Sigmund Freud  Sigmund Freud 
His Personality, His Teaching, & His School 
By 
Fritz Wittels 
Translated from the German by 
Eden and Cedar Paul 
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.i First published in 1924 
(All rights reserved) 
Printed in Great Britain by 
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, LONDON AND WOKING II faut admirer en bloc! PREFACE 
I made Sigmund Freud’s personal acquaintance in 
1905, but I had been influenced by his writings for 
some time before that. In the summer of 1910 
I had a personal difference with Freud, and left 
the Psychoanalytical Society. I consider, however, 
that during the years from 1905 to 1910 my relation- 
ships with this great man were sufficiently intimate 
to justify me in writing his biography. I have never 
ceased the study of psychoanalysis, which is a 
scientific method independent of its discoverer’s 
personality. My own aloofness from Freud since 
1910, my detachment from his overshadowing indi- 
viduality, has perhaps been an advantage. Of 
unquestioning disciples he has more than enough ; 
but I would fain be a critical witness. 
7 CONTENTS 
PARE 
PREFACE 7 
fueud’s opinion of wittels’ biography . . . 11 
CHAPTER 
I. EARLY YEARS 15 
II. CHARCOT 27 
III. BREUER AND FREUD 36 
IV. ANXIETY NEUROSIS 46 
V. DREAM INTERPRETATION 59 
VI. REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 85 
VII. SLIPS, MISTAKES, AND BLUNDERS 98 
VIII. EROS 105 
IX. FREUD’S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 129 
X. ALFRED ADLER 145 
XI. THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 160 
XII. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 176 
XIII. NARCISSISM 197 
XIV. WILHELM STEKEL 216 
XV. FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 234 
XVI. BIPOLARITY 249 
GLOSSARY 261 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 272 
INDEX 279 
9 FREUD’S OPINION OF WITTELS’ 
BIOGRAPHY 
The English translation, although substantially from 
the printed German original, contains a number of 
emendations made by the author at Freud’s sugges- 
tion. Some of these relate to matters of fact, and 
others to matters of opinion. Shortly after the work 
was published, Wittels sent Freud a copy of it, and 
on December 18, 1923, Freud wrote Wittels a letter 
of acknowledgment from which, with Freud’s express 
authorisation, the following extracts are here trans- 
lated : 
“You have given me a Christmas present which 
is very largely occupied with my own personality. 
The failure to send a word of thanks for such a gift 
would be an act of rudeness only to be accounted 
for by very peculiar motives. Fortunately no such 
motives exist in this case. Your book is by no means 
hostile ; it is not unduly indiscreet; and it manifests 
the serious interest in the topic which was to be 
anticipated in so able a writer as yourself. 
“ I need hardly say that I neither expected nor 
desired the publication of such a book. It seems to 12 
SIGMUND FREUD 
me that the public has no concern with my personality, 
and can learn nothing from an account of it, so long 
as my case (for manifold reasons) cannot be expounded 
without any reserves whatever. But you have 
thought otherwise. Your own detachment from me, 
which you deem an advantage, entails serious draw- 
backs none the less. You know too little of the 
object of study, and you have not been able to avoid 
the danger of straining the facts a little in your 
analytical endeavours. Moreover, I am inclined to 
think that your adoption of Stekel’s standpoint, 
and the fact that you contemplate the object of study 
from his outlook, cannot but have impaired the 
accuracy of your discernment. 
“ In some respects, I think there are positive 
distortions, and I believe these to be the outcome of 
a preconceived notion of yours. You think that a 
great man must have such and such merits and 
defects, and must display certain extreme charac- 
teristics ; and you hold that I belong to the category 
of great men. That is why you ascribe to me all 
sorts of qualities many of which are mutually con- 
flicting. Much of general interest might be said 
anent this matter, but unfortunately your relationship 
to Stekel precludes further attempts on my part 
to clear up the misunderstanding. 
“ On the other hand, I am glad to acknowledge 
that your shrewdness has enabled you to detect FREUD’S LETTER TO WITTELS 
13 
many things which are well known to myself. For 
instance, you are right in inferring that I have often 
been compelled to make detours when following my 
own path. You are right, too, in thinking that I 
have no use for other people’s ideas when they are 
presented to me at an inopportune moment. (Still, 
as regards the latter point, I think you might have 
defended me from the accusation that I am repudiating 
ideas when I am merely unable for the nonce to 
pass judgment on them or to elaborate them.) But I 
am delighted to find that you do me full justice in 
the matter of my relationships with Adler. . . . 
441 realise that you may have occasion to revise 
your text in view of a second edition. With an eye 
to this possibility, I enclose a list of suggested emenda- 
tions. These are based on trustworthy data, and 
are quite independent of my own prepossessions. 
Some of them relate to matters of trifling importance, 
but some of them will perhaps lead you to reverse 
or modify certain inferences. The fact that I send 
you these corrections is a token that I value your 
work though I cannot wholly approve it.” SIGMUND FREUD 
CHAPTER ONE 
EARLY YEARS 
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, his birthplace 
being Freiberg, a small country town in the north of 
Moravia.1 His mother was quite a young woman, 
and he was her first child. His father, who had been 
married before, was already a grandfather. Thus 
little Sigmund had a nephew, John, who was a year 
older than the uncle. Inasmuch as Freud’s develop- 
ment was notably influenced by the conflicts between 
the two boys, this peculiar relationship is worth 
mentioning. German was the ordinary language of 
the domestic circle, but the child was also familiar 
with the sound of Slavic speech. 
Like Goethe, Freud came into the world black 
of hue. But whereas in Goethe’s case this was due to 
the cyanosis of impending suffocation, we learn from 
Freud that as far as he was concerned he was covered 
with such an abundant black down that his mother 
called him “ a little blackamoor.” The biographers 
of Goethe like to dwell on the paradox that this 
1 Most of the biographical details in the text are taken from Freud’s 
Die Traumdeutung. For the editions, see Bibliography. My page 
references are to the second edition, 1909. 16 
SIGMUND FREUD 
“ Lucifer ” came into the world dark-tinted. There 
would be as much, or as little, justification for 
regarding Freud’s “ darkness ” at birth as symbolical 
of the part he was destined to play in the world, a 
part which to many has seemed satanic. He, himself, 
does not wholly deprecate the charge, seeing that 
the motto he has chosen for his book Die Traum- 
deutung is : Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta 
movebo (If I cannot influence the Gods of Heaven, 
I will stir up Acheron). 
Late one evening, when I was reading Freud an 
essay, he suddenly jumped up, saying: “Let’s see 
what old Goethe has to say about it,” and took down 
a copy of the second part of Faust. Noticing the 
affectionate way in which he handled the volume, 
and his eagerness to hunt up a quotation which did 
not seem to me specially apposite, I realised that he 
stood in a peculiar relationship to Goethe. In Die 
Traumdeutung, immediately after his account of 
how he was born a little blackamoor, Freud writes 
(p. 243) : “ Birth and death, as in the dream of Goethe 
I had shortly before this ...” In this way Freud 
brings the legend of his own birth into touch with 
the one Goethe relates in Dichtung und Wahrheit. 
His journey to Paris, which was to exercise a decisive 
influence upon the remainder of his life, took place 
in the years 1885-6, precisely one hundred years 
after Goethe’s Italian Journey. In this connexion, 
Freud’s persistent yearning towards Italy, and 
especially towards Rome, is noteworthy. 
We have excellent reason for assuming that Freud 
had a good conceit of himself, and an ardent 
longing to give practical proof that his favourable 
opinion was deserved. An old peasant woman had EARLY YEARS 
17 
told his mother that she was about to give birth to 
a great man. Subsequently, in Vienna, an itinerant 
fortune-teller informed Sigmund’s parents that the 
boy was destined to become a minister of State— 
an incredible prospect, in the Austria of those days, 
for any one who was not of noble birth. Such 
prophecies are common enough. The remarkable 
feature in the case is that, forty years later, Freud 
should have dreamed of the childish trifle.1 This 
indicates that the lad’s ambition had been something 
quite out of the common. 
When the little boy was three years old, the family 
removed to Leipzig. A year later, the Freuds settled 
in Vienna. Ever since the days of Maria Theresa, 
the capital of the sometime Austrian empire has 
exercised a strong attraction on the cultured section 
of the Moravian population. Sigmund’s elder brother, 
or rather half-brother, went to live in England. The 
second family grew in numbers, and in Vienna was 
no longer so well off. For a long time the Freuds 
lived in Kaiser Josef Strasse, now renamed Heine 
Strasse. Freud tells us that the name Josef has 
always played a great part in his dreams, his view 
being that in dreams of emperors and kings these 
potentates symbolise the father. On the other hand 
Stekel, Freud’s most distinguished pupil, considers 
that in such dreams there is condensed with the 
signification of the father an ideal of power and 
splendour. Since 1848, Joseph II has been regarded 
by the liberal bourgeoisie as the finest flower of the 
Habsburg dynasty; as an exemplar of wisdom, 
benevolence, progress, and devotion to duty. In 
reality, this emperor was a despot who paid lip-service 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 135. 18 
SIGMUND FREUD 
to the ideals of the French enlightenment. His 
progressiveness was an ill-digested Voltairism, his 
benevolence was capricious, and his wisdom was a 
fable. We may, however, admit that he was devoted 
to what he believed to be his duty. In 1848, his 
statue was decorated by hanging the flag of liberty 
to one of the arms. His notion of freedom was 
embodied in the maxim : Everything for the people, 
nothing by the people. 
Long residence, during the impressionable years 
of boyhood, in a street whose name carries such 
associations, cannot fail to have an influence ! Freud 
has become an emperor, one around whom legends 
begin to accrete, who holds enlightened but absolute 
sway in his realm, and is animated by a rigid sense of 
duty.1 He has become a despot who will not tolerate 
the slightest deviation from his doctrine; holds 
councils behind closed doors ; and tries to ensure, 
by a sort of pragmatic sanction, that the body of 
psychoanalytical teaching shall remain an indivisible 
whole. 
Freud attended the Sperl Gymnasium in Vienna, 
and throughout the eight years of his studies was 
always the leader of his class.2 We rarely find that 
these model pupils attain distinction in adult life, 
but Freud was one of the exceptions. There are, in 
fact, two kinds of model pupils. Some of them are 
exemplary because they are docile, because they 
know nothing of the revolutionary stirrings of youth. 
They never waste their energies in protests against 
the educational authorities. Those of the other type 
resemble the youthful Lessing, of whom it was said 
1 For an instance of strict devotion to duty see Traumdeutung, 
p. 162. a Traumdeutung, p. 109. EARLY YEARS 
that he was one of the horses that need a double 
allowance of fodder. In Sigmund Freud’s case, 
keen ambition wras obviously the motive force, for 
his was certainly not one of the sheep-like natures. 
Pie has always been of a combative disposition, as 
shown in his early bickerings with the nephew who 
was his senior,1 and by numerous incidents down to 
our own day. When he was fourteen years old, 
someone made him a present of Borne’s Works, and 
he still possesses this book, more than fifty years 
later, as the only relic of the library of his school days.2 
P\>r a long time, Freud hesitated in his choice 
of a career between law and natural science. His 
skill as a dialectician, his eloquence, his interest in 
universal history and in humanism, seemed to mark 
him out for the study of the abstract sciences. Shortly 
before leaving the Gymnasium, he made up his mind 
to become a medical student, but he tells us that 
this choice vras uncongenial.3 In another place4 
we learn that Goethe once more influenced his 
decision. In class, Freud became acquainted with 
Goethe’s “ incomparably beautiful essay on Nature,” 5 
and he declares that this awakened in him an 
enthusiastic desire to become a doctor. The state- 
ment arouses the impression of being a screen-memory. 
I do not know what the real determinant was. Goethe 
studied law to begin with, and then natural science, 
though his main interest was always given to imagina- 
tive literature. Freud told Stekel (so I learn from 
the latter) that at one time he had an inclination to 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 259. 
2 Sammlung kleiner Sehriften zur Neurosenlehre, vol. v, p. 144. 
(In subsequent notes, this will be called Sammlung, for short.) 
3 Sammlung, vol. iv, p. 4. 4 Traumdeutung, p. 270. 
5 Fragment iiber die Natur. See Bibliography. 20 
SIGMUND FREUD 
become a novelist, in order that he might be able to 
leave to posterity all that his patients had told him. 
“ Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” 
Freud declares to-day that medical knowledge is 
superfluous for the practice of psychoanalysis, and 
that his best pupils have been outside the ranks of 
the medical profession.1 
One who chooses natural science for his life 
occupation may make this choice because of a 
constitutional fondness for the study of natural 
phenomena, because of a longing to be perpetually 
examining them and admiring them. On the other 
hand, he may be one whose bent towards abstractions 
is so powerful that he is afraid of being mastered by 
it, and feels it necessary to study concrete science 
as a counterpoise. Certainly that is how it was 
with me. I became a medical student in order to 
keep my feet firmly planted on the solid ground of 
fact. I fancy Freud may have been influenced by 
similar motives. He studied assiduously and perse- 
veringly in the school of facts. 
Raphael would have become a great painter, 
even if he had been born without hands. In like 
manner, Freud would have become a great psychologist 
even though he had never studied medicine. The 
danger of psychoanalysis lies, however, in this, that 
it may lead those who practise it away from the 
world of concrete reality. Philosophers and men 
of letters may devote themselves to it; and may 
falsify it by the introduction of mystical, that is 
to say, suprasensual, ingredients. Psychoanalysis is 
still a rock on which the troubled waters of our 
1 I learn this from private information. EARLY YEARS 
21 
epoch are breaking; it is an invasion of reason into 
that which seems, but only seems, to be unreasonable. 
I do not know whether Freud is destined to make 
further notable discoveries. I am confident, however, 
that, despite some of the indiscretions of recent years, 
he retains unimpaired the critical spirit of the true 
man of science, and that this will enable him to 
safeguard psychoanalysis (even in its world-wide 
development) against a lapse into mysticism and 
scholasticism. There is no danger so long as he lives 
and retains his leadership. Freud’s decision to study 
medicine, to study concrete science, has been of 
immense advantage to the world. 
On leaving school, Freud went to England to 
visit his half-brother, who was quite twenty years 
older than himself. This journey expanded his 
outlooks greatly. In Austria he had never been 
able to escape the sense of inferiority which early 
affected him, as it does all Jews in German-speaking 
lands, and especially those who move in intellectual 
circles. In England, Freud renewed acquaintance 
with members of his family who had escaped this 
danger. Furthermore, conversations with his half- 
brother gave Sigmund a fuller and more affectionate 
understanding of his father. Thus the journey 
was important in that it put a term to some 
of those conflicts which none of us escape during 
adolescence.1 
Young Freud had no patrons. It was due to his 
talents and his remarkable diligence that he was not 
merely able to continue his studies with success, but 
soon began to play a notable part in the scientific 
1 Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, ninth edition, 1923, 
pp. 264 et seq.  SIGMUND FREUD 
world. While still an undergraduate he became 
demonstrator under Ernst Briicke. 
At that date, the medical faculty of the University 
of Vienna was at the climax of its fame, or had but 
just passed the climax. Briicke (ob. 1892) was pro- 
fessor of physiology from 1849 to 1890, and was one 
of the teachers who, in conjunction with Hyrtl and 
Rokitansky, established the theoretical foundations 
on which the great Viennese physicians were to build 
their practical successes. The scientific investigators 
of this epoch had an amazing competence for the 
observation and description of natural phenomena, 
and among them Briicke was preeminent. 
What we regard as characteristically scientific 
is, not so much the brilliant flash of insight that leads 
to a discovery, as the work of methodical demon- 
stration. The achievements of the investigator must 
be expounded in such a way that they can be tested 
by all who use the scientific method. Those who 
had worked under Briicke might subsequently become 
interested in fields remote from physiology, but they 
could never forget what they had learned about 
scientific method. Freud’s training in this respect 
was of inestimable value to him, and its results 
distinguish him from many of his pupils. The memory 
of Briicke’s “ formidable blue eyes ” 1 may often have 
acted as a restraint when he was preparing to make 
too bold a leap in the world of subterranean investi- 
gation. 
In Briicke’s laboratory, Freud had to dissect 
rare fishes, whose simple structure could throw light 
on some of the problems of biology. Another of 
Brucke’s multifarious interests at this epoch was the 
1 Traumdeutung, p 258. EARLY YEARS 
23 
study of the assonances of speech. Before his appoint- 
ment to the professorial chair in Vienna, he had 
published a careful study of the structure of the eye, 
and had only just missed being the discoverer of the 
ophthalmoscope. He had noticed the way in which 
the black aperture of the pupil lights up when luminous 
rays are projected into it in the line of the observer’s 
gaze, and he knew that this red reflex came from the 
retina. The book on the structure of the eye was 
published in 1849. The discovery of the ophthalmo- 
scope, from which modern ophthalmology dates, 
was made in 1850, by Helmholtz in Heidelberg. 
The point which Briicke had missed was that a lens 
must be placed in front of the illuminated pupil in 
order to make the retina visible to the observer. 
As luck would have it, Freud, too, was to come 
very near to an important ophthalmological discovery, 
and was just to miss it. In 1884, when he was assistant 
physician at the General Hospital, he procured from 
the Darmstadt firm of Merck a sample of cocaine, 
in order to study the properties of the drug. The 
effect of the coca plant as an invigorant, and its 
power of producing euphoria, were already known, 
but that the alkaloid extracted from coca leaves 
could anaesthetise the mucous membranes had not 
yet attracted attention. Freud had ceased working 
in Briicke’s laboratory two years earlier, and was 
content to write for publication in Heitler’s “ Zentral- 
blatt fur Therapie ” a report on cocaine, which was 
chiefly concerned with the history of the coca plant 
in Peru. Some experiments upon the internal use of 
the drug were also recorded, and references were made 
to the work of other investigators. Freud noted 
that the tongue and palate are benumbed after  SIGMUND FREUD 
24 
drinking a solution of cocaine. The closing words 
of the essay ran as follows : “We may presume 
that this anaesthetising action of cocaine could be 
utilised in various ways.” 
