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[[Freud ]] clearly stated that "the aim of the [[treatment ]] will never be anything else but the [[practical ]] recovery of the [[patient]]" (1904a, p. 253). He also declared that "[[Psycho]]-[[analysis ]] was [[born ]] out of medical [[necessity]]. It sprang from the [[need ]] for bringing [[help ]] to [[neurotic ]] [[patients]], who had found no relief through rest-cures, through the [[arts ]] of hydropathy or through electricity" (1919g, p. 259).

Many of the arguments that [[divide ]] [[psychoanalysts ]] on the problem of the "cure" arise from their different conceptions they have of the term's [[meaning]]. The medical [[model ]] leads to the [[idea ]] that the cure is a matter of the [[disappearance ]] of [[symptoms ]] or lesions, or even of a restitutio ad integrum (restoration of health) that would actually be [[impossible ]] in the [[mental ]] field. [[Hypnosis ]] and [[suggestion ]] made disorders [[disappear ]] as if by [[magic]], but only temporarily, which is why Freud abandoned these techniques. He was more concerned with deeper causes and, from the [[time ]] of Studies on [[Hysteria]], he limited his own influence: "[Y]ou will be able too convince yourself that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your [[hysterical ]] misery into common unhappiness. With a mental [[life ]] that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness" (1895d, p. 305).

In the analysis of "Little [[Hans]]," he insisted that "a [[psychoanalysis ]] is not an impartial [[scientific ]] investigation, but a therapeutic measure. Its [[essence ]] is not to prove anything, but merely to alter something" (1909b, p. 104). Thus the [[objective ]] is "change," giving the patient a capacity to mobilize his defenses differently and more effectively to manage both the [[external ]] and [[internal ]] conflicts that the cure cannot prevent from returning. In a note to The Ego and [[the Id]], Freud wrote that "analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego [[freedom ]] to decide one way or the [[other]]" (1923b, p. 50n).

It is necessary to remove all obstacles to the attainment of this [[goal]], and that is the [[work ]] of the treatment: the [[unconscious ]] must "convey itself into the [[preconscious]]" (1900a, p. 610); treatment involves "overcoming the internal [[resistances]]" (1905a, p. 267); analysis "replaces [[repression ]] by condemnation" (1909b, p. 145); the patient must "make the advance from the [[pleasure ]] [[principle ]] to the [[reality ]] principle" (1919b, p. 312); and "the aim of the treatment is to remove the patient's resistances and to [[pass ]] his repressions in review and thus to bring [[about ]] the most far reaching unification and strengthening of his ego, to enable him to save the mental [[energy ]] which he is expending upon internal conflicts, to make the best of him that his inherited capacities will allow and so to make him as efficient and as capable of [[enjoyment ]] as possible" (1923a, p. 251). From this perspective, "[[partial ]] or [[complete ]] [[sublimation]]" represents, as Freud wrote to [[James ]] Jackson Putnam in a [[letter ]] of May 14, 1911, "the goal of [[[psychoanalytic] ]] [[therapy ]] and the way in which it serves every [[form ]] of higher [[development]]" (1971a, p. 121).

Freud never concealed the pedagogic aspect of such a program. He insisted on several occasions that psychoanalysis was a kind of "after-education" (1916-17a, p. 451; 1940a, p. 175), even though he also maintained that the [[psychoanalyst ]] must not fall into the [[role ]] of an educator. Similarly, he often spoke out, [[right ]] up to the end of his life, against the idea that a "schematic normality" could define the end of the treatment, adding that "The business of analysis is to secure the best possible [[psychological ]] [[conditions ]] for the functions of the ego; with that it has [[discharged ]] its task" (1937a, p. 250).

A growing [[awareness ]] of the [[death ]] [[drive ]] and the [[repetition ]] [[compulsion ]] led Freud to reconsider the secondary gain from [[illness ]] as an obstacle to the cure and to reexamine the role of the "[[negative ]] therapeutic reaction." The latter, which [[satisfies ]] unconscious [[guilt ]] [[feelings ]] and the need for [[punishment ]] in the neurotic (through [[masochism]]), represents one of the most important obstacles to the satisfactory [[progress ]] of a [[Psychoanalytic Treatment|psychoanalytic treatment]].

Freud's continuing efforts to describe and analyze the negative therapeutic reaction shows that he persisted in [[looking ]] for this, in the [[sense ]] of "change," despite his later [[pessimistic ]] remarks. Other [[analysts ]] broadened the [[concept ]] of cure, even if certain remarks by Jacques [[Lacan ]] seemed to devalue it. On February 5, 1957, after a lecture by Georges Favez on "The [[Encounter ]] with the [[Analyst]]," Lacan expressed with the utmost clarity an idea that has since been greatly distorted by both his adversaries and partisans. He began by arguing against the idea that "if the measure of a therapeutic analysis is defined by its achieving the aim of producing a cure, that would mean that a therapeutic analysis is always something rather limited. All the same," he went on, "cure always seems to be a happy side effect—as I have said, to the scandal of certain ears—but the aim of analysis is not cure. Freud said the same [[thing ]] himself, namely, that making cure the aim of analysis—making it [[nothing ]] more than a means towards a specific end—leads to something like a short circuit that could only falsify the analysis. Thus analysis has [[another ]] aim" (1958, p. 309).

Lacan made these remarks were within the context of an argument that pitted him against the idea of "therapeutic analysis" and against the aim of "cure"—defined by Sacha Nacht as the "disappearance of [[fear ]] and the possibility of loving and [[being ]] loved" (1960)—as extolled by the Psychoanalytic Institute of [[Paris]]. His remarks aimed at a "pure psychoanalysis" that Lacan associated with [[training ]] analysis.

In any [[case]], Lacan's remarks can be compared to a formulation of Freud's that is similar only if we neglect the fact that it involves the question of symptomatic [[suffering ]] and not "cure." However, as stated at the outset, everything depends on how one understands the term: "The removal of the symptoms of the illness is not specifically aimed at, but is achieved, as it were, as a by-product if the analysis is properly carried through" (1923a, p. 251).

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1900a). The [[interpretation ]] of [[dreams]]. SE, 4 & 5: 1-751.# ——. (1904a). Freud's psycho-[[analytic ]] procedure. SE, 7: 247-254.# ——. (1905a). On [[psychotherapy]]. SE, 7: 255-268.# ——. (1909b). Analysis of a [[phobia ]] in a five-year-old boy. SE, 10: 1-149.

# ——. (1919b). Some [[character]]-types met with in psychoanalytic work. SE, 14: 309-333.# ——. (1919g). Preface to Reik's [[ritual]]: psycho-analytic studies. SE, 17: 257-263.

# ——. (1923d). [[The Ego and the Id|The ego and the id]]. SE, 19: 1-66.# ——. (1937c). [[Analysis Terminable and Interminable|Analysis terminable and interminable]]. SE, 23: 209-253.# ——. (1940a). An [[outline ]] of psycho-analysis. SE, 23: 139-207.# Freud, Sigmund, et al. (1971a), James Jackson Putnam and psychoanalysis. Letters between Putnam and [[Sigmund Freud]], Ernest [[Jones]], William James, Sándor Ferenczi, and Morton Prince, 1877-1917 (NathanG. Hale, Ed.). Cambridge: Harvard [[University ]] Press.# Freud, Sigmund, and Josef [[Breuer]]. (1895d). Studies in hysteria. SE,2.# [[Lacan, Jacques]]. (1958). [[Intervention]], in G. Favez: 'Le rendez-vous avec le [[psychanalyste]].' La [[Psychanalyse]], 4, 305-314.