ABSTRACT
Some psycho-analytic tensions appear in a simpler, less disguised form if we use as a model the impact of the thought of Jesus on the Jewish group and on later religious institutions. The stress on miracles of healing represented an urge to 'medicalize' the institution intended to serve the teaching of Jesus. Psycho-analysis cannot escape ideas of cure, treatment, illness, in psycho-analysts and patients alike. The importance of unconscious motivation has tended to screen the importance of conscious motivation. An analyst or a particular group of analysts may stress a medical view possessing, in the authors terms, a common vertex; an observer of the group would expect to find that its vertex is recognized by certain invariants such as ideas of disease, treatment, prognosis, pathology, and cure. Other groups may display similarly obtrusive vertices: a wish for power, influence, propaganda, education, research, or poverty.
