crim-
inal? I will tell you. Several times he came to my home as a guest
and to be studied. There were abundant evidences that he rum-
maged through many drawers and private files. Nothing was taken
by him. But he gave me information about old business matters
that were unknown even to my wife, because they had occurred
many years before our marriage, and before either of us came near
our present country home. With infantile simplicity he told me that
a stranger whom he met on the country road had given him this
information. His unusual curiosity in this matter I think is best
explained on the theory that the latent urge to theft was still so
strong that it compelled a partial satisfaction by snooping.
Here is another interesting circumstance: My wife was paying
the household bills, on the same day that she wrote M. T. H. an
invitation to make us another visit. By mistake one of her checks,
payable to a merchant, was placed in his envelope. He answered
the letter accepting the invitation for some weeks hence, but he made
no mention of the check. About two weeks later it was discovered
that the check had not reached its desired destination. After pon-
dering the matter, a letter of inquiry was sent to our expected guest.
He answered that he had the check. Evidently its affect-value for
him would not yet allow him to return it. He only promised to
bring it when he came to visit, the time being still nearly two weeks
off. This visit lasted nearly two weeks and no one mentioned the
3 See: John Howley: Psychology and Mystical Experience, Chap. 3.
38 THEODORE SCHROEDER
check until the morning of the day of his departure. Then he pro-
duced it, explaining how efficient a forger he had been; how he could
have forged an endorsement, and just how he could have gotten the
check cashed. There was also plenty of insinuating suggestion
that we could show our gratitude by giving him a check payable to
his order. All this discussion back and forth consumed about half
an hour, during which time he was fondling the check. Finally he
handed it over. On his behavior in this matter, I concluded that
psychologically he is still a forger, and a thief in spite of his present
super-righteous theomania.
I wish to show also the continuance of the sado-masochist con-
flict and its murder impulse. Since his conversion, his more con-
scious attitude and obvious conduct has been rather conspicuously
masochistic. However, when his more important designs are
thwarted, instead of killing his “enemy” with a knife or bullet, he
now pronounces the death penalty as only a god can do. In fact he
considers that his will is the will of the pantheistic god. He has
outlived so many “enemies” that he is firmly persuaded that his
death sentences are effective. I think this case illustrates the point
that suggestion alone changes only the symptoms of morbidity. It
may produce a partial social recovery. But I believe that mere
suggestion cannot produce a psychologic recovery, from functional
mental ills, if these are due mainly to immature fixations with great
affect-values. Probably this is less true in cases that approximate
to a pure regression, after the desires and mental processes have
once functioned on relatively mature levels. After a “cure * by
suggestion, the extravagant suggestibility due to the subjective con-
flict still remains. With the fading of the affect-value of the
remedial suggestion a counter-suggestion can easily become effective.
For this cause suggestive therapeutics are easily followed by
regression.
PsychoANALYTIC SOLUTIONS
The first important thing I learned about psychoanalysis was from
Dr. White, and it was this: “There can be no psychologic recovery
from an impulsive conflict except by developing the patient's psyche
to a unification, at an evolutionary level above that on which the con-
flict arose.” This evolutionary development means the maturing of
the desires and mental processes. It is from this viewpoint of deal-
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 39
ing only with intellectual processes, then, that we must define psycho-
analysis as a more scientific procedure than naked suggestion.
Among physicists and biologists it is generally thought, I believe,
that the scientific stage of our understanding has not been reached
until we are able to make some practical application of our under-
standing of nature's processes, or are seeking to make more exact
our understanding of the laws according to which things behave.
In other words the very essence of a scientific stage of development
is the enlargement and the better use of our understanding of the
behavior of things; that is, of nature's processes. This, I think, is
equally true in psychology. Accordingly I believe that we are not
working at the higher levels of scientific attainment until, and only
in so far, as the psychanalyst approaches an exclusive devotion to
the study and application of psychologic process, in its every aspect.
