lems society presents. Until the psychoanalyst helps them understand how they are the victims of irrational forces shaped in their childhood, the client responds like a broken machine to social conflict. Psychoanalysis returns some measure of freedom to the individual so that he can make conscious choices about how to adapt. Accordingly, Bruner writes of Freud's "emphasis upon the autonomy of ego functioning and the achievement of freedom from excessive or conflicted drives" (Bruner, 1986, 124). Still, the basis of human adaptive behavior to Freud, before the awakening brought about by psychoanalysis, is the unconscious, or the source of irrationality, or Unreason, as Bruner puts it. The social relationship with the analyst, then, is the means whereby the client learns to do effective battle with his unconscious, or Unreason:
So "the shrink" becomes both friend and tutelary battleground for Everyman--friend in the sense of advocate, and a "battlefield simulation" whereon the old wars can be successfully reenacted this time around (Bruner, 1986, 140).
However, the healing created by this social relationship between the client and the analyst is not simply a rational analysis of the situation, as the cognitive psychologist would use, for example, but rather focuses on non-rational means, such a slips-of-the-tongue and dream analysis.
To Freud, then, human adaptive behavior depends on whether the individual is a vic
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