The young surgeon, Karl Roller, one of Freud’s 
colleagues, read this essay, betook himself to Strieker’s 
Institute for Experimental Pathology, and remarked 
to Gustav Gartner, Strieker’s assistant : “ I gather 
from what Freud writes that it ought to be possible 
to anaesthetise the eye with a solution of cocaine.” 
Roller and Gartner at once made some experiments 
to ascertain whether this theory was correct—at 
first on frogs, rabbits, and dogs; subsequently 
instilling the solution into their own eyes. In the 
summer of 1884, Roller read a paper upon the new 
use of cocaine at the Ophthalmological Congress in 
Heidelberg, and the report of the discovery was 
cabled all over the world. A new era in operative 
ophthalmology had been inaugurated, and ere long 
the use of cocaine anaesthesia for minor operations 
found applications in all departments of surgery. 
Robert Roch’s first sight of the tubercle bacillus, 
an organism that is so minute but so terrible a scourge 
of humanity; Rarl Roller’s discovery that when 
he had instilled a drop or two of cocaine solution 
into his eye, the cornea had become insensitive to the 
prick of a needle; Rontgen’s first sight of the bones 
of his own hand; Galvani’s experiments on the 
muscles of the frog’s leg ; Pythagoras’ measurements 
of the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle 
—all these were stepping-stones established in the 
ocean of error and darkness, destined in due time 
to join up into a bridge leading to the shore of 
knowledge. The aim of natural science and its EARLY YEARS 
charm are to be found in such researches. It is hard 
luck for an investigator to come so near to great 
discoveries as Briicke did in 1849, and Freud in 1884, 
without reaching the goal. 
Freud pondered long in the endeavour to account 
for his failure. As late as 1906, when I was attending 
his lectures, this cocaine incident was still a good 
deal in his mind. Roller, said Freud, had had, as 
it were, a fixed idea that he would make an ophthal- 
mological discovery, and had endeavoured to apply 
to the ophthalmological field all that he heard and 
all that he read. That was why Roller, though not 
a man of any marked ability, had rushed off to drop 
some cocaine solution into his eye the instant he 
had read Freud’s essay. Now I do not deny for a 
moment that Roller, whose name has not been noted 
for any other researches, cannot be compared with 
Freud in point of genius. Nevertheless, so mechanical 
an explanation of a discovery seems to me inadequate. 
Roller did not become an ophthalmologist until 
after his achievement. Before that, his aim had 
been to study general surgery under Albert. Freud’s 
explanation does not explain the mystery of a creative 
act. 
In the eighties, Freud followed in the footsteps 
of Theodor Meynert, the renowned psychiatrist and 
cerebral anatomist. He worked in the children’s 
clinic of Max Rassowitz, who subsequently acquired 
fame as a biologist, and as a critic of some of Darwin’s 
teachings. Traces of Rassowitz’ views concerning 
the upbuilding and disintegration of protoplasm are 
to be found in Freud’s Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 
published in 1920. Rassowitz had a keen, speculative 
intelligence, and he took delight in running atilt 
25 26 
SIGMUND FREUD 
against prejudices both old and new. He did good 
service by his vigorous campaign against alcohol. 
To the end of his days he refused to admit the value 
of Behring’s antitoxic serum for the treatment of 
diphtheria. Though an able investigator, he is now 
almost entirely forgotten. CHAPTER TWO 
CHARCOT 
From the autumn of 1885 to the spring of 1886 
Freud worked in Paris under Charcot, the most 
famous neurologist of the day. Freud’s financial 
position was far from easy, and I have no doubt 
that he was often on short commons while in Paris. 
His favourite resort when not at work was the top of 
the tower of Notre-Dame. He could be alone there. 
He had sacrificed fine possibilities in Vienna in order 
to make this visit to Paris. 
It was not surprising that the famous name of 
Charcot should act as a lure. But the journey had 
another aspect, for it was also a flight. Just as Goethe’s 
Italian journey had been a flight from the philistinism 
of Weimar, so Freud felt that it was essential to 
break with all his previous activities. At first, he 
had been perfectly satisfied with his occupations in 
Briicke’s laboratory. But, as we have learned, he 
had abandoned this post even before leaving Vienna, 
and it does not appear that after his return from Paris 
he ever resumed relationships with Briicke. Theodor 
Meynert, his clinical teacher, who had at first made 
a protege of him, subsequently, he tells us, took a 
dislike to him.1 
Young Freud had friends enough, and had enjoyed 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 267. 28 
SIGMUND FREUD 
a fair measure of success. But this measure did 
not satisfy him, for he had the feeling of those who 
believe they carry a field-marshal’s baton in their 
knapsack. If we would know the young man’s 
opinion of himself, we may read it in the motto he 
“ half-jokingly ” designed to use as the title of a 
chapter on “ Therapeutics ” : Flavit et dissipati 
sunt. What are scattered ? Presumably the neuroses ; 
but we might think of rival investigators ! The phrase 
is from the medal that was struck in England to 
commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 
and in full it runs : Flavit Jehovah et dissipati sunt. 
In the reproduction of the motto, Freud has sup- 
pressed the word Jehovah.1 But he cherishes it all 
the more in his heart. 
The larger moiety of the years devoted by Charcot 
to scientific study was that in which he worked as 
a pathological anatomist. He was over fifty before 
he was at liberty to follow his bent, was free to lay 
down the scalpel and discard the microscope that 
he might concentrate upon the study of nervous 
diseases. At the Sorbonne, the philosopher Paul 
Janet (not to be confused with Pierre Janet, the 
neurologist, one of Charcot’s pupils) was then engaged 
in an attempt to counteract the predominance of 
materialism in philosophy. There was a similar 
idealistic trend in contemporary Germany, the classic 
land of idealist philosophy. Perhaps it was in the 
wards of the Salpetriere that this swing of the philo- 
sophical pendulum first showed its influence in the 
medical domain. Charcot taught that hysteria is 
psychically engendered ; that the disease is not due 
to any tissue changes, but arises from purely spiritual 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 151.—The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 180. CHARCOT 
29 
causes, which are not recognisable under the micro- 
scope. This conception of “ psychogenic ” disease 
seemed incomprehensible to the doctors who regarded 
themselves as modern at that date. Though it was 
recognised that the term hysteria must be used to 
denote a special group of symptoms, most medical 
observers were inclined to look upon the disease as 
a form of malingering, so that the disgrace of being 
regarded as a humbug was superadded to the suffer- 
ings of the unfortunate hysterical patient. Even those 
who took a more lenient view, were none the less 
materialistic in their outlook on the ailment. They 
considered that, although the pathological anatomy 
of hysteria was still unknown, improved technique 
and more powerful microscopes would, in due time, 
enable pathologists to ascertain the organic causes 
of the disorder. At that epoch, nothing was yet 
known regarding internal secretions. To-day it has 
been proved that neurotic symptoms are connected 
with disturbances in the composition and relative 
proportions of the incretions. But we also know that 
the glandular secretions are influenced by unconscious 
ideas. 
Charcot showed that in a hysterical subject it 
is possible, under hypnosis, to arouse ideas—with the 
aid, perhaps, of some trifling physical impression, 
such as a tap upon the skin—which lead to a paralysis 
of one of the limbs, a hysterical paralysis. This 
paralysis will last for some time after the awakening 
from hypnosis. Anaesthesia could be experimentally 
produced, as well as paralysis. Charcot thus proved 
that ideas can induce bodily changes. But if an idea 
deliberately introduced from without into the subject’s 
mind can have such an effect, does it not seem even 30 
SIGMUND FREUD 
more likely that the subject’s own unconscious ideas 
can work in like manner ? To-day, of course, we no 
longer hesitate to speak of “ unconscious ideas.” 
It is not easy to draw a sharp line separating the 
end of Charcot’s work from the beginning of that of 
his pupils. Suffice it to say that the psychogenic 
character of hysteria was established by Charcot 
towards the year 1883. In Leipzig, J. P. Mobius 
was not slow to profit by the discovery. But, generally 
speaking, Charcot’s theory came into sharp conflict 
with the views which were then, and still are, dominant 
in Germany.1 This is plainly shown by the fact 
that another of Briicke’s pupils, the distinguished 
physiologist, Sigmund Exner, published in 1894 a 
work entitled Entwurf zu einer physiologischen Er- 
klarung der psychischen Erscheinungen [An Attempt 
at the Physiological Explanation of Psychical Phe- 
nomena]. This book appeared almost contempo- 
raneously with Breuer and Freud’s Studien ilber 
Hysterie. Ten years after Charcot had proved that 
bodily diseases can arise out of ideas, Exner was still 
maintaining the antagonistic view that mental hap- 
penings can be explained in material terms, thus 
lining up with the naturalist philosophers Buchner, 
Moleschott, and Haeckel, to whom it seemed that 
there was nothing mysterious in the workings of 
the mind and the consciousness—no problem at all. 
With stupefaction we read in Exner again and again : 
14 having cut off a frog’s head ” ; or “ having laid 
1 As late as 1906, almost five-and-twenty years after Charcot’s 
discovery, we find the following bland statement by C. Fiirstner, one 
of the contributors to the collective work Die deutsche Klinik edited 
by Leyden and Klemperer (vol. vi, § 2, p. 157) : “ The theory of the 
psychogenic origin of various symptoms still lacks confirmation. How, 
for instance, can an idea cause unusual nervous symptoms in children ? ” CHARCOT 
31 
the headless body of a snake upon glowing charcoal.” 
The investigators of the old school imagined that, 
guided by such bold experiments, they could run the 
soul to earth in the body. Schopenhauer speaks of 
the human mind as the supreme enigma. Exner 
cannot see that there is any enigma. 
Hard indeed is it, in a materialistic age, to make 
people reverence the saying : “ The spirit builds the 
body for itself.” 
Thus the sometime assistant physician at the 
Vienna General Hospital moved through the courts 
of the Salpetriere, surrounded by old and grey two- 
storeyed buildings very like those of the Vienna 
hospital. He came to study under one who, like 
Freud’s teachers in Vienna, had graduated as patho- 
logical anatomist, and had therefore been well 
grounded in the field of natural science. This man 
maintained, and could prove, that mere ideas were 
able to cause disease. It is probable that Freud 
was not slow to realise that he was learning something 
which would bring him into collision with the Viennese 
School. 
The physicians of Vienna made light of hypnosis. 
Meynert declared that it was nothing more than a 
means for the artificial production of imbecility. Of 
course, this is not an explanation, but merely a quip 
expressing the irritation of one who is loath to admit 
the existence of a phenomenon that does not fit 
conveniently into his pigeon-holes. Forty years later, 
the alienist Wagner-Jauregg, a man of first-class intelli- 
gence, remarked to me : “ The trouble with hypnotism 
is that you never know who is pulling the other 
fellow’s leg.” The jest shows that those who would  SIGMUND FREUD 
fain account for everything in terms of organic 
disease, are no less perplexed now than were their 
forerunners of Meynert’s day when confronted with 
a purely psychical mechanism.1 
The hostility to Charcot’s teachings was so marked 
that, in the Medical Society of Vienna, Freud aroused 
an outburst of laughter when he reported that male 
hysterics could be seen in Paris. Meynert said that 
the notion was preposterous. One of the pundits 
present interposed with : “ But my good sir, 
4 hysteron ’ means the uterus ! ” Every one knows 
to-day that hysteria is just as common in men as 
in women, but that, owing to differences in the 
social position of the sexes, it shows itself in men 
under a different form. On his death-bed, Meynert 
said to Freud : 44 Really, you know, I have always 
been a typical instance of male hysteria ! ” 2 The 
remark explains, to those with true understanding, 
why Meynert and his contemporaries were so reluctant 
to admit the existence of hysteria in the male. 
Freud writes concerning Charcot: 44 He was not 
a thinker, but a man of artistic temperament—to 
use his own word, a 4 seer.’ He told us about the 
way he worked. It was his practice with things 
that were new to him to look at them again and 
again, intensifying the impression of them from day 
to day, until suddenly and spontaneously under- 
standing would come. Before his mental vision, 
chaos would change into order, and the change would 
1 These two witticisms, and especially the latter and livelier of the 
two, illustrate Freud’s theory that wit is something which economises 
thought, and pleases us because of this economy. Wit economises 
thought by diverting attention from the fundamental problem. Cf. 
Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, 1006. 
2 Traumdeutung, p. 267. CHARCOT 
always occur along the same lines. He would grow 
aware of the existence of new types of disease, charac- 
terised by the constant association of symptoms in 
particular groups ; the well-marked, the extreme 
instances, the 4 types,’ emerged to take their places 
in a system ; he would say that the greatest delight 
a man could experience was to see something new, 
that is, to recognise it as new.” 1 
Freud seems to have developed his own talent 
as a seer after this example. But, though a “ seer,” 
he is not a “ visualiser ” to a notable extent, his 
mind being rather of the intellectualising type. He 
certainly does not think in auditory images, being 
unmusical.2 The important thing in the seer’s gift 
is that one should have the courage to confide in it. 
The gift resides in the will to accept one’s own visions. 
By some this is termed “ intuition.” Every one 
might have the daimon of Socrates, an inner voice 
that whispers truths, would he only be bold enough 
to cherish so mysterious a power. But those who 
study natural science hesitate to employ methods 
that dispense with weighing and measuring. Natural 
science is “charged with hidden poison.” 3 
In the manner above described, Charcot had 
repeatedly visualised the attack of major hysteria, 
and he divided its course into four phases. The 
influence of his school was so great that for a time 
every one accepted the subdivisions. Before Charcot, 
no one had distinguished four phases in the hysterical 
paroxysm ; and, to-day, Charcot’s classification of the 
phases has been forgotten. There is no regularity 
in the hysterical paroxysm. The chaos cannot be 
1 Sammlung, vol. i, p. 2. 
3 Goethe, Faust, I, 1. 1986. 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 147. 34 
SIGMUND FREUD 
reduced to order by simple contemplation, and the 
seer’s vision was false. Even more fugitive was the 
vogue of Charcot’s subdivision of hypnosis into 
major hypnosis and minor hypnosis, with its detailed 
description of the three stages of hypnosis. We 
shall see that Freud took over from Charcot some of 
the questionable elements in the seer’s gift; and that 
both he and his pupils are often led astray by their 
fondness for classification, by their love for a tripartite 
subdivision. Those who sit at Freud’s feet are con- 
strained by the power of the master’s personality 
to see things with his eyes—just as Charcot’s disciples 
accepted folly as well as wisdom from the hands of 
their teacher. Thus it has come to pass that some 
of Freud’s pupils who have diverged a little from 
their master are better in a position to direct and 
purify the splendid current of his teaching than are 
the more reverential apostles whose critical faculties 
have been scorched by the fire of his genius. 
When Freud came to Paris, it was with a mind 
filled with the details of cerebral anatomy, though 
he was certainly in search of deliverance from this 
unduly physical outlook. At the Salpetriere, he 
acquired a new conception of the neuroses, one he 
was to continue to hold throughout life. Hysterical 
phenomena had become explicable to him as due 
to a dissociation of consciousness. A study of the 
works of Delboeuf, Binet, and Pierre Janet had led 
him far into the domain of the unconscious mental 
life. Confronting the familiar ego, the ego known to 
consciousness, there must be another ego, at times 
hostile to the other, at times assuming a threatening 
attitude towards the “ official ” ego. 
To the orthodox adherents of the Viennese School CHARCOT 
35 
of medical science, such an outlook could not but 
seem a relapse into medievalism, a relapse into the 
errors of those for whom hysteria had been the 
outcome of demoniacal possession. But young Freud 
was undisturbed by the prospect of a fight, for he 
loved contest, and was a born revolutionist. A case of 
Faust and Mephistopheles ! (The positive principle 
and the negative principle.) Freud delighted to play 
the part of devil’s advocate.1 
Thus the roots of the Freud of later days reach 
back to 1886. On the other hand, the studies of the 
earlier Freud, the young man who had been a cerebral 
anatomist, continued to bear fruit for several years 
after his visit to Paris, for in 1891 he published a 
monograph on Aphasia, and in 1893 a monograph 
on the Cerebral Diplegia of Childhood. They are 
excellent accounts of their respective subjects, con- 
ventional accounts, which now have rather an old- 
world flavour. The monograph on Aphasia, dedicated 
by Freud to his friend Josef Breuer, is the abler of 
the two. There is nothing in either monograph to 
foreshadow the storm which Freud was already 
brewing. 
1 Jenseits des Lustprinzips, p. 56„ CHAPTER THREE 
BREUER AND FREUD 
Freud’s days shortly after his return from Paris 
seem to have been filled with scientific controversy. 
He cut loose from the teachings of the Viennese 
School. A great impression was made upon him 
by the failure of the hopes which Erb had held out 
in his famous treatise on Electrotherapeutics. For 
a long time, Freud kept up communications with 
Paris, since this gave him a firm ground to stand 
upon. He translated some of Charcot’s lectures, 
and subsequently a work by Bernheim. 
Solid support was secured by Freud in his collabora- 
tion with Josef Breuer, who was an old family friend. 
Breuer was an excellent and thoughtful physician. 
He is still living in Vienna, being now well up in 
years, but both the literary and the personal ties 
between him and Freud were severed long ago. 
Freud was too intimate with Breuer for the friendship 
to last. The younger man’s volcanic nature could 
not long endure such an intimacy. 
Breuer was one of those successful practitioners 
who find that the claims of a growing practice divert 
their energies from the science they love. The two 
friends must have enjoyed fascinating hours when 
Freud was pouring out the story of his Parisian 
experiences—was telling of Charcot, hypnotism, and BREUER AND FREUD 
37 
the psychogenic theory of hysteria. Breuer was, 
on the whole, opposed to such theories, and he never 
went so far as to repudiate the anatomists and 
physiologists. As early as 1888, J. P. Mobius had 
enunciated the following definition: “ Hysterical, 
are all the morbid manifestations which are caused 
by ideas.” Breuer held that this assertion went 
too far. Nevertheless, it was from Breuer that 
came the push which was to start the psychoanalytical 
avalanche. In 1881 and 1882, Breuer had under his 
care a girl suffering from hysteria. She was affected 
with paralytic symptoms, disorders of speech, and 
somnambulist tendencies. Breuer applied a new 
method of treatment, which relieved her of all these 
troubles. He hypnotised the patient, and in the 
hypnotic state she was able to remember a great 
deal which in the waking state she had forgotten. 
