Curable and Incurable Neurotics Quotes

“Something in every person objects to acknowledging the fact that he is not even "master in his own house".
The unconscious is un-conscious, and there's no bargaining on that score. The whole analytic therapy is based on the principle of making the unconscious conscious through an emotional therapeutic process, thus changing the unfavorable inner structure. All the misconceptions current about "self-analysis" via book knowledge are empty talk; self-analysis is a fancy word for arriving at wrong conclusions about one's own wonderful self. A psychiatric guide is needed for the descent into one's "inner hell". Psychoanalysis has always had the distinction of presenting unpalatable ideas. This fact is not based on some peculiar predilection of analysts but is inherent in analytic discoveries. Since our science deals with psychic material typically repressed (expelled from consciousness because too painful and shameful to remain conscious) the reaction of the conscious ego is an indignant "no". Facts, however, do not change by simple denial of them.”
― Edmund Bergler, Curable and Incurable Neurotics

“The decisive point, which cannot be stressed often enough, is that the patient has to be given an analytic chance. He is deprived of this chance when his deep masochistic conflict is neglected and his difficulties explained only in terms of superficial layers; he is simply not familiarized with his real unconscious problem. This does not mean that the patient will always use that unique chance, but that's his affair.”
― Edmund Bergler, Curable and Incurable Neurotics

“The question arises: What do neurotics really want from psychotherapy?
Consciously the answer is simple: They want help for their suffering. Unconsciously the story is much more complicated and the answer by no means simple. In their various neuroses neurotics unconsciously enjoy deep masochistic pleasures, camouflaged by the various defenses that constitute their symptoms and personality quirks. These are attached to different "rescue stations" of libidinous or pseudoaggressive nature, depending on what level of infantile development they finally reached. What is practically amounts to is that penance is paid in the form of symptoms, inhibitions, personality distortions causing conscious unhappiness, for the underlying and hidden unconscious happiness. That "happiness" does not rest on living out instinctual drives but on maintaining the neurotic balance by multiple defense mechanisms achieved vis-a-vis the torturing inner conscience. Hence the neurotic fights for his inner defenses, especially his masochistic defense. Every neurotic rescued "something" from the infantile debacle, and to that "something" he holds on for dear life.”
― Edmund Bergler, Curable and Incurable Neurotics

“In short, many of these analyses, though conducted in the forties and fifties of the century, could just as well have been conducted in 1905 or thereabouts. It is not clear whether the analysts knowledge was static and fixated on that early date or whether they had the benefit of later theoritical knowledge ( and hence of all the progress made since that time ) but did not apply it dynamically. I do not maintain, of course, that if these rather anachronistic errors had been avoided in the previous analyses of the patients mentioned above they would all have been cured. Some were apparently unrecognized schizoid personalities, some where incapable of changing. But many, in fact most, could be helped when their pyshic masochism was put in the center. I have reporter in earlier books such seemingly hopeless but actually curable cases in which i was the second, third or fourth analyst.
The decisive point, which cannot be stressed often enough, is that the patient has to be given an analytic chance. He is deprived of this chance when his deep masochistic conflict is neglected and his difficulties explained only in terms of superficial layers; he is simply not familiarized with his real unconscious problem. This does not mean that the patient will always use that unique chance, but that's his affair.”
― Edmund Bergler, Curable and Incurable Neurotics