It follows that mere naked suggestion is not on the level of scientific
psychologic procedure. Inevitably suggestion deals only with con-
crete remedial propositions, not with natural evolutionary processes.
Suggestion, whether rationalized by the aid of a moral sentimental-
ism, or even by a great erudition that is used in the form of a special
plea, and even though the rationalization include considerable psycho-
logic insight, it is still very far from being a highly creditable
scientific procedure. The scientific stage of psychoanalysis is
reached only when suggestion, as I have defined it, has been mini-
mized, quite to the point of extinction, and the devotion is quite as
exclusively to the application and artificial acceleration, of known
processes of psychological évolution. Only by such procedure can
the patient's emotional conflict be solved, on an evolutionary level
above that on which the conflict arose. When the patient has
attained that state he neither desires nor needs any concrete sugges-
tions for the solution of his problems. His emancipation from
immature dependence upon the analyst is completed. Only so can
we artificially recondition the impulses and mental mechanisms of a
patient or pupil, so as to make them function on an ever higher
evolutionary level of the desires and mental process. Only by such
means can we get a psychologic recovery, as distinguished from a
mere social recovery. At this stage, all concrete suggestion has quite
disappeared, by being merged in true psychoanalytic procedure,
which only then has reached a scientific status of dealing exclusively
with mental processes and intellectual methods.
w
40 THEODORE SCHROEDER
TowARD CONCEPT OF Evolution
In the psychologic aspect, personality or character is rated, not
according to conduct, but according to the degree of evolutionary
development of the impulses and the mental processes, which accom-
pany and in part determine the conduct. Very infantile parasitic
impulses in psychologically morbid but physically mature persons,
can be “justified ” by the aid of very great erudition, used with great
intellectual ingenuity. In this sense, mental maturity does not con-
cern itself much with the quantity of cultural acquisition, but rather
with the use that is made of it, and with the habitual mental attitudes
toward both objective and subjective realities; also with the deter-
mination of how far the interests are unified and upon what evolu-
tionary level of desires and mental process the self-expression is
taking place.
By mere suggestion we may change some particular line of con-
duct which is the expression of one aspect of a subjective conflict.
This can be accomplished without enlarging the understanding of
the conflict and without changing the evolutionary status of its under-
lying impulses. What can be brought about by pure suggestion is
to change a subconscious or a consciously suppressed impulse into
an efficient determinant for modified conduct. Because of the higher
suggestibility inherent in the subjective conflict, that change can also
be undone by another counter-suggestion. That is why mere sug-
gestive therapeutics is so often followed by a relapse. The patient
may always have had a perfectly logical and truthful special plea
with which to rationalize the dominant compulsion, or its ante-
cedents, as well as the results of the emotional disturbance. This
rationalization may even utilize far more objective data than is
usually marshaled in defense of contrary lines of conduct. But all
this in itself does not promote peace of mind, nor such an approach
to a maximum of efficiency in the manipulation of the environment,
as will insure a grownup's comfortable adjustment to the habits of
a maturer psychologic level. A social recovery may be had, and a
social regression follow thereon, without any fundamental change in
the individual’s psychologic status.
When we attain the attitude of those psychanalysts who think
only of dealing with nature's processes, as in the case with the more
scientific physicist, then the suggestion of concrete remedies is sup-
planted by a very different procedure. Now the patients, or pupils,
in the course of the reductive analysis, are enlightened only about
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 41
psychologic processes, as these are exhibited by the subject, and are
related to a like process operating in the immediate human environ-
ment. First we exhibit the mental mechanisms in each concrete
reaction to the human environment. Then the underlying impulse,
and the actual mental processes, are exhibited by way of contrast, in
an evolutionary setting. From this viewpoint psychoanalytic equip-
ment depends in part on the degree of detail which we are able to
see in each concrete mental mechanism, and the length of range and
quantity of detail contained in our evolutionary concept of the psyche.