Among the details thus recalled, were the causes 
of the symptoms from which she suffered. Here are 
some of these reminiscences : 
a. Not able to hear when anyone came into the 
room, absence of mind on these occasions, 108 detailed 
instances, mention of persons and circumstances, 
often with the date; the first instance given was 
when she failed to hear her father coming in. 
b. Failure to understand when several people 
were conversing, 27 instances, the first being failure 
to understand her father and an acquaintance. 
c. Failure to hear when a single individual spoke 
to her, 50 instances. Origin, that her father had 
vainly asked her to fetch some wine, etc. 
As soon as the patient had traced back the thread 
of her memories to an origin, the symptom vanished. 
According to the terminology then introduced by 38 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Breuer and Freud, it had been “ abreacted.” The 
record does not show whether Breuer had treated 
any other cases in the same way. For a time, he 
looked on benevolently while Freud was making use 
of the newly discovered “ cathartic ” method in the 
treatment of a female patient under hypnosis. In 
an interim report published in the year 1893,1 and 
in the major work of 1895,2 Breuer and Freud 
affirmed that the newly discovered method was 
fruitful, and that by its use hysterical patients could 
be freed from their symptoms. But by 1895, Freud 
was already abandoning the use of hypnotism. 
Breuer’s discovery supplemented Charcot’s; or 
it may be regarded as Charcot’s discovery inverted. 
Charcot had shown that by instilling suitable ideas 
it was possible to cause hysterical symptoms. Breuer 
showed that hysterical symptoms vanish when the 
pathogenic idea can be disinterred from the 
unconscious. 
In 1889, Freud made another journey to France, 
Instigated, presumably, by the idea that the applica- 
tion of Breuer’s method demanded an expert knowledge 
of hypnotism, he went, not now to Paris, but to 
Nancy, which was at that time, under Liebeault and 
Bernheim, the chief centre for the study and practice 
of hypnotism. Bernheim’s explanation of hypnotic 
phenomena was extremely simple. “ II n’y a 
pas d’hypnotisme, tout est dans la suggestion.”3 
But he made no attempt to explain the nature 
of suggestion. 
Freud never became a very successful hypnotist, 
1 Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phanomene 
(now included in vol. i of the Sammlung). 
8 Studien iiber Hysterie. 
3 There is no hypnotism ; suggestion explains it all. BREUER AND FREUD 
39 
and for years he has ceased to make any use 
of the hypnotic method. Nevertheless, strangely 
enough, many people imagine that psychoanalysis 
is a kind of hypnosis, or is at any rate a form of 
suggestion. Freud’s main purpose in developing 
the psychoanalytical technique was to render psycho- 
therapeutics independent of hypnotism. Public dis- 
plays of “ hypnotism ” have aroused a very natural 
prejudice against the method. Results gained by the 
use of hypnotism are not durable, simply because, 
in a profound sense, they are dishonest gains. The 
relationship between hypnotism and psychoanalysis 
is akin to the relationship between passive immunisa- 
tion and active immunisation. There is something 
essentially artificial and superficial about the results 
obtained by hypnotism, whereas psychoanalysis goes 
to the root of the matter. 
During Freud’s stay in Nancy an enduring 
impression was made upon his mind by the following 
experiment of Bernheim’s (Experiment A) : 
A posthypnotic suggestion is remarkable enough 
per se. “ You will wake up, and five minutes later 
you will take that umbrella in the corner and open 
it.” In due course the subject acts on the suggestion. 
The operator enquires : “ Why do you open an 
umbrella indoors ? ” We should naturally expect 
the answer : 44 That is what you told me to do.” 
Or perhaps the answer : 44 From an inward impulse 
which I am unable to account for.” Instead of 
giving either of these answers, the subject becomes 
embarrassed, hesitates, and at length furnishes an 
explanation which everyone, except the subject, 
knows to be false. We get some such answer as 
this : 441 wanted to see whether it was my own.” 40 
SIGMUND FREUD 
The subjects of Bernheim’s experiments were 
healthy persons for the most part. Such experiments 
show that in certain circumstances we all act under 
the stress of motives very different from those which 
we believe to be at work. The real factors are in the 
unconscious. We lie without knowing it. At Nancy 
the collapse of the theory of free will and the victory 
of determinism, which philosophical considerations 
had long led us to expect, were made directly visible 
in Bernheim’s experiment. 
Thus three noted men are grouped round the cradle 
of psychoanalysis : Charcot, Breuer, and Bernheim. 
The first and the last have a world-wide fame, quite 
independent of this association. Breuer, on the other 
hand, would have been practically unknown had 
not Freud so persistently trumpeted his name, 
acclaiming him as the real founder of psychoanalysis. 
Others share my surprise that Freud should place 
so much value upon Breuer’s collaboration. Breuer 
was likely to have forgotten his 44 case ” before long, 
for its significance had not become manifest to him 
prior to his conversations with Freud, and he had 
never thought of publishing it. After Charcot’s 
experiments, the next step was obviously to invert 
the order of the enquiry, and to ask : 44 Why do you 
suffer from paralysis, and how long have you had 
this trouble ? ” Indeed, the step was so obvious 
that it must have been taken sooner or later quite 
independently of Breuer, and was taken in France 
by persons who had never heard of the Viennese 
physician. It is true that Freud brought the news 
of Breuer’s case with him to Paris, but Charcot took 
no interest in the affair. Moreover, we shall soon see 
that Freud’s real discoveries, those which form the BREUER AND FREUD 
41 
eontent of what is now known as psychoanalysis, 
have nothing to do with Breuer. 
Even if, before going to Nancy, Freud had been 
unable to devise for himself the reversal of Charcot’s 
experiment, there can be no doubt that he would 
have hit upon the notion after watching Bernheim 
at work, and would have done so if Breuer had never 
existed. Take, for instance, Bernheim’s subjects who 
acted on posthypnotic suggestions, opening umbrellas 
and the like. In a second experiment with such a 
subject (Experiment B) Bernheim would show that 
by suitable remarks he could bring the unconscious 
idea into the patient’s consciousness. He would say : 
“ Excuse me, but you are making a mistake. The 
reason you give is not the real one. Think the matter 
over. Try to recall what happened.” He would go 
on saying things like this until the apparently 
forgotten incidents of the hypnotic trance rose into 
the subject’s conscious memory, and the suggestion 
was recalled to mind. In Paris, Freud had learned 
how hysterical symptoms could be induced under 
hypnosis ; in Nancy he learned that without hypnosis, 
and simply by reiterated persuasion, the subject 
could be induced to trace back a symptom to the 
idea out of which it had originated. 
Inasmuch as Freud was disinclined to practice 
hypnotism, his researches were, so I believe, hindered 
rather than helped by Breuer’s collaboration. Already 
in 1895, when the two men were still working together, 
Freud had abandoned the use of hypnotism and had 
moved on to the practice of psychoanalysis. Breuer’s 
contribution to the discovery of psychoanalysis was 
no more important than Briicke’s contribution to 
the discovery of the ophthalmoscope. Breuer caught 42 
SIGMUND FREUD 
sight of the reflex from the unconscious, much as 
Briicke caught sight of the reflex from the retina. 
But Freud supplied the lens through which the images 
disclosed in psychoanalysis become visible. Breuer, 
in the record of his case, has nothing to tell us of 
the young woman’s fixation upon her father, not 
a word about the transference of affect upon the 
physician, not a word anent sexual symbolism. It 
was inevitable that the dynamic of repression should 
elude him, seeing that he practised hypnotism. The 
whole “ conflict ” was left in the dark. But these 
mechanisms constitute the essence of Freud’s teaching, 
and that is why we have to dissent from Freud when 
he makes so much of the part played by Breuer. 
At times, indeed, Freud realises that Breuer’s contri- 
bution was not very important, after all.1 
Shortly after the publication of the Studies con- 
cerning Hysteria, Breuer began to find it impossible 
to accompany Freud farther along the new path. 
When sexual explanations came to play a larger and 
ever larger part in Freudian theory, and when Freud 
began to interpret dreams, Breuer withdrew from 
collaboration. He returned to his early love, the 
study of organic disease. Not for him the role of 
interpreter or magician ! He was content to be a 
faithful student of such natural phenomena as can 
be scrutinised through a microscope or analysed 
in a test-tube. 
Freud married in 1886, shortly after his return 
from Paris. His wife was born in Hamburg and grew 
to womanhood in a cultured environment. She has 
always been an admirable helpmate—not perhaps 
1 Sammlung, vol. iv, pp. 1 et seq. BREUER AND FREUD 
43 
an easy task for the wife of a man who is such a demon 
for work. Even to-day, Freud receives patients 
from nine in the morning until eight in the evening. 
His literary tasks—writings for publication, and an 
enormous correspondence—occupy him till about 
1 a.m. Then he sleeps for seven hours. He is a 
remarkably good sleeper, and this probably explains 
his marvellous power of sustained work. 
Six children, three boys and three girls, were born 
to the Freuds between 1887 and 1895. He is a good 
father, just as he is a good son. (His mother is still 
living, now nearly ninety.) 
I mention these details because those who know 
Freud only by repute might perhaps be disposed to 
think of him as a rebel in conduct as well as a revolu- 
tionist in ideas. His writings have undermined 
the credit of the conventional code of sexual morality. 
Personally, he walks straitly, resembling in this his 
forerunner Nietzsche. 
All who have entered Freud’s immediate circle 
have derived the impression that he is a man with a 
well-balanced and strongly moral personality. He 
is austere towards others, and anything but indulgent 
where his own case is concerned ; and, for all his 
severity, he displays that old-fashioned Austrian 
courtesy which is now threatened with extinction. 
He is almost more liberal in his benefactions than his 
circumstances might seem to justify. If my account 
makes it plain that there are flaws in his character, 
the reader must be good enough to remember that 
we owe our knowledge of most of these flaws to the 
man’s amazing frankness. In his writings, and 
especially in Die Traumdeutung and Zur Psycho- 
palhologie des Alltagslebens, he has, as he phrases it, 44 
SIGMUND FREUD 
depicted himself as the only rogue in a company of 
immaculate individuals. The usual practice of us all 
is to conceal our weaknesses with the utmost care, 
and to conceal them from ourselves as well as from 
others. The wolves wear sheep’s clothing. Pride 
apes humility ; envy wears the mask of good will. 
But confession is followed by absolution. Freud 
has analysed himself, and has given the results to 
the world in the two books just mentioned. These 
are the royal gifts of a man of genius. Assuredly 
the world that receives this largesse would be most 
ungrateful to don a pair of critical spectacles and to 
read from these books : “ Oho ! you are one of these 
envious wretches, a man who detests those whom he 
calls friends, a fellow whose main desire in life was 
to become a professor—and so on, and so on.” We 
shall do better to admire the genius, to value the man 
with all his faults—the man whose talents are so 
intimately intertwined with these alleged faults that 
the defects become merits. Genius is perforce solitary. 
This consideration explains all the questionable traits 
in Freud’s character. For my part, I have only one 
complaint to make of him, he smokes too much. 
But even this fits into the picture. He can only 
think in a cloud of tobacco smoke ! 
Here are Freud’s own conclusions regarding him- 
self : “It has always been necessary to my affective 
life that I should have both an intimate friend and 
a cordially detested enemy. I have invariably been 
able to satisfy my needs in this respect, getting a 
new friend and a new enemy as required. Often 
enough, the method of childhood has been so per- 
sistent that the same individual has been both 
friend and enemy—though not now, of course, BREUER AND FREUD 
45 
both friend and enemy at the same time, or altern- 
ately friend and enemy several times in succession, 
as may happen to one in early childhood.” 
This peculiar tendency towards attraction and 
repulsion is one which Freud shares with the magnetic 
pole. He refers it to his early struggles with his 
nephew John. Since John was a year older than 
Sigmund, the latter was unable to enforce his avun- 
cular authority. At first the friends who had to be 
repelled were older than Freud ; they were fathers, 
so to speak. Brothers came next in the series. Freud, 
as he grows old, sees himself surrounded by the 
members of the primitive horde, every one of whom 
is longing to get his teeth fixed in the progenitor’s 
throat. But, behind them all stands little Sigmund, 
defending himself, and saying : “ Me slap him ’cos 
he slap me ! ” 1 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 298. CHAPTER FOUR 
ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
In 1892, Briicke’s “ formidable blue eyes ” were 
closed for ever. Meynert, the cerebral anatomist, 
who had been Freud’s clinical teacher, died during 
the same year. I cannot regard it as a matter of 
chance that the first of Freud’s joint publications 
with Breuer, the first indication that he had entered 
a new path, should have been published in 1893. 
Briicke and Meynert, Freud’s scientific fathers, had 
both been champions of the organic view of disease ; 
not until after their death could their “ son ” openly 
revolt, not until then could he impulsively turn 
away from anatomy and physiology. 
The cathartic method of Breuer and Freud was 
the first in which an unconscious mental conflict was 
made the starting-point of analytical work. It is 
very remarkable that in the same year (1895) in 
which the Studies concerning Hysteria appeared, 
Freud should have published a paper upon “ Anxiety 
Neurosis,” in which he denied the significance of 
mental conflict in a domain where the working of 
mental conflict would seem to be most obvious, 
namely in the domain of anxiety.1 
1 Ueber die Berechtigung von der Neurasthenie einen bestimmten 
Symptomenkornplex als “ Angstneurose ” abzutrennen, Sammlung, ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
47 
In this paper, Freud does not deal only with 
anxiety. He refers to a considerable number of 
sensations and other morbid phenomena which are 
to be regarded as “ equivalents ” of anxiety : palpita- 
tion, dyspnoea, sweating, tremor, vertigo, diarrhoea, 
formication, etc. Although the title of the essay was 
modest, conveying the implication that Freud was 
proposing to detach only a small group of symptoms 
from the general concept of functional nervous dis- 
order, the reader comes in the end to the conclusion 
that all neurotic phenomena are contemplated by 
the author as equivalents of (it would be better to 
say, masks for) anxiety. The anxiety problem is, 
in fact, the core of the problem of neurosis. Anxiety 
is an invariable element in these cases, but is not 
always present to consciousness, for in many instances 
it has been “ converted ” into a bodily symptom. 
We have to become familiar with the difficult notion 
that anxiety is common in persons who are not aware 
of it. 
Had Freud realised that, under the pretext of 
detaching a small group of symptoms from the general 
domain of neurosis, he was really proposing to subsume 
the whole field of functional nervous disorder under 
the concept of “ anxiety and its equivalents,” it is 
likely that he would have shrunk back in alarm. 
This much is certain, that in the very same year in 
which he taught (in the “ Studies ”) that the neuroses 
arose from mental conflicts, he discovered, approach- 
ing the matter from another side, the “ actual neu- 
roses,” which were nof caused by mental conflict 
vol. i, No. 5.—In Brill’s transl ion of the Selected Papers (see Biblio- 
graphy) this appears under ti 3 title, On the Right to Separate from 
Neurasthenia a Definite Symptom-Complex as “ Anxiety Neurosis.” 48 
SIGMUND FREUD 
but by other noxious influences. In addition to a 
particular form of headache accompanied by gastric 
disorder, which was presumed to be the outcome 
of masturbation, he described anxiety states which 
he considered to be due to the practice of coitus 
interruptus. “ In the phobias of the anxiety neuroses, 
the anxiety shows itself, on psychological analysis, 
to be no further reducible, . . . and it cannot be 
cured by psychotherapeutics.” 
During the days when I was one of Freud’s 
intimates, Stekel would often ask Freud whether 
he could conceive of a pure case of anxiety neurosis 
in which the anxiety could arise out of the actual 
noxious effects of coitus interruptus without the 
intermediation of any unconscious ideas. Freud was 
in a dilemma. He said that he was now consulted 
only by persons suffering from the graver forms of 
anxiety neurosis, those in which hysteria existed as 
a complication. Nevertheless, he would not admit 
that pure types of his anxiety neurosis did not exist. 
Since Stekel was able again and again to describe 
anxiety states due to mental conflicts, Freud suggested 
to this importunate disciple the use of the name 
“ anxiety hysteria ” to denote such cases. Since 
then, Freud and his intimates (among whom Stekel 
is no longer numbered) have continued to recognise 
two types of nervous anxiety. In one set of cases 
the trouble has no roots in the unconscious, and is 
termed anxiety neurosis; but the cases in which 
unconscious mental conflict is operative are spoken 
of as anxiety hysteria. But anxiety neurosis, accord- 
ing to Freud and his immediate followers, is not 
amenable to psychoanalysis. 
I believe the distinction to be unsound. With ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
49 
Stekel,1 I am convinced that anxiety is invariably 
due to conscious or unconscious ideas. Freud has 
taught us how we should question our patients. 
When a sufferer from anxiety consults me, I ask : 
“ What are you afraid of ? ” I refuse to be satisfied 
with the answer: “ I don’t know.” Bernheim’s 
Experiment B shows that we must not trust the 
patient in such cases even when the answer seems 
reasonable. The real cause is unconscious, and 
must be sought for until it is found. 
Coitus interruptus is practised far too often for 
us to be able to regard it as a cause of anxiety states. 
When this objection was made, Freud’s answer was 
that a “ constitutional factor ” must cooperate in 
the production of anxiety states. The tubercle 
bacillus was here, there, and everywhere; it did not 
give rise to tuberculosis except in predisposed persons. 
