ABSTRACT
To continue with Freud, his adult life was marked by a series of broken friendships and professional associations.20 (He separated or broke with Breuer, Jung, Adler, Rank, Ferenczi, Stekel, among others.) In each case he had high hopes, followed by disappointment. It is as though, in each case, Freud is saying to them, ‘You have not amounted to a psychoanalyst.’ And he puts his colleagues in a position of saying to him, ‘Father, can’t you see I’ve come to something?!’ Unbeknownst to himself, Freud has taken on the paternal role and is re-enacting it over and over again. He longs for male friendship; he longs for colleagueship; and he is fated never to have it. Obviously, we are not in a position to know for sure whether this interpretation is correct; the interesting point is that it could be.21 For it shows that it is not enough for Freud to discover one of the central meanings of his life – it is not enough to discover it in an emotionally and psychologically vivid way. If this insight is to provide insight, Freud must also acquire a practical ability to recognize this meaning as it arises in the small-scale and large-scale issues in life. The process of acquiring this practical skill Freud would later come to call working-through.22
