ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about Theodor Reik. Reik was born in Vienna on May 22, 1888. He was the third son of Max and Caroline Trebitsch Reik. The family lived in a Jewish middle class district, a short walking distance from the street where Freud had lived as a boy. Reik was a morally courageous and an intellectually independent man who believed that systemizing psychological work leads to rigidity, compulsion and incoherence. His interests were broad and included primitive tribes, culture, ritual, primary process, symbols, literature, poetry, music, love and sex, murderous urges, and hard sciences. He said that the mechanical application of psychological knowledge in analytic work is a criminal act against an embryonic thought. Determinants shift from expectations to surprise. The analyst’s unconscious responses are often in dynamic tension with the patient’s unconscious and repressed material. Analyst and patient may unconsciously collude in order to diminish surprises to avoid discovery and mental pain and suffering.