Unfortunately, the idea of this constitutional 
factor predisposing to anxiety states is extremely 
nebulous. No doubt, hereditary taint plays its part 
in the causation of disease; but the idea that the sick 
and the hale were all bound in chains forty or fifty 
years ago is a gloomy one, and Freud’s original aim 
was to free us from this tyranny by substituting 
the theory of repression. If there really are disorders 
that arise out of repressed ideas, anxiety can have 
no other cause than the ideas which give rise to it. 
In neurotic patients, these ideas are unconscious. 
The task of the psychoanalyst is to bring them into 
consciousness, and to render them harmless by the 
light of reason. 
We have seen that Freud reached the turning- 
1 Wilhelm Stekel, Nervose Angstzustande und ihre Behandlung.— 
For English translation, see Bibliography.  SIGMUND FREUD 
50 
point in 1895. His new departure was leading him 
so far away from the teachings in which he had been 
brought up that he was aghast at his own discoveries. 
As far as his inner self was concerned, Briicke and 
Meynert were still alive, and under the admonishment 
of their eyes he lagged a long way behind Charcot 
and Mobius, who had both taught, before Freud, 
that all neurotic symptoms were due to ideas. Freud’s 
paper on the “ actual neuroses ” (somatic neuroses) 
represents the inward negative which his mind opposed 
to the teaching of the Studien published the same year. 
Precisely because of this mistake, Freud’s work 
on the actual neuroses was generally acclaimed. It 
is true that in this paper we find the first indication 
of what was subsequently stigmatised as Freud’s 
“ one-sidedness ”—the first references to the sexual 
factor in disease. I need hardly say that many 
writers before Freud had included conditions apper- 
taining to the sexual life among the causes of neuras- 
thenia. Where Freud was an innovator was in his 
contention that the sexual life played a predominant 
part in every case ; and that other noxious influences, 
such as overwork, sorrow, mortified ambition, loss 
of money, and the like, need hardly be considered. 
This was the first sound of the trumpet with which 
the awakening giant proclaimed his sexual theory 
to the world. Ostensibly (though we, to-day, are 
better informed) Freud was illuminating no more than 
a small section of the vast domain of neurasthenia; 
and only of the diseases within this limited section 
did he seem to say that they were due to sexual factors. 
He found favour, therefore, for having at length 
given due place to the neglected sexual factors of 
disease. People were delighted at the direct trans- ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
51 
formation of a noxious influence (masturbation, coitus 
interruptus) into a morbid entity. For those who 
were trained to think of disease in anatomical and 
other physical terms, the theory that unconscious 
ideas could cause disease was hard of digestion. The 
incredible notion that coitus interruptus could be 
a cause of anxiety was accepted. The doctrine of 
the actual neuroses (somatic neuroses), one of the 
few defects in the splendid edifice of Freudian research, 
found its way into the textbooks, and there it still 
remains. Students were told nothing of the great 
truths enunciated by Freud; but the untenable 
notion of the actual neuroses is now a part of official 
medical teaching. Freud’s immediate followers con- 
tinue to defend it—Ferenczi as recently as 1922. 
The ipse dixits of the master seem unchallengeable 
to his disciples until the master himself repudiates 
them. It would be well if Freud were to repudiate 
the theory of the actual neuroses (somatic neuroses) 
and thus to save his faithful pupils the labour of 
continuing to support this error. 
Freud is not fond of discussing his earlier writings. 
When they are attacked, he will engage in savage 
rearguard skirmishes. For instance, he once main- 
tained that the process of birth, the infant’s forcible 
passage through the narrows of the pelvic outlet, 
was the primary cause of the emotion of anxiety. 
He still held this opinion in 1923. Freud, like his 
teacher Charcot, is a seer, and suffers accordingly. 
He looks at phenomena long and often, until they 
assume the aspect he wants them to assume. 
I have seen any number of children immediately 
after birth, and have never been able to detect in 
them any signs of such affects—which, indeed, do  SIGMUND FREUD 
52 
not appear until a much later stage of mental develop- 
ment. Freud himself enquires how we are to explain 
the occurrence of anxiety in children delivered by 
caesarian section. At first Freud maintained in all 
seriousness that those who had been, like Macduff, 
from their mother’s womb untimely ripped, knew 
nothing of anxiety. Subsequently he put forward 
the notion of racial inheritance. The predisposition 
to anxiety had been instilled into our minds by the 
natal experiences of countless generations, so that an 
individual Macduff could not escape this heritage. 
The objector may enquire : “ What about birds ? 
They are not born after the mammalian fashion, 
but they suffer from anxiety.” Freud’s answer 
runs : “I am only concerned with human beings. 
I don’t know how it is with animals.” 
That is what I call a rearguard skirmish. 
Anxiety is characteristic of the whole animal 
kingdom. Anxiety in face of actual dangers is, in 
Freudian terminology, “ objective anxiety ” (Real- 
angst). Anxiety for which there is no justification 
in danger actually present or reasonably anticipated 
is “ neurotic anxiety.” There is no such thing 
as unmotived anxiety. Every anxiety is objective 
or real anxiety, but the neurotic is not conscious of 
what he dreads. The motive for the anxiety is 
hidden in the unconscious. 
I once saw a horse shy at sight of an airplane. 
This airplane was on a covered lorry which was 
moving backwards towards the horse. The shape 
of the plane showed weirdly through the covering, 
resembling that of a plesiosaurus or some other 
prehistoric monster. The horse had never seen any- 
thing of the kind before, and was terrified. Again, ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
53 
I once watched a little boy, seven months old, to 
whom a teddy bear was offered as a plaything. 
The child drew back, obviously alarmed by the hairy 
creature, this being the first time that any anxiety 
had been manifested by the infant. I have no doubt 
that anxiety is racial, is phylogenetic, and that the 
experience upon which the feeling of anxiety depends 
lies deep in the unconscious. 
The psychologist has to decide whether he is 
aiming at the formulation of philosophy (the goal of 
philosophy being to discuss the ultimate significance 
of all things) ; or whether, like other students of 
natural science, he is content to observe facts. Does 
he want to know what anxiety really is in its essence ; 
or will he be satisfied to work with concepts regarding 
anxiety which are quite clear for practical purposes 
however obscure they may be metaphysically con- 
sidered ; just as the physicist works with “ forces ” ? 
The physicist measures forces and makes calculations 
about them without concerning himself as to the 
essential nature of force. He does not seek to look 
behind the phenomena. His metaphysical needs do 
not become active until he has grown old and weary 
of measurements and calculations, as has happened 
in the cases of Mach and Ostwald. Years ago, Freud 
used to say, quizzically, that he did not read the 
philosophers, for unfortunately he could not under- 
stand them.1 But, nowr that he is getting on in 
years, he slips a volume of Schopenhauer into his 
pocket when he goes for a holiday. Like so many 
others whose life-work has been in the field of natural 
science, he turns towards metaphysics at long last. 
1 Cf. also Traumdeutung, p. 150. 54 
SIGMUND FREUD 
In the terminology of Freud and his school, it is 
spoken of as “ metapsyetiology.” Now, natural 
science is a good thing, and metaphysics is another 
good thing. But to mingle the twain leads to 
confusion. 
If a psychopathologist teaches us that the anxiety 
of neurotic patients always has a cause, even though 
no cause be manifest; if he insists that we shall 
always find an adequate cause if we look for it in 
the unconscious, and that the anxiety is therefore 
well grounded—this is descriptive natural science. 
Such a mechanism for the production of anxiety can 
be found by those who look for it, and can be demon- 
strated by them to others. The theory that coitus 
interruptus may be a direct cause of anxiety would 
also come within the domain of descriptive natural 
science, provided that this causal sequence (however 
incredible) could actually be shown to exist. But 
since the demonstration is not forthcoming, Freud, 
being loath to give up his idea, elaborates meta- 
physical mechanisms which are ingenious and pro- 
found, but belong to another sphere than that in 
which we work with our patients in order to help 
them. 
Consider the following instance. A girl has a 
father-fixation. She is unaware of the fact, for 
moral considerations have led her to repress her 
incestuous impulses, so that they have become 
unconscious. She suffers from anxiety states. Freud 
believes that the repressed libido may find its way 
back into consciousness in the form of anxiety. How 
does this happen ? In virtue of what witchery does 
it occur ? 
“ The matter is by no means plain. . . . The ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
55 
topical dynamic of the anxiety development is still 
obscure. We do not know what mental energies are 
given out in the process, or from what psychical 
symptoms they derive. I cannot promise you that 
I shall be able to answer these questions.” 1 
Elsewhere, Freud speaks of anxiety as the negative 
of libido; and when he teaches that libido is always 
masculine, we may doubtless supplement this state- 
ment by saying that anxiety is its feminine counterpart. 
These assertions are, in fact, obscure, and of little 
account for practical purposes. An alternative view 
of the matter is perspicuous enough. The daughter 
is afraid of herself, afraid of the might of these 
impulses which are urging her towards something 
she loathes. From the subterranean conflict between 
morality and impulse, anxiety rises to the surface. 
The girl is afraid of herself. She feels that something 
terrible might happen, feels it plainly. But she is 
not intellectually aware what this terrible thing is, 
and therefore she does not know why she is afraid. 
She can be helped by psychoanalysis. But I need 
hardly say that, upon this plane of natural science, 
we do not know what anxiety is per se; and we 
do not know the essential nature of morality, 
conscience, impulse, and the unconscious. In his 
practice, the psychoanalyst can ignore such theoretical 
refinements. Indeed, he must not allow metaphysical 
considerations to interfere with his labours. 
It seems to me indubitable that Freud’s only 
reason for assuming the existence of a causal relation- 
ship between masturbation and coitus interruptus 
on the one hand, and anxiety or its equivalents on 
1 Vorlesungen, Taschenausgabe, p. 428. 56 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the other, was the obvious fact that the former are 
often the temporal antecedents of the latter. But 
the real connexion is the following. 
Masturbation is neither a vice nor a disease, but 
a normal form of human sexual activity. Per se, 
it is harmless. Had Stekel’s only contributions to 
medical science been the enunciation of these propo- 
sitions and their vigorous advocacy,1 he would 
deserve to have a statue erected in his honour by 
the liberated youth of the world. Since masturbation 
is condemned by the canons of contemporary 
civilisation and by the principles of ordinary education, 
our young folk are forced to run atilt against wind- 
mills. In the struggle they grow pale, become timid, 
conscience-stricken, and anxious. What makes them 
ill is not masturbation, but the struggle against 
masturbation. 
Still, the foregoing statements concerning mastur- 
bation are not exhaustive. In most cases, mastur- 
bation is merely a transitional practice, one which 
fills in the gap between the awakening of the genital 
sexual life and the conquest of the mate. If, for any 
reason, this conquest cannot be achieved, the practice 
of masturbation is apt to persist; and behind the 
act lurks a fantasy which is often so unethical and 
so repulsive to consciousness that it is thrust down 
into the unconscious. The repression of these perverse 
or criminal images and desires may certainly give 
rise to headache, or to some other form of neurosis ; 
may arouse a consciousness of guilt, low spirits, 
melancholia, suicidal inclinations. In these cases, 
likewise, the remedy is not to be found in the 
prohibition of masturbation, but in unearthing the 
1 Stekel, Onanie und Homosexualitat, third edition. ANXIETY NEUROSIS 
57 
repressed fantasies by means of psychoanalysis. The 
gorgon’s head must be brought into the open. 
The owner-superintendent of an Austrian home 
for nervous diseases had read Stekel without fully 
understanding that author’s drift. A young man 
who was one of his resident patients, and who later 
came to me for treatment, had been given the following 
prescription: “You must masturbate! At least 
twice a week! ” This amazing neurologist knew 
nothing of the evil spirits that dwell in the unconscious. 
The lad was affected with an unconscious longing 
to kill his father and all his brothers and sisters in 
order that he might be left alone with his mother. 
The doctor’s prescription meant that he was, in fancy, 
to commit murder, to wade through slaughter, at 
least twice a week. By following the advice, he had 
been brought to the verge of lunacy. 
The working of the imagination is the quintessence 
of sexual intercourse, and classifications of the types 
of intercourse in which this feature is ignored lead 
us hopelessly astray. If two people love one another, 
any conceivable form of sexual intercourse they 
have a fancy for is normal and ennobling—if we 
must pass ethical judgments at all. On the other 
hand, what is termed “ normal sexual intercourse ” 
is a masturbatory act if the participants do not 
love one another. Inasmuch as human beings have 
an intense need of love, such intercourse is always 
accompanied by fantasies. The fact is familiar to 
every reader of Goethe’s Elective Affinities. Each 
of the partners in such a coitus is picturing 
an imaginary happiness, and is annihilating the 
actual companion. In these cases it is assuredly 
better and more economical to masturbate. The 58 
SIGMUND FREUD 
imagination can work more freely when one is 
alone. 
Per se, coitus interruptus is just as harmless as 
masturbation. But let us suppose that one of the 
parties to an interrupted coitus is out of tune with 
the other. Then, in connexion with the act, there 
will arise and will be repressed such thoughts as 
these : “ Why am I bound to her ? She does not 
please me. If only I were free ! If only we had 
no children ! Perhaps she will die ; perhaps my wife 
will die.” In such cases, the moral authority in the 
mind will protest against the repressed ideas, and 
when the evil wishes make their way to the surface 
anxiety ensues. 
Coitus interruptus is practised thousands upon 
thousands of times without ill consequences. Indeed, 
I am almost inclined to believe that it is quite harm- 
less in the case of unmarried persons. Hamlet’s wise 
saying must be remembered in this connexion : 
“ There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking 
makes it so.” CHAPTER FIVE 
DREAM INTERPRETATION 
Freud lost his father in 1896. He tells us that the 
death of the father is the most important occurrence 
in a man’s life.1 While the father still lives, the 
son is his child, and therefore remains a child. 
When the father dies, the son himself becomes a 
father, no matter whether he has children or not. 
From the father we take over the germ-plasm, the 
immortal part in us, whose mortal guardian we are 
for the brief span of life. As a rule, we do not 
enter into effective guardianship of this property 
until after the decease of the former guardian of the 
entail. As long as the father lives, we remain 
linked to the earlier generations, to the past, and 
therefore to childhood. An invisible umbilical cord 
connects us with the father until he disappears into 
the tomb. But at this turning-point in life the tie 
with the past is suddenly broken, and our gaze is 
henceforward directed towards the future, towards 
future generations—towards the sun. From of old, 
the sun has been the symbol of the father. 
The cutting of the umbilical cord which connects 
us to the past, this final consolidation of individuality, 
is never achieved without internal struggles. A 
1 Traumdeutung, Introduction. 60 
SIGMUND FREUD 
modicum of love (and, since feelings are bipolar, a 
modicum likewise of its counterpart, hate) is set 
free, and has to find attachment elsewhere. Friend- 
ships are formed or broken; marriages, often rash 
marriages, are apt to take place at this period. The 
mind is bewildered, so that strange outbreaks are 
prone to occur. Those who write biographies, and 
those who read them, should never forget the date 
of the father’s death. Here is the key with which 
we can unlock hidden doors. 
I have tried to show that the death of the 
spiritual fathers (Charcot, too, died in 1893) had 
a marked influence on Freud’s creative activities. 
Even after 1893, however, he remained under the 
influence of Breuer, the old family friend; and 
he was still much influenced by the teachings of 
others. But after the death of Freud senior, Sig- 
mund grew to his full stature and became Freud. 
In rapid succession were now written the books 
that were eventually to be published under the 
titles : Die Traumdeutung (1900); Psychopathologie 
des Alltagslebens (1901); and Drei Abhandlungen 
zur Sexualtheorie (1905). Freud was already forty 
when his father died.1 Ostwald has a theory that 
great men find themselves early. Sigmund Freud, 
at any rate, was an exception. 
1 In the edifice of Freudian doctrine, an increasingly important 
place is given to the father. In Freud’s latest work, Das Ich und das 
Es, 1923, he refers conscience and the ego-ideal or super-ego to the 
father complex.—The pianist M. R. recently told me the following 
story : “ It must have been in the seventies when my father and I 
met Freud senior one day in the street. At the moment, I was arguing 
with my father about something. Freud senior laughingly reproved 
me : ‘ What, do you contradict your father ? My Sigmund’s little 
toe is cleverer than my head, but he would never dare to contradict 
me!”’ DREAM INTERPRETATION 
61 
Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams has been fiercely 
attacked. The dullards who believe that they have 
a lien upon the human intelligence, and who always 
use it to darken counsel, are still shaking their heads 
over this book. Yet all who study dreams by the 
method discovered by Freud and elaborated by his 
pupils, are absolutely convinced that the Freudian 
theory of dream interpretation is sound. 
The dream related by the dreamer is not the 
dream that has been dreamed. If we wish to learn 
the hidden significance of the dream, we must reach 
back from its ostensible meaning to the thoughts 
of which it is the mask. Like a cipher, the dream 
can only be understood with the aid of a key. 
Communications written in cipher are, at first sight, 
meaningless. So with dreams ; but the deciphered 
dream invariably has a deep significance. The 
dream gives expression to impulses that are deeply 
hidden. Forbidden wishes, feelings of love and hate, 
criminal trends, delusions of grandeur, self-adulation, 
longing for death—all these manifest themselves 
in dreams, but their meaning is so artfully covered 
up that the dreamer is unable to grasp the significance 
of his own dream. The dream distortion is a good 
thing for the dreamer, for it relieves him of respon- 
sibility for his dream. Freud played the part of 
Prometheus. Not only did he bring the light which 
illumines the dark recesses of the dream, but he also 
forced us to assume responsibility for our dreams. 
So long as dreams were unmeaning froth (“ songes- 
mensonges ”) there was no need to trouble about 
them. Undoubtedly, our responsibilities grow heavier 
when dreams are included within the domain of 
conscience; when we recognise that our dreams 62 
SIGMUND FREUD 
give expression to our evil impulses, to our protests 
against morality and civilisation; and when the 
bearing of the Delphic precept “ Know thyself ” 
undergoes so unexpected an extension. That is 
why Freud’s discovery has been so unwelcome. 