The procedure is not a direct and immediate attack upon the proxi-
mate troublesome causes, nor is it the mere rationalization of the
submerged social impulses. On the contrary, the purpose is to use
the psychogenetically understood incidents of the subject's everyday
life, as a means to give the patient, or pupil, a clear vision of the
advantage of maturing the desires and mental processes, so as to
have them function in closer harmony with the process of the natural
law of psychic evolution. This is deemed the best means to all
those ends that may still seem worth while, when our sense of relative
values has been subjected to the modifications of the maturing
process. With the growth of such interest in maturity comes an
increasing emphasis on a technique for reconditioning the desires and
mental processes. Where suggestion only offers concrete changes of
conduct as a solution of the problem, pure psychoanalysis attempts
to supply a psychologic development which will enable the patient
to make wise solutions without the need of suggestion or the help
of others. Even naked suggestion may include varying degrees of
intelligence as to both the related subjective and objective factors.
Psychoanalysis on the other hand gives them an evolutionary concept
of the psyche, as a plan of self-development to work to, as well as a
technique for continuing the self-discipline, by which the process of
maturing the desires can be indefinitely pursued. In cases of rela-
tively pure fixation at primitive evolutionary levels, this maturing
of the desires and mental processes is the only sure road for out-
growing the emotional conflict, as to any particular mode of gratifi-
cation. By this method we unify the energies upon living in
harmony with the requirements of our own human nature, ever in
the process of being better understood, and ever in the process of
maturing (and changing) its desires, especially in their psychologic
aspects, or factors. Instead of dealing with concrete conduct, or
offering specific solutions for troublesome habits, and instead of the
42 THEODORE SCHROEDER
direct and immediate assault upon the treasure-house of results,
there is impressed an abiding confidence that all results which are
really desirable, from the viewpoint of a more highly matured psyche,
can be best attained when the accompanying and similarly matured
mental processes direct the energies in their pursuit of gratification.
MINOR PROCESSES TO EvoluTIONARY SCIENCE
A therapeutic technique that attaches a predominant interest to
an understanding and automatically living in harmony with psycho-
evolutionary processes, obviously does not lend itself well to the
method of suggestion, with its concrete solutions for problems.
Neither can it long appear effective as the mere rationalization of
suppressed impulses, or of another aspect of the associated moral
conflict. But, it is a means toward understanding the origin and
mental mechanism of the conflict between morals and natural law
in the psychologic realm and for outgrowing moral values and out-
growing the need for them, or for their underlying emotional dis-
turbances. Thus one may achieve a psychologic recovery, rather than
merely to develop a new moral code, or reënthrone an old morality
with the same old morbid overvaluation, still operating and practically
unchanged. In the later stages of maturity, the interest will be
unified upon psychologic processes seen deterministically, and then
all moral value will have disappeared. Now the sole devotion is to
the psychologic aspect of natural law in social relations. Further-
more, a personal development which consists in maturing the desires
and mental processes, is the only way to outgrow the psychologic
level on which the moral-emotional conflict arose, or on which it later
works. Only a very, very few approach that stage of development
in the ordinary course of life. Now we see reductive analysis as an
indispensable means for the evolutionary understanding of the
dominant trends, and of the resultant possibility for an intelligently
directed, conscious, effort to correct—to outgrow—the relatively
immature affect-values, and their dominating associations. So we
come to see every stage of development in an evolutionary perspec-
tive, and in process of change. This understanding of the evolu-
tionary process, when imparted through a thorough course of psycho-
analysis, gives us a working plan, with some vision of its future
demands and of the conditions of their realization. The accompany-
ing nonsuggestive psychoanalytic procedure will supply a technique
for continuing the development indefinitely. Such character de-
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUGGESTION 43
velopment then becomes the whole of the immediate object of life
and through this maturing comes greater certainty of attaining every-
thing else that such matured persons may still desire.
