THE COUNTER-WILL - 100 YEARS OF SCIENTIFI C INVESTIGATION INTO THE UNCONSCIOUS

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's original publicat ion of his first psychoanalytic case study on hypnotic cure the author examines the wide spectrum in Freud's clinical observation of what co nstituted his patient's ''opposition''. The acknowledgement of this '' opposition'' and the affect belonging to it, as well as of the resentm ent active in the counter-transference, afforded them their proper exp ression and provided therein the cure. The postulation of there being opposition in the face of an existing volitional paralysis - the patie nt could not breast-feed her child although she ''wanted'' to - led to the discovery of the unconscious conflict. This was proof, however, t hat the unconscious and its workings even existed in the first place. The author delineates the clinical observations and arguments and then reflects on what the treatment and the core interpretation would look like today. Finally she takes a critical look at what today is a kind of scepticism or defensiveness in matters concerning the unconscious. This scepticism was already to be found in the husband as well as the patient herself.