The dead return—the dead thoughts of evil, the 
shapes that we would fain keep from the light of day, 
the thoughts that had been thrust down into the 
Tartarus of the unconscious. In our dreams, we 
murder our nearest and dearest. We revel in 
perversions at which we shudder in our waking hours. 
All our criminal instincts are unchained in the 
dream. We are venturesome, too, in dreams, for 
when we are locked in slumber we are not exposed 
to the dangers that would gather round us did we 
actually carry out all that we do imaginatively in 
dreams. No one knows what we dream. We do 
not even know it ourselves, for the dream distortion 
hides from us, as from others, the true meaning of 
our orgies. Dreams that might betray us too readily 
are forgotten ; they cannot pass the censor. 
There were thinkers before Freud who recognised 
the significance of dreams. Freud mentions as fore- 
runner Josef Popper-Lynkeus (ob. 1921). Others 
quote passages showing that Nietzsche had grasped 
the meaning of the dream.1 But there is a great 
difference between the flash of genius which dis- 
closes a truth in an aphorism, a truth that lapses 
a moment later into the ocean of oblivion; and the 
systematic conquest of a truth, so that it becomes 
one of the permanent acquisitions of science. When 
Freud wras told that Nietzsche had foreshadowed 
many of the discoveries of psychoanalysis and much 
1 Cf., for instance, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, I, 12 and 13. DREAM INTERPRETATION 
63 
of the Freudian sexual theory, he answered that 
he knew little of Nietzsche, and that he must 
renounce the pleasure of studying Nietzsche’s works, 
for he did not want “to be hampered by any 
preconceptions that might interfere with the elabora- 
tion of psychoanalytical impressions.”1 This was 
rather a strange thing to say. Nietzsche’s writings 
are to-day part of the common heritage of culture. 
We meet his ideas at every turn—in the street, 
in the tea-shop, in conversations between analysts 
and their patients. Freud may refuse to make 
direct acquaintance with Nietzsche’s thoughts, but 
he will still have these thoughts in his mind, and 
they will appear there in a garbled form. There 
are no water-tight doors by which he will be able 
to exclude the current of Nietzschean ideas. Indeed, 
Freud has changed his mind, and now takes Nietzsche 
as well as Schopenhauer with him on his travels. 
“ The dream is the royal road into the uncon- 
scious.” Now that we understand the language 
of dreams—an advance made in 1900 after a pause 
of several millenniums—the doors to the unconscious 
have been opened, and it will be futile to struggle 
against entering the paths that lead into this under- 
world. Hitherto none but sincere Christians have 
known, in their humility, that they were miserable 
sinners. To-day, the man who prides himself upon 
his culture and refinement, the gentleman, the good 
citizen, is compelled to recognise his own criminal 
and anarchical impulses, and his responsibility there- 
for. The days of hushing-up are over; the reign 
of psychoanalysis begins. Incipit Zarathustra. If, 
in their inward selves, human beings are lower 
1 Sammlung, vol. iv, p. 12. 64 
SIGMUND FREUD 
animals, it is well that they should be aware of the 
fact, and should not deceive themselves and others. 
The lower animals can be tamed more effectively when 
we know their sinister powers, and their “ vices.” 
For decades, the nations had lived together peace- 
fully, and had come to regard war as impossible. 
Then, in a moment, war, in its incredible brutality 
was upon them. One would have thought that 
the horrors of mass murder would never have been 
forgotten. Yet what do we find ? If any one 
who was at the front tries to talk of his experiences, 
people turn a deaf ear. Should he write a book 
on the subject, no publisher would look at it. “We 
don’t want any war-books, thank you ; the public 
is sick of the topic.” People wish to forget these 
horrors. If our forefathers, those who had experi- 
enced war, had continually impressed upon their 
children what war really is, it is possible that the 
thought of these dread realities might have prevented 
the recent war. But our ancestors failed to do their 
duty, and we are heedlessly repeating their sin 
of omission. Since we are too cowardly to look 
into war’s hideous countenance, since we will not 
keep this gorgon’s head in our consciousness— 
because we repress it—it remains alive in the uncon- 
scious, to emerge, ultimately, and devour us. We 
make war because, in our innermost selves, we 
are murderers. Did we know that we are murderers, 
we should be murderers no longer, for murder is 
forbidden by the conventions of our civilisation. 
But we remain murderers because we refuse to 
recognise that we are murderers. 
It is the same with all our passions. The munition 
manufacturer dreams of war; the henpecked husband DREAM INTERPRETATION 
65 
dreams of free love ; the woman whose husband is 
impotent dreams of athletes and operatic tenors. 
The munition manufacturer does not know that he 
has dreamed of wars which will bring him enormous 
profits. Nevertheless he feels guilty because of the 
dream which he does not clearly remember. He 
fosters mass murder, and his sense of guilt makes 
him pious, makes him a man of good works. We 
should prefer him to live a less exemplary life, for 
we have to pay for his benefactions with the lives 
of our children. 
The wife who murders her husband in dreams 
makes up for it by lavishing so much attention 
on him that the poor fellow is driven almost crazy. 
The henpecked husband dreams of obscene adventures, 
and atones for his dreams in daily life by sancti- 
moniousness, by frowning upon the most innocent 
pleasures. Unconscious ideas work, though they 
are unconscious. Our guiltlessness is no more than 
apparent. In reality, we are all under the harrow. 
The consciousness of guilt is so universal that it 
has given rise to the doctrine of original sin, and 
metaphysical explanations have been excogitated 
to account for it. Then came Freud, and said : 
You are choosing the wrong way of trying to free 
yourself from the burden of your sins. You are 
transferring the entries against you from the book 
Consciousness to the book Unconsciousness, and you 
fancy that when you have entered them in the 
latter you can disregard them henceforward. But 
your creditors are not satisfied. In your dreams, 
they remind you of your debts; and since you 
refuse to pay, you are committed to the debtor’s 
prison. The credit entries in the book Consciousness 66 
SIGMUND FREUD 
ought to be balanced by heavy entries on the debit 
side. But you have falsified your accounts by 
erasing these debit entries from your ostensible 
balance sheet. 
The interpretation of dreams increases our re- 
sponsibility. Were this all it has done for us, we 
might fancy that it has made life harder. But the 
sense of guilt is of old date. Popper-Lynkeus calls 
it “ the world’s cry of anguish.” For thousands of 
years the consciousness of guilt has laughed reason 
to scorn, though before the days of Freud no one 
knew what the sense of guilt really signified. 
Ein wenig besser wiird’ er leben, 
Hatt’st Du ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts 
gegeben. 
Er nennt’s Vernunft. . . .1 
If the dream is a fulfilment of our secret wishes, 
we may let the dream have free play, without trying 
to destroy its wheel-work by some sort of infernal 
machine. We are not to blame for the dream. The 
criminal impulse exists within us, and finds harmless 
vent in the dream, injuring no one, and making its 
way into consciousness in so distorted a form that 
it does not burden our conscience—or at least does 
not load our conscience with the full weight of the 
transgression. Thus the dream frees us from the 
hidden wishes whose unattainability has been a 
heavy load. 
Dream interpretation, in fact, is charged with 
“ verborgnes Gift und von der Arzenei ist’s kaum 
1 Faust, I, 283 et seq. 
He might live a little better, 
Hadst Thou not given him the semblance of heaven’s light. 
He calls it Reason. . . . DREAM INTERPRETATION 
67 
zu unterscheiden.”1 Of the milliards of dreams 
woven in our brains, only an infinitesimal portion, 
happily, is interpreted. Freud’s own patients forced 
dream interpretation upon him; they were con- 
tinually telling him their dreams, until at length 
the psychologist realised that the sufferers were 
trying to convey a message to him in the language 
of the dream ; he had to study this new tongue, 
as the sages of fable studied the speech of the birds. 
For ten years after 1900, when the first edition 
of Die Traumdeutung appeared, Echo was dumb. 
Thenceforward, many began to use the new instru- 
ment, and not always to the advantage of their 
fellow-men. Let no one who has the luck to be 
care-free try to lift the veil that hides the real 
meaning of his dreams ! Dream interpretation as 
a social amusement has incalculable consequences. 
Leave the poor little pigs in their sty, if they are 
happy there, and grunt merrily over their trough. 
But when it behoves us to clean out a pig-sty, we 
must do it thoroughly. An incomplete psycho- 
analysis, a dream interpretation severed from its 
connexions with the general course of the life to 
which it belongs, is as dangerous as an operation 
which the surgeon has left half-finished. We may 
be warned by the suicide of the analysts who 
have studied the dreams of their patients, and 
have seen a caricature of their own unconscious 
mirrored in these dreams. Seized with horror, they 
have cut their own lives short. Otto Weininger, 
for example, practised a fragmentary self-analysis ; 
and the glimpse into his unconscious droved him 
1 Faust, I, 1986. 
. . . hidden poison, scarcely to be distinguished from a medicament. 68 
SIGMUND FREUD 
to suicide. Three among the distinguished psycho- 
analysts I have personally known, Schrotter, Tausk, 
and Silberer, ended their own days. These were 
all members of the small psychoanalytical circle 
in Vienna. Others may follow in their steps. The 
practice of psychoanalysis should only be under- 
taken by persons whose minds are well poised and 
thoroughly healthy. Moreover, unless Freud’s dis- 
covery is to become a curse, as cocaine has become 
a curse to drug-addicts, its use for therapeutic 
purposes must be restricted to those who labour and 
are heavy laden. Yet who among us is not heavy 
laden ? Above all, the practising psychoanalyst must 
begin his work by being, himself, thoroughly analysed. 
The craft cannot be learned from books. Immunity 
against the dangers of psychoanalysis cannot be 
acquired except by one whose own unconscious 
has been elaborately swept and garnished. 
Everyman is married. His wife no longer pleases 
him. First of all, she is ever at hand, and he can 
possess her without the smallest trouble. Secondly, 
she is an expensive luxury. Thirdly, he is tied 
to her for life. His friend’s wife is much more 
attractive. None of the drawbacks just mentioned 
exist in her case. He dreams of his friend’s wife, 
dreams that she comes to him, and that he delights 
in possessing her. But Everyman is a man of high 
principles, and would not readily betray his friend ! 
Besides, he is not aware of his passion for his friend’s 
wife. Originally, he was opposed to his friend’s 
marriage, fearing that the friendship might suffer 
from the intrusion of a third person. Only a skilled 
interpreter can recognise the adulterous thought DREAM INTERPRETATION 
69 
in his dream. Everyman had dreamed of a mountain 
slope, and of an excavation in it beside which he was 
standing. His first thought had been that this 
must be Napoleon’s tomb in St. Helena. His friend’s 
wife is called Helen. 
There are the facts of the case. 
We cannot pass judgment yet awhile. If the 
dream fulfils its function as a protective institution, 
the unconscious love may be fully discharged in 
this dream. Without burdening Everyman’s moral 
consciousness, without notably impairing his conjugal 
peace, such dreams may continue for years to fulfil 
all the longings he cherishes in his unconscious for 
his friend’s wife. There may have been a certain 
sense of antagonism towards his own wife, a spite 
against her, whose true causes have been hidden 
from all. The result of his unconscious longings 
may even be that he is extremely tender to his wife. 
—Obviously, there is no need to interpret Every- 
man’s dream, and the interpretation might do him 
more harm than good. 
On the other hand, it may happen that “ die 
Liebe wuchs, genahrt vom Traumverlangen ” ;1 and 
that, after several years, this love flames up in the 
conscious. The entry of a long-repressed love into 
consciousness, sometimes occurs so suddenly and 
with such overwhelming force that the moral and 
reflective personality is hopelessly outmatched. The 
world is continually being astonished at the way in 
which people will sacrifice the fruit of many years’ 
labour; will squander, not only money, but spiritual 
1 Love grew, nourished by dream desire.—This is from the German 
translation of Cyrano de Bergerac, Act III, Sc. 6. The original, 
“ l’amour grandit, berce dans mon ame inquire,” is less perfectly 
apposite to the author’s thought!—E. and C. P. 70 
SIGMUND FREUD 
values which they have long cherished—will sacrifice 
them under stress of a love passion whose object, 
as a rule, seems unworthy of the sacrifice. Schopen- 
hauer tries to explain such behaviour, which seems 
utterly unreasonable, by ascribing it to the will- 
to-reproduction. The higher will of the species 
overpowers the will of the individual. This is 
metaphysics. But it is plain enough that the ready- 
made and unreasonable passion comes from a region 
where the laws of logic and morality do not run. 
In that region, during those early days when the 
passion was still weak, timid, and ashamed, it might 
have been brought under control if the dreams had 
been pondered and interpreted. A year ago, Every- 
man would have shrunk back in horror at sight 
of the gorgon’s head. Conjugal duty, paternal duty, 
duty to his friend, position in society—the thought 
of these, and the desire for a peaceful existence, 
would have been stronger than the germinating 
love. Six months earlier, the influence of the love 
might well have outweighed moral considerations. 
But a safety-valve would have been found, so that 
Everyman would not have heedlessly forfeited his 
position. To-day it is too late. An explosion is 
inevitable. 
The average life takes its course between these 
two extremes: that in which the unconscious with 
its dreams provides a vicarious satisfaction for 
forbidden wishes; and that in which the unconscious 
with its dreams adds fuel to the flames. Wishes 
and thoughts which we dare not yet entertain, or 
dare no longer entertain, are thrust into the dark 
recesses of the unconscious. They find their way 
back into the conscious in distorted forms, and that DREAM INTERPRETATION 
71 
is why so many of our actions are distorted and 
unreasonable. Much of our daily life that is other- 
wise inexplicable, grows intelligible when the influences 
of unconscious mentation are taken into account. 
It may be hard to decide, in such cases as this imagi- 
nary but typical instance, when to “go down to the 
mothers in the underworld,” and when to refrain 
from this.1 A general rule is not easy to formulate. 
In their zeal for knowledge, the interpreters of dreams 
may be prone to take excessive risks. Knowledge 
entails obligations. 
Der menschen Frieden ist in Eure Hand gegeben. 
Bewahret ihn ! Er sinkt mit Euch, mit Euch wird er 
sich heben.2 
Freud’s Die Traumdeutung is a very remarkable 
work. It incorporates the most outstanding of his 
discoveries, and yet it is impossible to describe it 
as a satisfactory book. In writing it, the author was 
subject to remarkable inhibitions. He had a will- 
to-confess, which to a great extent seemed an active 
outlet, but in part operated as a curb. The author 
likes to use his own dreams as examples, and we 
therefore learn so much about his life that Die 
Traumdeutung develops into an extremely original 
autobiography. But, whilst we may tell our dreams 
unreservedly to the psychoanalyst, it is another 
matter to publish them to all the world. “ Der 
Blick des Forschers fand nicht selten mehr, als 
1 The allusion is to the Second Part of Faust. Here Faust, who 
longs for the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife, is told to 
go down to the mothers in the underworld, for only through them can 
he win Helena.—E. and C. P. 
2 Schiller, Die Kiinstler. 
The peace of mankind is entrusted to your care. 
Safeguard it ! It falls with you, with you it will rise. 72 
SIGMUND FREUD 
er zu finden wiinschte.”1 The consequence has been 
that a great many imperfectly revealed secrets are 
conveyed in these reports, and the book thus acquires 
a very peculiar stamp. In the case of many of Freud’s 
dreams recorded in this book, the interpretation 
is no more than hinted at. I myself, or another 
who has worked under Freud and Stekel (the ablest 
dream-interpreter of our time), could give an 
exhaustive interpretation of many of these dreams. 
But this would be an unwarranted intrusion into 
the privacies of a personality—the personality of 
one who has already gone amazingly far along the 
road of self-revelation. The author does not in- 
variably focus upon the true aim of his book, the 
elucidation of the dream language. Owing to the 
way in which he mingles personal revelations with 
a discovery of secular and universal importance, 
Freud fails to get into touch with his readers. It 
is difficult enough, in any case, to persuade people 
to accept a new idea which runs counter to all their 
traditional opinions. The task becomes almost im- 
possible when, between the lines, there is to be 
read a personal statement running more or less 
as follows : “I have a great many faults, but I 
do not need to be much ashamed of them now, 
for at length I have made my great discovery.” 
In the later editions of the book, the personal 
note is less in evidence, for Freud has summoned 
collaborators to his aid. The size of the volume 
has been considerably swelled, mainly by the 
contributions of pupils who confirm the master’s 
discoveries, and the additions strain the framework 
1 Lessing, Nathan der Weise, II, 7. The investigator’s glance 
often discerned more than he wanted to discover. DREAM INTERPRETATION 
73 
of the original design. The book, considered as 
a work of art, has not thereby been improved. 
Freud has been unable to make up his mind 
to rewrite Die Traumdeutung throughout. Owing to 
self-analysis, it has become tabu to him—the father 
imago and its destruction. The upshot is that 
readers will to-day find it easier to learn about 
dream interpretation from other works than from 
Freud’s original monograph; and it is generally 
agreed that the most masterly contribution to the 
subject is Stekel’s Die Sprache des Traumes. Never- 
theless, Freud is a writer of supreme ability, the 
ablest among all the authors of his school. When 
he likes, he can use brilliant imagery, incisive 
arguments, exquisite phraseology. In its pungency 
and terseness, his style recalls that of the writers 
of classical antiquity, and is not free from the faults 
of those writers, from their occasional obscurity 
and density. Die Traumdeutung is a mixture of 
incompatibles, and that is why Freud falls short 
in the very work which embodies the most funda- 
mental of his discoveries. In the Vorlesungen zur 
Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse, published in 1918, 
nearly half the volume is devoted to dreams, and 
the subject of dream interpretation is fully recon- 
sidered. But in this restatement, practically no 
attention is paid to the independent researches of 
Freud’s pupils. 