The patient or pupil, conditioned by a relatively immature en-
vironment, has always attached all values to sensations and feelings,
and to the related concrete objectives. When once approximately
all the interest has been directed away from concrete objects and
from their immediate resultant associates, as specific sensations and
feelings—and that disconnected interest has become attached to the
psychoevolutionary process, adequately understood, as an evolution
in the desires and of mental mechanisms, then the conflict and its
inefficiencies will have disappeared in the process. However, this
can probably be seldom accomplished by suggestion alone. I feel very
certain that no psychologic recovery can ever be brought about by
suggestion, if the case is predominantly one of early fixation as
distinguished from psychologic regression. For the better psycho-
analytic procedure, past experience with a varied life all psychologi-
cally understood and correlated with conscious experimentation, must
have brought to the psychanalyst so clear and detailed a view of
psychic evolution and its conditioning factors, as to make possible
the artificial reconditioning, and so in compressed manner, maturing
of the desires and mental process, in acceleration of nature's method.
It is only in this use of such a concept of the evolutionary process
of the psyche, seen in a long perspective and filled with an abundance
of minute detail, that we reach the more scientific stages of psy-
chology. Here also are we farthest removed from naked suggestion.
It is inevitable that under pressure of many unavoidable circum-
stances, the better informed psychoanalysts will be often compelled
to resort to suggestion and to be content with mere social recoveries.
The more intelligent psychanalysts will not deceive themselves nor
others with the belief that such suggestion is psychoanalysis. Others
for want of understanding will not know the difference.
ABSTRACTS
Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis. By THEoDORE SchROEDER. Psyche
(London) 3 (no. I): 71–81, July, 1922.
This essay is designed as a contribution to the definition of the psycho-
analytic approach, by contrast with Watsonian behaviorism. Watson's
approach to psychology is by the laboratory route, and postulates an
absolute materialist monism; Watson repudiates such concepts as: con-
sciousness, perception, image, etc. With this much known, the regular
readers of this REVIEw will be able to guess the main trend of the
criticism or contrast. This abstract will be therefore limited to a state-
ment of the psychoanalytic implications of Watson's philosophic predis-
position, and of other philosophic systems.
Watson contends that: “The process of intelligence is something
that goes on, not in mind, but in things.” This is deemed the counterpart
to Mrs. Eddy’s “Allness of mind and nothingness of matter.” Both
these absolutes indicate in their proponents an immature urge to achieve
omnipotence, and omniscience, which alone can assume to deal with
absolutes. With greater maturity we know that we see only incomplete
aspects of things and their ways, and achieve only relative degrees of
approach to the truth, and void our minds of absolutistic tendencies.
Watson's absolute materialist monism, and Mrs. Eddy's absolute
idealist monism express different aspects of the same internal conflict.
Where Mrs. Eddy makes her escape from a painful situation by denying
the related physical factors (see: Christian Science and Sex, N. Y. Med.
Jour., Nov. 27, 1920), Watson accomplishes the same phantasmal escape
by denying the existence of all consciousness of it and of mind itself.
Watson shows the workings of his fear psychology in several ways. He
confesses that he is deterred from discussing certain emotions, instincts,
habits. The explanatory cause “is that the discussion of the total activity
involves a frankness in dealing with human (sex) nature which the
American school public is not yet educated to entertain.”
“The psychoanalyst recognizes, seeks to explain, and to help the
public outgrow its emotional conflict over sex, and its consequent hostility
to the enlarging of our understanding concerning the sexual nature.
Watson evades the conflict, for he does nothing to minimize the sexphobia
in others, which he admits makes him fearful. Perhaps he can explain
this greater predisposition to fear, in terms of his own biochemical
action. The psychoanalyst sees it more clearly in another aspect, as an
extravagant affect, which can be understood and modified through the
ABSTRACTS 107
psychoanalytic approach, as well, and sometimes better, than through the
endocrine glands, diet, etc. In this choice of Watson, to fight a few
psychoanalysts rather than to fight the vastly more popular sex-supersti-
tion which also confessedly oppresses him, some will see an important
factor of Watson's personality. From the psychoanalytic point of view
this can be partly, and at least equally well explained in terms of certain
peculiarly personal affect-values, which Watson has been compelled to
attach to matters of sex.” + + +
“Let me exhibit one choice of Mr. Watson's that concerns only a
single word. * * * In one place, Watson writes: “As a science,
psychology puts before herself the task of unraveling,' etc. By thus
writing of “psychology’ as a female, Watson made a choice which I
venture to guess was not determined by conscious or discovered bio-
chemical processes, of which he was aware at that time, and which he
can now explain as he then understood them.” + + +
“Others, working under a different set of affect-values, would have
constructed a different sentence to express the same thought. Thus:
Psychologists put before themselves; or: Psychology puts before itself.
