and

It secas to me that psychoanalytic doctrine has developed rather Each new theory like the way theology developed in the Middle Ages. purports to give a plausible and efficaceous explanation of that which was formerly inexplicable, an explanation, moreover, which tends to add to the self-consistency of the whole. Of course, doctrinal disputes are rife among the analysts as was the case among the theologians of long ago. Above all, when one asks for proofs the psychoanalysts give the mystic's answer: "You cannot judge us until you have experienced analysis and after that you will not need to." A few of the more a science candid analysts have admitted that their profession is not but rather an art. This, of course, implies that the analyst is an artist and that his patients are the raw material with which he creates. But there is a great difference between the bona fide artist who uses in his work only Laert, insentient clay, canvas, pigment, the psychoanalyst who works his creative will upon sentient human beings like himself. As Kant put in, we are morally obliged to treat To these each human being as an end in himself and never as a means. objections the analyst will reply with a shrug and a comment on the objector's defensive narcissism. But why should any individual relinquish his om narcissism to become the malleable creature of a psychoanalyst's narcissism? To this the analyst will answer promptly, "Because you are unhappy, you suffer, you are sick." And perhaps he will continue, along Berglerian lines, "You see, you believe that your inhappiness is caused by others, you believe that the world is against you, 'everybody is out of step but Johnny'. In reality you create your own guffering, you know. In fact, you enjoy suffering. You delight in getting yourself ostracized because of your homosexuality; you revel in getting beaten up, rolled, exploited, blackmailed, tossed into jail. You are a masochist, you know. It is your own fault that your family kicked you out when they discovered you were homosexual. It is your own fault that you got fired from that good job when the boss received an anonymous letter revealing your homosexuality. It is your own fault that the young man you loved and did everything you could for robbed It is your own fault that you blind and later tried to blackmail you. a good-looking detective picked you up, led you on, and then arrested you when you responded to his advances. You have an irrational grudge against your family, your boss, your lover, the detective who arrested you, but down deep, you mow, you loved every minute of it. You wanted everything to happen just the way it did, you made it happen that way. What's more, if you care to me as a patient I would make use of this very need to take a beating to make you well. I'd clobber you and clobber you with the sure knowledge that you would always come back for more until at last you gave up homosexuality, got married and settled down. And it would not hurt me more than it did you, either. Because, after all, let's face it, you're a louse." The prospective patient might answer, "Well, I don't know. . .Supposing I'm a masochist like you say: Isn't it possible that my masochism just feeds your sadis?" At this the analyst puffs like a pouter pigeon, "Preposterous! That is paranoid suspiciousness. I an entirely objective! Thoroughly unbiased! What you fail to realize is that homosexuals are utterly impossible people in every respect. The analyst must make them over, completely. After all, the homosexuality started in the years of earliest infancy, when the child was still a nursling, as a matter of fact. One must remake the individual from the very beginning, you soo0. Read my book. You will see that there is absolutely no good in the homosexual at all. Not one of y patients possessed a single redeeming trait until I took his in hand, you'll notice." The interrogator ponders, shakes his head and sighs: "To remake a human being practically from scratch and in moire dan' you sometimes feel that maybe you are competing mallachine REVIEW

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with God?"

After rereading Dr. Bergler's book and reviewing these pages, I confess I find it all very confusing. I believe that most of my objections to the book are well-founded. Even my objections to psychoanalysis are, I think, well-founded. At the same time I am certainly not anti-analysis to the extent that my criticisms might indicate. Nor do I believe that the theory of psychic masochism is poppycock. There is no doubt in my mind about the reality and the importance of masochism as a husa7 wrecker. Its understanding certainly provides a powerful therapeutic tool, or lever. But it seems to me that Dr. Bergler overworks this masochim thing. Every trait in his patients which isn't "correct" Dr. Bergler would ascribe to masochistic provocativeness, I suspect. Now it might be said that a Jew who remains a Jew in an anti-semitic environment is simply a masochist. By refusing to change, to yield to social prejudices and pressures, he "invites" trouble for himself. The psychoanalyst could very easily draw the conclusion that the Jew's resistance to change was due to the fact that he wanted to get hurt, needed to be persecuted, enjoyed it. In some cases such an interpretation might very well be true. Yet in many cases, the great majority, the Jew who remains a Jew in an anti-semitic environment is exhibiting integrity. Is the homosexual who refuses to be brainwashed into conformity a masochist, or is he exhibiting integrity? In any case, the man who yields to coercion, whether physical or psychic, cannot retain mich self-respect. And as long as our society maintains a coercive attitude towards homosexuals I doubt that there will be many voluntary changes.

· •

Masochism. Dr. Bergler's book creates stilk another perplexity in my mind. If the homoserial refuses Dr. Bergler's curative therapy this refusal is an indication of his masochism. Homosexuality can bring nothing but unhappiness and humiliation, the homosexual who refuses to change is opting for suffering, this can only be because he likes to suffer. On the other hand, Dr. Bergler states candidly that he utilizes the patient's masochism in order to make him give up the homosexuality. So it would see that the homosexual is a masochist if he refuses curative therapy and a masochist if he goes through with it. "You're damned if you do and darned if you don't." But some people really do find themselves in homosexuality.

Dr. Berglor, es I've noted, refers to a live-and-let-live attitude as normal. Yet he tells us also that his cured homosexuɛls delest other homosexuals even more violently than he himself does. What can we think but that Dr. Bergler takes the infantile, neurotic sense of guilt which plagues his patients and makes it stick, makes his patients submit to their own most deeply irrational self-condenation? What sort of finished, cured product does Dr. Bergler aim to turn out? He gives us a strong indication in a back-handed sort of way in the following sentence: "What is most discouraging, you seldom find an intact ego (what is popularly called 'a correct person') azong them (homosexuals)." Such a phrase may be in popular use in Middle Europe but one doesn't hear it in the United States. I suspect that there is a Junker in the woodpile.

Psychoanalysis requires a minimuz of three visits a week for at least a year, zaybe two years. Twenty dollars a visit would be a modcrate fee these days. At that rate an analysis would cost at least three thousand dollars, maybe six thousand or more. I do not begrudge

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