For thousands of years, the ancient Egyptian 
writings remained unintelligible, until at length the 
discovery of the Rosetta stone, engraved with Greek 
and demotic transcripts of its hieroglyphic legend, 
enabled Champollion to decipher the ancient writing. 74 
SIGMUND FREUD 
In like manner Freud has awakened to new life 
an art which, as we learn from much ancient 
testimony, was known to the sages of antiquity, 
and subsequently forgotten. Passages in Holy Writ 
and in many other works of old days show that 
the ancients had a detailed knowledge of the peculiar 
symbolism of dreams. We are all familiar with 
the story of Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat and 
the seven lean kine, and of Joseph’s interpretation 
of the dream. To-day, we decipher from dreams, 
not the future, but the past and the hidden present. 
It is true that our wishes can readily fashion the 
future, and to this extent, therefore, we can read 
the future in our dreams. If our dreams give 
expression to our unconscious wishes, they must 
often represent the future in the making. 
A patient of mine recently had the following 
dream. Three squads of gymnasts. In the first 
squad were children, doing easy exercises. In the 
second squad, more difficult exercises were in pro- 
gress, but the gymnasts were not yet expert in 
these. The patient was in the third squad. Here 
the exercises were to be done with apparatus, on 
the horizontal bar, and so on. Since such exercises 
always make him giddy, he protested vigorously, 
and wanted to leave the squad. 
The analysis of this patient was to be pursued 
for three weeks only. The dream was dreamed at 
the end of the second week. The squads were 
weeks, just as Pharaoh’s kine were years. During 
the first week he had been quite content with our 
conversations. The second week had involved some 
unpleasant surprises. He contemplates the third 
week with dread. In the third week he will find it DREAM INTERPRETATION 
75 
impossible to conceal from me any longer the 
workings of his inner self.—I leave unconsidered 
the sexual symbolism and the transference. 
I was able to tell my patient that he was 
entertaining the thought of breaking off the treat- 
ment before the end of the three weeks, for which 
we had arranged to have the sittings. Thus can 
the future be foretold. Sometimes, too, as we learn 
from Joseph’s proceedings, the future may be modified 
by foreknowledge derived from dreams. 
Why should the dream choose a squad as a 
symbol ? A week is a series of similar days. On 
one occasion, moreover, I had spoken rather sharply 
to my patient. It was during the second week, 
and I had blamed him for having struck his wife. 
He comes from Briinn, where the sound “ ii ” is 
pronounced “ i ” [Italian]. A dreamer will commit 
these local errors of speech, although in the waking 
state the same person will speak quite correctly.1 
Those who find puns amusing are especially 
outraged by this feature of the dream. Dreamers 
make atrocious puns—puns which in the waking 
state only an imbecile would be guilty of 1 For 
my part, I learned dream interpretation in Stekel’s 
school, where less importance is attached to such 
word-plays than by the strictly orthodox Freudians. 
But no one can deny that they occur. At an early 
date, Freud became aware of this trick of the 
unconscious. In the “ Studies ” (1895) he tells of 
a female patient who had a fantasy that he and 
Breuer had been hanged on two adjoining trees. 
The meaning was that each was the “ pendant ” 
1 The latter part of this explanation is only intelligible with reference 
to the German. “ Squads ” are “ Riegen ” ; “ to blame ” is “ riigen.” 76 
SIGMUND FREUD 
to the other !—In the nineties, one of Freud’s earliest 
collaborators, I. Sadger, sent Freud an essay extolling 
Flechsig’s works. Freud considered the essay bom- 
bastic, ' and since Sadger had previously written 
upon Ibsen, Freud dreamed of a “ norekdal ” style, 
the adjective being a condensation of “ kolossal ” 
[preposterous], “ Nora,” and “ Ekdal.” 
Those who regard such word-plays as stupid 
or unmeaning will do well to recall that the dream 
is not angling for their applause. If the meaning 
is adequately distorted, the purpose of the dream 
has been attained. The joke perpetrated by the 
unconscious may be so amazingly bad that we can 
hardly believe in the possibility of its having been 
made. In that case, the dream distortion has 
achieved a triumph ! 
A female patient who had read Stekel dreamed 
that she was flying to Apulia. This province forms 
the “ heel ” of the Italian “ boot.” Now, in the 
Viennese dialect the heel is called “ Steckel.”— 
Another patient saw in a dream the chief square 
in Eger, where there are two ancient houses known 
as the “ Stockel ” [Stekel].—Another dreamed of 
Kaa, the great python in Kipling’s Jungle Book. 
Kaa represents strength [kraft]. But K [in the 
German alphabet pronounced “ kah ”] is also an 
initial letter. Most of the Jewish surnames beginning 
with K were originally Kohn. The woman with 
whom the dreamer was in love had been called 
Kohn, but had changed her name to Kraft. Only 
the initial letter has remained. 
A dream symbol arises from the confluence of 
several trends of thought, which are jointly repre- 
sented by some specific word or image. Thus every DREAM INTERPRETATION 
77 
element in the dream is “ over-determined.” The 
dream condenses the latent dream thoughts. The 
latent dream is always a complete romance. Behind 
a dream that can be written in a few lines—behind 
even the single letter K, for instance—there may 
lurk the whole of the dreamer’s life since earliest 
childhood. And it is here that the interpreter of 
dreams runs a grave risk, for it is so easy to open 
boundless vistas. Is it not true, nevertheless, that 
the whole man is implicit in the intonation of every 
phrase he utters, in his gait, in his demeanour ? 
The graphologist gets marvellous results from the 
study of handwriting. Why should we not learn 
much from the study of dreams, which arise in the 
night during a period of complete self-absorption ? 
Metaphor is peculiarly characteristic of the dream. 
The most arid of mortals, those who in their waking 
life seem quite unable to visualise, will dream in 
charming and vivid pictures. They paint in slumber, 
just as they poetise in slumber. It is indisputable 
that the artistic masterpiece comes from the same 
workshop as the dream. Artists are those who 
have a keener ear than their fellows for the utterances 
of this portion of the mind. Popper-Lynkeus,1 who 
in ordinary life was a man of mathematical mind, 
and one who gave himself out to be nothing more 
than this, at length astonished the world with a 
volume of fantasies. He published a collection of 
eighty-four tales which were most striking in the 
wealth of their imagery. The majority of these 
pieces were simply transcripts of dreams. They can 
all be interpreted, and only through interpretation 
1 This writer’s real name was Joseph Popper. Lynkeus was a 
literary pseudonym 78 
SIGMUND FREUD 
can their hidden meaning be disclosed. But why 
interpret ? All love stories lead ultimately to the 
genital organs and their union. Some of the zealots 
of the Freudian School declare that a man must 
be shallow indeed if he fails to interpret everything 
in terms of penis and vagina. On this showing, 
the writers of the grosser types of music-hall ditty 
would be far more profound than Shakespeare in 
Romeo and Juliet—for there can be no doubt that 
they cross the t’s and dot the i’s more plainly than 
the British dramatist. 
y 
My experience has been that people soon grow 
weary of recounting their dreams. This sense of 
boredom arises from the ingrained conviction that 
dreams are utter nonsense. When, furthermore, the 
story of the dream is to be followed by a lengthy 
interpretation, there is an inclination to revolt, 
and an inclination to reject the whole theory of 
interpretation. We do not dream in order to be 
interpreted; we dream in order not to be inter- 
preted. If, none the less, people are fond of telling 
their dreams to any one who has acquired a reputation 
as an interpreter, it is because they have a happy 
confidence that the distortion is adequate, and that 
nothing of importance will transpire. In actual 
fact, the interpreter cannot usually make much 
progress without the aid of the dreamer and his 
associations. Still, one who has already interpreted 
a few thousand dreams will usually unriddle more 
than the dreamer would like him to know; he 
unriddles, and keeps his own counsel. Let me 
repeat that knowledge entails obligations. Only for 
scientific or medical reasons, and only in a private 
interview, is it permissible to interpret a dream. DREAM INTERPRETATION 
79 
Often enough, indeed, the trained interpreter will 
grow exasperated at an idiotic onslaught upon so 
well-established a discovery. Losing his balance 
for a moment, he will favour some peculiarly impu- 
dent dreamer with a fragment of interpretation. He 
would do better to hold his tongue. Truth is never 
a welcome guest! 
A colleague of mine said to me once : “ Dreams 
refer to the experiences of the previous day. It 
is impossible to say anything more of them than 
that. Yesterday I was reading about the South 
Sea Islands, and about the canoes hollowed out of 
tree-trunks, which are very easily overturned. Last 
night I dreamed of a boathouse by a lake, and of 
an overturned canoe in which there had been room 
for only one person, who must obviously have been 
drowned.” 
The dream is greatly condensed, but its meaning 
was not difficult to unravel. I knew that my 
colleague had an only child. An only child is the 
source of joy fraught with anxiety. If anything 
happens to this child, the parents will be childless. 
(Here came my friend’s first nod of assent. The 
boy had gone on a school excursion and had come 
home late. The parents had been anxious.) It 
would be better to have a second child. (Further 
assent. He had discussed the matter at considerable 
length with his wife.) This way out of the difficulty 
would be quite easy if I were a South Sea Islander. 
God nourishes their children like the lilies of the 
field. But even this one boy already costs me more 
than I can afford. (Here the dream takes a new turn, 
in accordance with the law of bipolarity.) If the 
boy were dead, or if he had never been born, I 80 
SIGMUND FREUD 
should have been more successful in my career. . . . 
I break off the interpretation here. It would lead 
us far afield, would lead us to the problem of birth, 
to the fantasy of the return to the mother’s womb, 
and to an impotence complex (canoe = cannot). 
It is impossible to expound all these considerations 
to the readers of this book, and only those who 
have had prolonged personal experience of psycho- 
analysis could fully understand them. Let me 
therefore beg indulgence for a reserve which some 
will call “ discretion,” and others “ shirking the 
issue.” 
The manager of a Swiss hotel, Herr Siegfried L., 
is universally called Fritz L., so that his real Christian 
name has been almost forgotten. He becomes en- 
gaged to a girl from Reichenberg in northern Bohemia, 
who is charmed with the name Fritz. Occasionally 
she tells him about a Siegfried of her acquaintance, 
and adds that this is a name she cannot bear. Her 
betrothed does not venture to tell her his real 
baptismal name. But at the registrar’s office it will 
inevitably come to light, and what will he do then ? 
This thought keeps him awake. He picks up a 
book, selecting by chance [?] the campaigns of 
Frederick the Great, the invasion of Bohemia, the 
battle of Lobositz. At length he falls asleep and 
dreams : 
“ In the hall of the hotel. The door opens. 
Enter Frederick the Great with a crook-handled 
stick in his hand, and huge, rolling eyes. Every 
one makes a bolt for it, and the dreamer, too, sees 
only from a great distance.” 
This dream, likewise, has, as its setting, a recent DREAM INTERPRETATION 
81 
occurrence. The Queen of S. had come to stay in 
the hotel and had had an unfortunate reception. 
Of course, some sort of etiquette must be prescribed 
for such occasions ! Unhappily, no one knew what 
was the proper thing to do. The result was that 
they had all run away, and had left Her Majesty 
standing alone in the hall. 
But this dream, too, is extraordinarily condensed. 
The more superficial part of the meaning runs as 
follows : Of Siegfried, hardly a trace remains. Not 
only is he Fritz, but the Great Fritz. He is not 
merely the manager, but the undisputed owner of 
the hotel. He is the invader of Bohemia; he is 
irresistible in his seizure of the maiden from Bohemia. 
At the same time, however, the dream is tinged with 
anxiety. With heroic valour is associated heroic 
dread. 
Behind the anxiety concerning the baptismal 
name his betrothed dislikes, another anxiety lies 
hid. A dread that he will prove sexually incom- 
petent is cleverly masked by this alarm about the 
inferiority of his name. 
Last of all, I will give two examples to show how 
dream interpretation is turned to account in psycho- 
analysis. One of my female patients dreamed : 
“ My sister and I were wearing red dresses. Mine 
was slit up at one side. My sister’s was not. I 
felt very unhappy about it.” 
Interpretation. This girl had been so unlucky 
as to have a sexual misadventure in childhood. 
It had happened when she was only ten years old. 
She was most anxious to conceal this “ disgrace,” 
and would not confess it to me for some time. The 82 
SIGMUND FREUD 
interpretation of the foregoing dream overcame her 
resistance, and she told me all about the affair. 
This enabled me to relieve her of much of the distress 
which the terrible experience had entailed. 
In reality, the dream was much longer, and its 
interpretation far more complicated. I have simpli- 
fied it for demonstrative purposes, though my con- 
science pricks me for doing violence to the manifold 
beauty of nature. 
Another patient dreamed: “I meet Professor 
Freud : he is most cordial; more cordial than I 
like. My wife is standing in the background. Freud 
is wearing a false beard, plaited out of white paper; 
it hides part of his face. We walk on together; 
my wife has disappeared.” 
Our patients often tell us that they have dreamed 
of Freud. The implication is that they have made 
a mistake in consulting the apprentice when they 
might have consulted the master-craftsman. “It is 
a pity that Freud’s fees are so high ; his cordiality 
is excessive.” We shall learn the remarkable way 
in which the dream Freud is, none the less, helpful. 
“ My wife stands in the background. . . . My wife 
has disappeared.” Those familiar with dream inter- 
pretation will know what this signifies. During the 
progress of the interpretation, the patient adds that 
his Freud was a strange little mannikin with a dried 
up, yellow face. The patient shudders as he speaks. 
The mannikin is not Freud, after all; he is Death. 
At the core of this neurosis was a detestation of 
the wife. 
The death symbolism of dreams is a vast field, 
and it is one in which Stekel has been the most 
successful of explorers. “ Almost every dream is a DREAM INTERPRETATION 
83 
puzzle picture under which we may write the ques- 
tion : 4 Where is the figure of Death ? ’ ” 1 
In one respect Freud has gone astray. His 
original doctrine was that every dream is a wish 
fulfilment. In 1920, he modified this assertion, 
and admitted that some dreams are reminiscences 
of unpleasant experiences. Not even yet has he 
recognised what his pupils Stekel, Silberer, Jung, 
and Maeder have proved by countless instances, 
that the dream is also the representative of morality, 
who raises his warning voice during slumber. For 
instance, a woman may dream that she is walking 
across a flowery mead towards a bog, and she is 
afraid that she will sink into its depths. 
In the latest of his books, Das Ich und das Es, 
Freud recognises that there is an unconscious con- 
science. The inference is that there must be dreams 
of conscience. It would surely be as well, after 
decades of silence, to draw such inferences explicitly 
and in detail. Why continually speak of the infra- 
ego, while dismissing the super-ego in a line or two. 
Are we to be ashamed because the divine as well 
as the bestial dwells in our unconscious ? 
When, at this date, we survey the history of 
Freud’s campaigns against his renegade disciples, 
and when, in Das Ich und das Es we read, “ not 
only the lowest elements of the ego, but also the 
highest, may be unconscious,” we cannot but ask, 
“ Why has this admission come so tardily ? ” Nor 
can we fail to regret that the statement was not 
made more emphatic. 
In the following passage from the same book we 
1 Die Sprache des Traumes. 84 
SIGMUND FREUD 
seem to be reading the terms of a treaty of peace 
after a ten years’ war : 
“ Should any one wish to maintain the paradox 
that the normal human being is not only far more 
immoral than he believes, but also far more moral 
than he is aware, then psychoanalysis, upon whose 
discoveries the former half of the contention is 
based, would not dissent from the latter half of 
the contention. 
“ The paradox is only apparent. Its simple 
meaning is that, in respect alike of good and evil, 
the nature of man transcends, enormously transcends, 
what he believes of himself—that is to say, what is 
revealed to his ego by conscious perception.” CHAPTER SIX 
REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
The aim of Freud’s journey to Nancy was to acquire 
a thorough knowledge of hypnotic technique. This 
seemed to him indispensable after the study of 
Breuer’s case. But when he left Nancy, he broke 
with hypnotism for ever. 
The most pitiful pretender may be a successful 
hypnotist. A black beard, a bold eye, a pair of 
check trousers, can do more in this field than pene- 
trating intelligence and high spiritual worth. Freud 
had never been greatly drawn towards hypnotic 
methods. His impetuous journey to Nancy showed, 
indeed, that he did not feel sure of himself. But 
since, wherever we go, we rediscover ourselves, 
Freud acclaimed in Bernheim’s Experiment B the 
possibility of bidding farewell to hypnotism. As 
Charcot’s pupil he knew that hysterical symptoms 
can be induced by ideas imparted during the hypnotic 
state. Bernheim’s Experiment A confirmed Charcot 
in this respect. Pierre Janet, older than Freud but 
his fellow-pupil under Charcot, had already begun to 
describe the unconscious, and other French authors 
were following in Janet’s footsteps. The cause of 
hysterical symptoms was to be found in the un- 
conscious. Cases of double consciousness had been 
elaborately described, and it was necessary to assume 86 
SIGMUND FREUD 
that the mind has a bipartite character, for there was 
no other way of explaining these cases. Indubitably 
there must be a mental domain outside the field of 
consciousness. Bernheim’s Experiment B showed 
that, through persuasion, through insistent reitera- 
tion, we could force an entry into this obscure region. 
This is the point at which Freud branched off 
into an independent research. He abandoned the 
use of hypnotism. He was weary of failures, weary 
of having to ignore the forces of his own powerful 
personality in order to practise an art that was 
unworthy of him. He told his patients that they 
could remember, that they would remember, that 
they must remember. As early as 1895, he could 
report successes with patients treated in the waking 
state. At that time he would still often lay his 
hand on the patient’s forehead, as a stimulus to 
recollection. I do not think he does this nowadays. 
He certainly should not do so if he is true to his 
own theory, for this is a step on the way towards 
the induction of hypnosis. 
In many cases, however, despite persuasion, laying 
on of hands, commands, the desired recollection 
would not come. Hours would pass without the 
patient saying a word. At length Freud came to 
the conclusion that he would make more rapid 
progress if he allowed his patients to say whatever 
came into their heads. No matter whether it was 
important or unimportant, sense or gibberish. 