A woman psychologist, more obsessed by maleness than by the rhetorical
habit of male predecessors, might have written, “As a science, psychology
puts before himself the task of unraveling,' etc. From the psychoanalytic
approach each of these choices but reveals the present dominating affect-
value, which was probably acquired through the past sexual life of the
person who makes the choice.”
“Now then the psychoanalyst, seeking to understand the Watson
personality in terms of a dominant compulsion, and of the psychogenetics
thereof, can see a quite clear causal unity between the above choice of
femaleness and several other of Watson's choices. First, we have the
relative obsession with femaleness which compelled him to feminize
psychology. Second: His feminized psychology has a will, of which he
does not know the meaning. Third: A fearful attitude towards the
popular sex-phobias. Fourth: A corresponding aversion to the psycho-
analysts’ claim that they can trace such fearful affects, back to their
causes in the individual’s sexual past, and to the emotional tones (of
shame and fear) then acquired. Fifth: The psychoanalyst may also see
in such past the genesis and development of an impulse to exclude some
painful experience from consciousness, and a resultant declaration by
Watson that he does not know what others mean by consciousness.
Sixth : From a deductive application, of psychoanalytically revealed
mechanisms, one can easily get a working hypothesis to explain Watson's
necessity for defending an absolute materialist monist philosophy, and
for repudiating a concept of consciousness, sensation, perception, will,
image, etc.” + 4 +
“Now I wish to suggest how philosophers are further explainable,
108 ABSTRACTS
from the viewpoint of a complete determinism, in which our theories and
thoughts are considered as tools of the personality, just as are our
hands and hearts. If the internal conflict is intense enough, the tendency
always is to try to deny in toto some generalized manifestation, or associa-
tion, of the painful factor of experience.
“Where the internal conflict is rather mild, the urge to identify oneself
with absolutes is less potent. Accordingly, we find the tendency is to
dualism or pluralism. Thus come philosophic theories of interactionism,
parallelism, and James' pragmatism, and pluralism. With only a little
more of intensity the parallelism sometimes becomes a bit lopsided, and
more emphasis is placed upon one aspect than upon the other. Such
victims of the subjective copflict tend to intellectualize, and more
exhaustively to rationalize one or the other aspects of these conflicting
tendencies. Then we get from them debates, as to whether mind dominates
over matter or matter over mind. ‘How did the mind get a body?'' etc.
Here they recognize with unequal prominence both aspects of the
ultimate unknowable cosmic stuff, but seem not to make an efficient
coördination. At best, we here get theories of a more equalized inter-
actionism, which, however, assume that mind and matter are distinguish-
able and separable entities. These must be considered as separate entities
because the underlying conflicts, within the personality, will not permit
of the more complete integration.”
“In the approximate absence of emotional conflicts, which means a
more unified personality, I should expect a tendency to see matter and
force, in their evolution to brain and psyche, to be viewed as but different
aspects of the same organic unity. Then the argument will run thus.
Matter and force (brain and psyche) cannot be known in themselves,
nor have ever been known (in the living state) to have a separate
existence. Death is merely a condition in which the psychic aspect is in
a state of disintegration, and regression to the biochemical level of
energic manifestation. So we come to the conclusion that force and
matter (brain and psyche) are but different aspects of the ultimate and
unknowable cosmic stuff. So again our psychologic past predisposes
some of us toward the double-aspect hypothesis held by some of our
philosophers.” [Author's abstract.]