Freud’s primordial discovery was born of the physi- 
cian’s need. A study of the ideas and impressions 
that rise freely into the patient’s mind, a study of the 
chains of thoughts, will in every case, and speedily, 
furnish a clue leading us into the recesses of the REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
87 
unconscious. I call this the primordial discovery, 
for it furnished the key with which Freud was able 
to unlock so many of the*dark chambers of the mind. 
Patients often overwhelm us with a flux of words, 
with a torrent of information which we shall vainly 
endeavour to stem. Especially do they do this in 
the early days, before they have come to realise 
that we are in league with the devil! Nothing 
can stop the flow, and all the analyst can do is sit 
quietly and listen with quizzical attention. No 
one knows better than the psychoanalyst that speech 
was invented to conceal thought! We do not listen 
so much to what the patient says as to what he does 
not say, to what he says twice over, to what he 
emphasises. We take special note of gaps in his 
revelation, knowing that there we shall find his 
complexes—guided by the general technique of 
psychoanalysis, which by now is fully elaborated. 
The analyst allows the analysand to go on talking, 
confident that, in the end, the important and the 
true will rise unaided to the surface. I presume 
that Freud’s primordial discovery must have been 
made in this way. He had to listen, so he listened to 
the end. But at the end there cropped out the hidden 
things which the flux of words was intended to hide. 
For a long time I believed, and indeed still 
believe, that this use of the free flow of thought 
was peculiar to Freud. In 1920, a resident in 
Budapesth drew attention to an essay by Ludwig 
Borne entitled, Die Kunst, in drei Tagen ein Original- 
schriftsteller zu werden.1 The essay concludes with 
the words : 44 Take a few sheets of paper and write 
down for three days in succession, without falsification 
1 The Art of becoming an original Writer in three Days. 88 
SIGMUND FREUD 
or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. 
Write what you think of yourself, of your wife, of 
the war with the Turks, of Goethe ... of the day 
of judgment, of those set in authority over you— 
and when the three days are over, you will be amazed 
at the new and strange thoughts that have welled 
up out of your mind.” 
Freud, who has always been fond of reading 
Borne, agrees that this essay may have played a 
significant part in the early history of the use of 
the free flow of ideas for psychoanalytical purposes. 
We cannot suppose that Freud originally designed 
to become an interpreter of dreams. But his patients, 
whom he allowed to talk freely upon any subject 
they pleased, related their dreams inter alia, and 
did so often enough to arouse Freud’s interest in 
the topic. He began to study the scientific literature 
of dreams. It is quite impossible to say how much 
he derived from these forerunners, and how much 
was the contribution of his individual genius. Not 
until he had finished his own book on dreams did 
he become acquainted with the views of Nietzsche 
and with those of Popper-Lynkeus. The Bible shows 
us that the ancients were aware of the symbolism 
of dreams ; that the dreams which occur in any 
one night have the same significance (Pharaoh’s 
dreams) ; that forgotten dreams can be brought 
back into consciousness (Nebuchadnezzar’s forgotten 
dream). Artemidorus, the classical author of a work 
on dream interpretation, had come into Freud’s 
ken. Frequent references are made to Schemer’s 
Das Leben des Traumes (1861) ; Freud regards the 
book as obscure and | turgid. I doubt if sufficient 
attention has been paid to the close connexion REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
89 
between some of the doctrines in Freud’s Die Traum- 
deutung and the teachings of Freud’s direct precursor 
Schemer. Stekel, on the other hand, does full 
justice to Artemidorus and Schemer in Die Sprache 
des Traumes.1 
From a number of scattered and casual inti- 
mations, Freud has, in masterly fashion, built up 
a scientific edifice. He has defended it magnifi- 
cently against a world of foes. I still seem to hear 
the hyena-like laughter with which a meeting of 
doctors hailed the contention of one of Freud’s 
pupils that, in a dream, a bird signified, or might 
signify, the penis. The invincible solidity of his 
theory of the dream gave Freud the power to rebut 
attacks upon other parts of his doctrine which were 
less firmly grounded. It is regrettable that this 
great man is so unwilling to accept improvements 
and additions to the theory of dream interpretation 
when they are suggested by other observers. More- 
over, as I have already pointed out, he is reluctant 
to abandon contentions which criticism has shown 
to be erroneous. It would seem that a conservative 
tenacity must be inseparable from greatness. But 
whereas Freud has continually modified and improved 
other parts of his teaching, he has paid remarkably 
little attention to the theory of dream interpretation 
since the publication of the first edition of his book 
on this subject. Traumdeutung is tabu to him, and 
we know the reason. 
With a royal contempt for philosophical con- 
1 Artemidorus reports that when Alexander the Great was almost 
inclined to abandon the siege of Tyre, the conqueror dreamed of a 
dancing satyr. The experts in dream interpretation congratulated 
him, saying that the dream signified aa, Tvpog—Tyre is yours, 90 
SIGMUND FREUD 
siderations, Freud terms that part of the mind’s 
content which is unknown to consciousness “ the 
unconscious.” Learning from Experiment B and 
from his own experiences of neurotic patients that 
there is a resistance to the re-emergence of unconscious 
ideas, he called this resistance “ the resistance,” 
and described what had been pushed out of con- 
sciousness as “ repressed.” I doubt if most people 
realise to-day what a stroke of genius it was to coin 
these three terms, the unconscious, repression, the 
resistance. Because the words and the corresponding 
ideas are simple, it is easy to make the mistake of 
supposing that the discovery of them was simple. 
A great many practitioners will still say : “ What 
is the use of these interminable analyses ? In the 
first quarter of an hour I can find out all that the 
patient has to say.” In reality, the patient (un- 
wittingly) offers an obstinate and multiform resistance 
to the questioning physician. Psychoanalysis, with 
the aid of a difficult technique, must laboriously 
bring the unconscious ideas to light. A youth under 
my care was suffering from severe dyspnoea, anxiety 
states, and many other troubles. Twice he had 
become unconscious when witnessing dramatic per- 
formances of Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse. He 
suffered almost as severely when he saw Grillparzer’s 
Die Ahnfrau played, and again when he saw the opera 
Aida. He had a dreadful longing to throw himself 
out of the window, was afraid to cross bridges, 
trembled at sight of a policeman ; and so on. He 
told me that, some years earlier, his sister had died 
of a mysterious disease. 
I saw this patient almost every day for several 
months, and interpreted more than a hundred of REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
91 
his dreams. For a long time my endeavours to 
overcome the resistance were futile, though I devoted 
my best energies to the task. The resistance was 
disclosed, not only by the dreams, but by many 
of the symptoms with which analysts are familiar. 
He would come too late for his appointment, or 
would fail to come at all. He would overwhelm 
me with more material than I could find time to deal 
with. Becoming piqued, he would consult another 
analyst; or would suddenly make up his mind that 
I was a humbug. He would be very rude to me, 
in the hope that I would give him his conge. He 
would oppose my explanations and hints for guidance 
with a resolute negative. For a whole hour he 
would preserve an obstinate silence, as if he were 
suffering from lockjaw. He would tell me that his 
business affairs were not prospering, and that conse- 
quently he would be unable to go on paying my 
fees. All these were merely symptoms of the resist- 
ance, which might put an end to the psychoanalytical 
investigation. The duplication of his personality 
was obvious. One of the two personalities, desiring 
to get well, wanted to tell me everything. The 
other personality was parasitic, like a devil that 
will not be exorcised. The evil spirit is in comfort- 
able quarters, and defies the exorcist. Manifestly, 
the patient set a certain value upon the illness, and 
was unwilling to part with it. 
But the unconscious complex was tracked to its 
lair. In the end the resistance was broken down. 
I need not trouble the reader with the toilsome 
details, and will be content to record the amazing 
result. His sister had one night got into his bed, 
and during some sort of sexual intimacy she had  SIGMUND FREUD 
92 
fallen into a cataleptic trance which had lasted for 
several hours and had naturally aroused intense 
anxiety in the brother. What on earth would happen 
if, when morning came, his sister was found in his 
bed ? Fortunately, she came to herself in good 
time, and nothing was discovered. 
When she died a few years later, the patient 
suspected that death had not really taken place. 
No one else in the family had any reason for such 
a suspicion, but he knew of her cataleptic tendency. 
He kept his own counsel and let them bury her. 
He fancied himself to be her murderer. By identifi- 
cation he became “ a living corpse.” That was 
why he could not bear to see the opera Aida, in which 
the heroine was buried alive ; and that is why he 
could not bear to see Grillparzer’s play in which a 
brother kills his sister. What about bridges ? They 
lead to the other shore—to the land of the other 
world. The policeman arrests murderers. . . . 
Fifty symptoms or more were explained and 
uprooted by this belated revelation. Four months’ 
work were requisite for the discovery. 
The solutions are not always so dramatic as in 
this case. Invariably, however, the mysterious forces 
of the unconscious resist the discovery of solutions. 
Sometimes the analyst can discover them readily 
enough, but the discovery remains void of effect, 
because the patient refuses to accept the analyst’s 
solution. He must, himself, realise what he has 
repressed and what has made him ill. Many people 
believe that we indoctrinate our patients with these 
solutions. We should be able to make our fortunes 
as imaginative writers if we could spontaneously hit 
upon such fantasies ! It is enough for the analyst REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
93 
to have experienced the significance of these flashes 
of recognition. They are primordial phenomena. 
A lady analyst of my acquaintance says : 44 When 
the patient discovers a solution, I should like to 
give him a good hug ! ” 
But if the patient resists the disclosure of his 
unconscious, ideas, why does he not simply stay 
away ? What a fool he must be to come day after 
day, and to pay the analyst fees, that something 
may be discovered when all the time he is resisting 
the discovery ! The answer is that the resistance 
is quite as unconscious as are the morbific ideas. 
The resistance is part of the illness, and is manifested 
only by its effects. Moreover, it is quite common 
for the patient to break off the treatment. A skilful 
analyst will read in the unconscious the imminence 
of such an eventuality. He will know the patient’s 
intention before the patient is himself aware of it. 
If the analyst bluntly tells the patient that he is 
thinking of such a thing, the patient will deny the 
intention, in all good faith. Take, in witness, the 
following fragment from a dream : 441 dreamed you 
said to me : 4 There is absolutely nothing the matter 
with you.’ Then you turned your back on me.” 
In this dream we have the favourite motif in 
which one persons shows another the broad of his 
back. The dreamer intends to bid me a final 
farewell. Of course, if I tell him that there is nothing 
the matter with him, the analysis will come to an 
end. 
How does it come to pass that, in general, patients 
are quite willing that we should try to break down 
their resistance ? This happens because a tie has 
been established between doctor and patient. To 94 
SIGMUND FREUD 
put the matter in crude terms, the patient falls in 
love with the doctor. If we wish to express ourselves 
with more refinement, and more accurately, we 
shall say that the patient transfers to the doctor 
feelings that were originally directed towards others. 
The phenomenon of transference is akin to the 
phenomenon of resistance. They are a pair of 
counterparts, constructed in accordance with the 
principle of bipolarity. 
At first Freud found it difficult to explain the 
phenomenon of transference. To say that the patient 
had fallen in love with the doctor was a disagreeable 
way of phrasing the matter; it sounded vulgar. 
Nevertheless, not only in the positive phase, but 
also in the negative phase (in which aversion, jealousy, 
and passionate hatred make their appearance), the 
phenomena of the transference were so similar to 
those witnessed in a person who is “in love ” that 
the expression was hard to avoid. Freud’s first 
account of the discovery of the transference is 
contained in the Bruchstilck einer Hysterieanalyse, 
published in 1905. This is the classical description 
of a psychoanalysis ; and to-day it produces on us 
the impression aroused by Stephenson’s “ Rocket ” 
when we compare it with a modern express loco- 
motive. Since then, Freud has again and again 
returned to the subject of the transference. His 
opinion to-day may be summarised in the following 
terms. 
We tell the patient that he is to remember. In 
a profound sense, he always knows what we want 
him to remember, for, though he can repress it from 
consciousness, he cannot really expel it from his 
mind. The symptoms from which he suffers, the REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
95 
dyspnoea, the dread of bridges,1 etc., are symbolical 
memories. He is continually reliving his dreadful 
experience. “ He is suffering from reminiscences.” 
The patient has hitherto been lonely in this process 
of reliving. Now, in the physician, he has won the 
friend to whom he has to pour out his soul. He 
confesses, partly in words, and partly by transferring 
upon the physician that which he has once lived 
through. In his unconscious, he terms the physician 
his father, his brother, his friend. Nay more, the 
unconscious ignores differences of sex. The physician 
is his mother, his sister, his inamorata. He loves 
the analyst, or hates him, according to the nature 
of the repressed experiences for which the analyst 
acts as a substitute. The resistance is only at work 
to prevent the putting of the memory into words ; 
it has no power over the transference. 
We might think that it would be simpler to recall 
the original experiences, instead of thus erroneously 
reliving them in the physician’s company. But 
there is a compulsion towards transference, an urge 
which is known as repetition compulsion. We are 
under the dominion of a sinister law, which Plato 
and Nietzsche speak of as the law of “ the eternal 
recurrence of the similar.” 
“ Thus we know persons for whom every human 
relationship ends in the same way. We know bene- 
factors whose fate it is to be abandoned by their 
proteges. In the end, however much these proteges 
may differ, the inevitable quarrel ensues, so that 
1 The German term is “ Briickenangst.” Ernest Jones tells us 
that, though about 150 different “ phobias ” are spoken of in English, 
no term has yet become current to denote the fear of crossing 
bridges. On the analogy of agoraphobia, it would be “gephura- 
phobia.”—E. and C. P. 96 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the benefactor seems foredoomed to taste all the 
bitterness of ingratitude. We know persons whose 
friends in the long run invariably play them false. 
We know others whose fate it is again and again 
to appoint another to a position of authority over 
themselves, or it may be in public life; after a 
time they always put an end to this authority, 
only to replace it by a new one. We know lovers 
for whom every tender relationship with a woman 
passes through the same phases and ends in the same 
fashion. . . . Especially impressive are the cases in 
which the recurrent experiences seem purely passive, 
in which the person appears to exercise no active 
influence at all, but to suffer from the perpetual 
recurrence of the same destiny. Think of the story 
of the woman who was thrice married, each time 
to a man who speedily fell ill and had to be nursed 
by her till he died.” 1 
In this way the phenomenon of the transference 
can be explained by the working of a mysterious 
law to which we are subordinated by fate. We are 
told that over the gateway by which we enter life 
there is written : “ Thou shalt renounce, shalt 
renounce! ” Likewise inscribed over that portal 
are the words : “ Thou shalt transfer, perpetually 
transfer ! ” We see, then, that psychoanalysis “ does 
not create the transference, but merely discovers it ” 
—discovers a vital phenomenon which is ordinarily 
overlooked. Again and again we have to show the 
patient that he is transferring affects upon us. It is 
not from us that he demands love. He demands it 
from others, and while the analysis is in progress 
he imaginatively substitutes us for these others. 
1 Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips. REPRESSION AND TRANSFERENCE 
97 
It is not to us that he is grateful, nor is it against 
us that he bears a grudge. If we are successful in 
this reiterated discovery of the transference, a recog- 
nised transference is as good a remedial measure 
as a memory recalled in words. We cure the patient 
in so far as we can receive his transference and 
disclose it to him. 
“ The doctrine of repression is the cornerstone 
of the psychoanalytical building,” wrote Freud in 
1914. Speaking of the “ facts of the transference 
and of the resistance,” he goes on to say : “ Every 
trend in research which recognises these two facts 
and takes its start from them is entitled to the name 
of psychoanalysis, even though it may lead to other 
results than mine.” 1 
Subsequently Freud demanded of the analyst 
that he should push his enquiries back into the 
patient’s earliest childhood. “ We can regard as 
correct psychoanalysis only those analytical enquiries 
which have succeeded in enabling the adult to pierce 
the veil which hides from him the memory of his 
own early childhood—when he was from two to 
about five years old.” 2 
Less scientific is the view of Freud’s more imme- 
diate pupils (a view which has never been repudiated 
by Freud), that every member of the Viennese 
Psychoanalytical Society and of the daughter societies 
elsewhere, is entitled to describe himself as a 
psychoanalyst.3 
1 Sammlung, vol. iv, p. 13. 2 Ibid., vol. v, p. 201. 
3 Conversely, a member of the Viennese Society once contested 
my right to term myself a psychoanalyst, seeing that I was not a 
member of the Society. CHAPTER SEVEN. 
SLIPS, MISTAKES, AND BLUNDERS 
The year 1898 was that in which Freud conceived 
the ideas which secured publication in the years 
1901 and 1904, under the title Zur psychopathologie 
des Alltagslebens. The book had a great success, 
precisely because its full bearing was not at first 
understood. It is one of the best of Freud’s writings, 
full of wit and charm. In the later editions, the author 
invited all his pupils to share the hospitality of 
its pages. I have said that the exercise of similar 
hospitality proved disastrous to Die Traumdeutung 
considered as a work of art, but the framework of 
the Psychopathologie is sufficiently elastic to house 
the merry company. 
Freud’s choice of motto for the volume was a 
stroke of genius : 
Nun ist Die Luft von solchem Spuk so voll, 
Dass niemand weiss, wie er ihn meiden soli.1 
The book is so widely known that I can deal 
with it summarily. There is no such thing as chance. 
Our will is not free. The conscious thinks, but the 
unconscious directs. We make mistakes, slips of 
1 The air is now so full of these ghostly visitants, 
That no one knows how to avoid them. (Faust, Part II.) SLIPS, MISTAKES, AND BLUNDERS 
99 
the tongue, we pick up the wrong thing, we forget, 
because the unconscious has a will of its own which 
differs from our conscious will; and because the 
unconscious does what it pleases with us when our 
strictly logical attention lapses for a moment. This 
inner will, which is so often an opposing will, can be 
known by its works, by manifold trifles of everyday 
occurrence. A great deal that is accounted humorous 
arises out of these everyday slips [“ parapraxis ” 
is the technical translation of the German term 
“ Fehlleistung ” originally used by Freud]; and any- 
thing that is really humorous always contains a serious 
kernel. Here is a specimen, from a lecture given by 
a Dutch analyst of the Zurich School: “We cannot 
underestimate the value of Freud’s services ! ” 
Freud’s view of these “ Fehlleistungen,” these 
slips of tongue or pen and other blunders, naturally 
encountered opposition in certain quarters. Lazy 
people—and most people are lazy where thought is 
concerned—charged him with undue generalisation. 
He had lumped all mistakes and blunders under one 
head. Really there were two kinds. Those of the one 
kind were, as Freud had rightly pointed out, due 
to a disturbance of the will through the operation of 
a counter-will. Those of the other kind were the 
outcome of pure chance ; they were foam on the 
surface of things ; they were matters of no account 
whatever ; they could not be explained, and they 
needed no explanation. Such a contention irre- 
sistibly reminds us of the naive utterance of a child 
which, when its companions would fain enlighten 
it as to how babies come into being, answers : “ Per- 
haps your parents did something of that sort, but 
I’m quite sure mine didn’t! ” 100 
SIGMUND FREUD 
When Freud noted the success of the Psycho- 
pathologie, he had good reason to quote Mephis- 
topheles, and to say ; “ Den Teufel spurt das Volkchen 
nie ; und wenn er sie beim Kragen hatte ! 5,1 As 
soon as any one admits the existence of the uncon- 
scious, and agrees that there is a road leading down 
into this domain, he must make the best of the 
discoveries that ensue. 
In the course of this book I allude to several of 
Freud’s own slips. Here is one which no one else, 
I think, has yet pointed out. In Die Traumdeutung, 
the author refers to the inscription on the Viennese 
memorial to Emperor Joseph. He quotes : 
Saluti patriae vixit 
Non diu sed totus. 
But there is a misquotation here. The inscription 
runs : 
Saluti publicae vixit 
Non diu sed totus. 
For the sake of those of my readers whose Latinity 
is not of the best, I had better explain that “ publica ” 
may signify “ publica puella,” a prostitute. (Of 
course the inscription tells us that the emperor 
lived wholly for the public good in the familiar 
sense of the term public.) One of the German 
terms for prostitute is “ Freudenmadchen,” the 
equivalent of the French “ fille de joie,” or of the 
Chaucerian-English “ gay girl.” Now, as early as 
1896, Josef Breuer had begun to dissociate himself 
1 Not if he had them by the neck, I vow, 
Would e’er these people scent the Devil! 
Mephistopheles speaks : Faust, Part I, Auerbach’s Keller 
(Bayard Taylor’s translation.) SLIPS, MISTAKES, AND BLUNDERS 
101 
from Freud’s researches because the stress Freud 
laid upon the sexual life was repugnant to him. 
The significance of the “ accidental ” misquotation 
begins to dawn on us. We have also to consider 
the slip which led Freud to write “ patriae ” instead 
of “ publicse ” in the light of the fact that, as Freud 
himself tells us, his book Die Traumdeutung was the 
expression of his reaction to the death of his father 
(pater). Furthermore, Freud’s teaching signifies a 
liberation of love from ancient bonds, and many of 
his contemporaries look askance at the discoverer 
of psychoanalysis for this reason. Saluti publics 
vivis ! (Thou shalt live for the public wellbeing !) 
But Freud is a quiet citizen who would like to live 
and die at peace. In France, the champions of the 
enlightenment did not live to see the revolution; 
and Martin Luther died before the Thirty Years’ 
War. 
Relevant to this discussion of blunders is the 
following statement of Freud’s.1 In the nineties, 
or perhaps earlier, Freud became an intimate friend 
of Wilhelm Fliess, the Berlinese physician and biolo- 
gist. Fliess is an able thinker, and is in more than 
one respect a kindred spirit to Freud. He adopted 
the notion of bisexuality, which is an old one, 
perhaps as old as the practice of dream interpretation ; 
he vigorously defended it, and endeavoured to har- 
monise it with the teachings of modern science. 
The theory is that in every male there are also 
feminine elements, and conversely. Freud, whose 
foible it is to discover for himself everything that 
contributes to the development of his teachings, 
was at a standstill with his sexual theory until he 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 300 ; Psychopathologie, p. 170 102 
SIGMUND FREUD 
availed himself of the doctrine of bisexuality to 
account for sexual perversions. When, in 1901, he 
at length made this step, he reported it to Fliess as 
an independent discovery. Fliess answered with 
astonishment: “ But I told you about this idea 
two and a half years ago, and you laughed me to 
scorn ! ” Here we have a more recent instance of 
cryptomnesia, analogous to the submerged memory 
of having read Borne’s recipe for becoming an author 
in three days (supra, p. 87). Freud had entirely 
forgotten his talk with Fliess about bisexuality. 
We know from what happened in the matter of 
cocaine that he takes it amiss when others are 
beforehand with him in a discovery. In his latest 
book, Das Ich und das Es, there occurs the follow- 
ing noteworthy passage: “If psychoanalysis has not 
yet duly appreciated certain matters, this has never 
been because it overlooked them or underrated 
their importance, but simply because it was follow- 
ing a certain course which had not yet led to 
them.” 
We learn in Die Traumdeutung that even before 
1900 Freud had broken with several of his former 
friends. Fliess was to compensate him for all these 
losses. Fliess meant more to him than any one had 
meant before, and he was determined to cleave to 
Fliess for evermore.1 Any one with psychoanalytical 
experience will have his suspicions aroused by this 
sort of glorification. We gather 2 that Freud must 
already have divulged various things which Fliess 
had told him in confidence. Consider, for instance, 
the following dream. “ FI. turns to me and asks 
how many of his affairs I have spoken about to P. 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 300. 2 Ibid., pp. 257 and 297. SLIPS, MISTAKES, AND BLUNDERS 
103 
This gives me queer feelings.” In another part of 
the same dream we learn that Freud’s daimon had 
determined to consign this enthusiastic friendship 
to Hades. “ I meet him in the street, where he 
is conversing with my deceased friend P., and I go 
with them somewhere where they seem to be sitting 
opposite one another at a little table.” It would 
hardly be possible to find a better example of death 
symbolism. 
The actual cause of the rupture of this friendship, 
which occurred in 1904, was as follows. In 1903, 
Otto Weininger’s celebrated book Geschlecht und 
Charakter had been published. In that work, the 
talented young author used the key of bisexuality 
to open the portals of his kingdom. Fliess was 
engaged in preparing an important work, which was 
published in 1906. His main idea was that bisexuality 
—the bisexuality of the cell—was supreme controller 
of living matter. Finding that Weininger had antici- 
pated his discovery, he wrote to ask Freud whether 
the latter knew the author of Geschlecht und Charakter. 
The question was a natural one, for Fliess had never 
spoken of his theory of bisexuality to any one except 
Freud. Freud was, in fact, to blame, though at 
first he denied all responsibility. One of Weininger’s 
friends, a young man of science, had been a patient 
of Freud’s, and to him Freud had blabbed. We 
may grant that he had no bad intentions—in the 
conscious. But what about the unconscious ? And 
what about the dream of 1899 ? Subsequently, 
Freud admitted with splendid frankness that he had 
forgotten the talk about bisexuality with Weininger’s 
friend, had forgotten it because its consequences 
had been so unpleasant. He admitted, too, the 104 
SIGMUND FREUD 
probability that in the unconscious he might have 
harboured a grudge against his friend Fliess because 
of the latter’s great discovery. 
Such an example of “ parapraxis ” was beyond 
the range of Fliess’ understanding, and the friendship 
was shattered. The eternal recurrence of the similar ! 
In the conscious, his friendship with Fliess had 
seemed to Freud to be built on imperishable founda- 
tions. In the unconscious, the foundations had 
crumbled years before the final breach took place. 
Who can read the tale without feeling the tragedy 
of inexorable destiny ? CHAPTER EIGHT 
EROS 
In the year 1898, Freud made a third great discovery. 
He showed that our sexual life begins at birth, and 
not, as had generally been supposed, at puberty. 
This contention aroused intense and universal indig- 
nation in the camp of the enemies of truth. In 
later years, Freud has frequently declared that the 
fact that children have a sexual life is so obvious 
that we ought rather to be ashamed of ourselves 
for our failure to notice it than proud because we 
have found it out. There are a good many children 
in the world, and a good many grown-ups to watch 
the children. Why was it that no one, before Freud, 
noticed that infants have erections and that they 
masturbate; that children have an urgent desire 
to get into bed with father and mother; that at a 
very early age they display an interest in their own 
genital organs and in those of their playmates; 
that they are affected by the mental conflicts of 
love, suffering from jealousy, from the longings and 
torments of love, suffering intensely, though their 
sufferings are in this respect less vocal than those 
of adults ? 
Of course these things were seen before Freud 
pointed them out, but no one would admit that 
they were sexual manifestations. The nature of 106 
SIGMUND FREUD 
our science is determined by the nature of our general 
outlook. Children are little angels, and one of the 
most conspicuous distinctions between an angel and 
a human being is that an angel has no sexual impulse. 
There is, of course, a difficulty in the way of regarding 
children as angels, for angels have no excreta; but 
people put up with that little peculiarity in children. 
Still, they find it atrocious that any one should 
describe “ innocent ” children as utterly immoral 
libertines. That is how they summarised Freud’s 
discovery, for in the view of our traditional educa- 
tionists “ innocent ” and “ sexual ” are incompatible 
terms. 
Even adults, respectable adults, were to repudiate 
sexuality as far as possible. It was permissible to 
speak of hunger and of social need, but sexual need 
must be kept to oneself. Any one who obviously 
displayed the latter was apt to become a popular 
butt, like the “ old maid.” If the display of sexual 
desire was made by children of school age, such 
contaminated specimens must be excluded from 
the flock, to the accompaniment of a chorus of moral 
disapprobation. 
Fifteen years ago I wrote a book entitled Die 
sexuelle Not (Sexual Need), and dedicated it “ To 
my honoured Teacher, Sigmund Freud.” The editor 
of the Bernese “ Bund ” wrote to my publisher 
saying that the title of the book was both ludicrous 
and repulsive, and that, were it for this reason alone, 
he would be unable to publish a review of Die sexuelle 
Not. (The then editor of the 44 Bund ” was a writer 
of considerable note, J. V. Widmann.) To-day, 
the phrase 44 sexual need ” has become proverbial. 
At school, in the press, and in general discussion, EROS 
107 
people are less shamefaced about these matters 
than they were fifteen years ago. Others besides 
Freud and his pupils are fighting on behalf of libera- 
tion. A great wave is carrying us all forward. Poets, 
novelists, and men of science are the forerunners. 
We have already learned that Freud’s attention 
was directed at an early date to the nervous diseases 
of childhood. When quite a young practitioner he 
was interested in a form of paralysis in little children 
which might be due, he thought, to an injury received 
during intra-uterine life ; or perhaps, in some cases, 
to a mental conflict in the mother. We see whither 
his thoughts were tending. From 1887, onwards, 
he was able to study the mental life of little children 
close at hand, in his own offspring. I think, however, 
that we may assume that Freud, like most persons 
of note, retained exceptionally clear memories of 
his early childhood, and that these memories may 
have helped to confirm the conviction that his theories 
were sound—a conviction in which he has never 
wavered. 
As early as 1896, we find an account of sexuality 
in little children in an essay prefixed to a study 
published in that year by Stekel.1 But I regard 
1898 as the cardinal year of the discovery, for Freud 
writes in Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (p. 60) : 
“ In my forty-third year, when I began to become 
interested in what I could remember of my child- 
hood. . . Nevertheless, such ideas do not spring 
fully equipped from the brain. As late as 1900 
we read in Die Traumdeutung (p. 94) that “ childhood 
knows nothing, as yet, of sexual desire.” In later 
1 Koitus im Kindesalter, “Wiener medizinische Blatter,” April 18, 
1896. For Freud’s contribution, see Sammlung, i, 10.  SIGMUND FREUD 
108 
editions of the book, this sentence is left untouched. 
Now, indeed, there is a footnote which mitigates 
its significance ; but that note had not been added 
in the second edition, the one published in 1909 ! 
Herein we see an additional indication that Die 
Traumdeutung is tabu for Freud. 
The lusty infant is sexual through and through. 
It knows nothing of utility, nothing of reality ; and 
it recognises no obstacles to its desires. It is drunken 
without wine. To suck at its mother’s breast fills 
it with ecstasy. The healthy infant, when awake, 
is perpetually in movement, and all its movements 
are pleasurable ; it kicks and crows, has no dread of 
falling, ignores the risk of knocking itself against 
the hard objects in its environment. Its trusty 
guardians have to safeguard it against the disasters 
that would otherwise be entailed by its own heed- 
lessness. 
The infant sucks its own fingers and toes, for the 
action is pleasurable. In like manner, everything 
it can get hold of is thrust into its mouth. Things 
too big for that are thrown away, and it takes delight 
in destroying them. The passing of faeces is pleasur- 
able ; rolling in faeces is pleasurable ; smells which 
to us are offensive are attractive to the infant. If 
not prevented, it will besoil itself and everything 
within reach.1 Such is the nature of our “ little 
angel ”—and yet in all the world there is no more 
fascinating spectacle than the unending enjoyments 
of the infant. 
The first serious privation the infant has to suffer 
is the loss of the maternal breast. A great many 
1 Freud speaks of this as the oral and anal phase of sexuality. EROS 
109 
children, indeed, never enjoy this universal privilege 
of the mammalia—have never known the delight of 
sucking sweet milk from a warm hemisphere with a 
characteristic odour, the soft cushion into which the 
little snub nose burrows. Weaning, and especially 
a late weaning, is a terror to mothers and nurses. 
Soon after this the child is constrained to satisfy 
its bodily needs in utensils, instead of passing excreta 
at random, and has to renounce the pleasures that 
were derivable from contact with the warm and 
damp excreta. Rocking and kicking movements 
have to be controlled, for the child must now learn 
to walk. Collisions with furniture teach it respect 
for reality and for the dangers of reality. Thus, 
from the first, training comes into conflict with the 
promptings of desire, and the reality principle estab- 
lishes its dominion over the pleasure principle.1 
The child is born with an imitative impulse, or 
develops this impulse at a very early age. It imitates 
whatever pleases it. All children imitate the sounds 
they hear, and among other sounds they imitate 
those they themselves make in passing faeces and 
in breaking wind. It is by imitation that they 
learn to walk and to talk. Love must collaborate 
here. The child learns only from those it loves— 
learns from them because it wishes to become like 
them (identification). Through love, too, it learns 
things that are anything but pleasurable : obedience, 
moderation, abstinence, and renouncement. 
In the year 1905, Freud gave a concise exposition 
of his views concerning sexuality in a little book 
1 Freud, Formulierungen liber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen 
Geschehens, Samralung, iii, 5. 110 
SIGMUND FREUD 
which has become classical, Drei Abhandlungen zur 
Sexualtheorie. Freud himself compared his theory 
with that of Plato’s Symposium. The comparison 
was subsequently elaborated by his pupils and 
admirers. 
The Drei Abhandlungen is Freud’s best book. It 
contains the essence of Freud, that which will go 
down to posterity. Important though dream inter- 
pretation and the theory of resistance are, what the 
world sees in Freud is mainly the investigator of 
sexual problems. Psychoanalysis is by most people 
regarded chiefly as a method for the bold and 
revolutionary study of the sexual life. The new book 
was received with acclamations from the few who 
were competent to understand it. The theory was 
so tersely and luminously formulated, and was stated 
with a force that seemed so unanswerable, that it 
had an irresistible success. 
The description of the sexuality of the child is 
the central feature of the book. Freud holds that in 
early childhood the sexual organs have not yet 
come to play a predominant part. The child draws 
its enjoyments from all sources, from all fields of 
sensation. The lips are the first and most important 
instruments of pleasure. The next important source 
of pleasure is the exercise of the muscular apparatus. 
When the infant falls asleep after being suckled, 
it is enjoying the ecstasy of a well-filled stomach. 
We may doubt whether any of the joys of later life, 
even those of love and of gratified ambition, are so 
intense. 
In these early days, the child knows nothing, 
psychologically, of differences between the sexes. 
It does not even distinguish between its own body EROS 
111 
and the animate or inanimate objects of the outer 
world. The infant’s own thumb, a comforter, its 
mother’s nose—all are alike. 
Freud teaches that all infants masturbate, but 
discontinue the practice ere long. Before the fourth 
year of life, most children resume masturbation for 
a time, to forget it once more. But the repression 
of the memory of this second period of masturbation 
simultaneously involves the repression of most of 
the memories of early childhood. This accounts for 
the phenomenon of “ infantile amnesia,” for the 
amazing fact that our memories are a blank as regards 
a period of life during which, to all seeming, memory 
was extremely active. But as regards early childhood, 
the sea of forgetfulness has swallowed everything 
except for a few islands. For the third time, children 
masturbate at puberty, and the memory of having 
masturbated at this age usually persists into adult 
life, although ordinary respectable folk are prone to 
deny having masturbated even at puberty. 
In 1908, Freud published a paper entitled Analyse 
der Phobie eines fiinfjahrigen Knaben.1 The phobia 
of this little boy of five has become classical. Freud 
recently reported that little Hans, who has now 
become big Hans, has no remembrance of his trouble 
of childhood, or of its treatment. Everything has 
been forgotten. He is a healthy and vigorous young 
man. 
It is a law of our mental development that we 
should forget most of what happens to us during the 
early years of childhood. Analyses are rarely pushed 
back as far as this, and for that reason I feel incom- 
petent to pass an opinion on the validity of Freud’s 
1 Sammlung, iii, 1. 112 
SIGMUND FREUD 
doctrine concerning the three phases of masturbation. 
I do not see how we can decide whether a repression 
of the reminiscences of childhood occurs in association 
with the repression of the memory of masturbation. 
Stekel opines that the child at this age lives in 
paradise, in a paradise so beautiful that it has to be 
forgotten if the life of subsequent years is to be at 
all tolerable. Such an outlook seems to me to be 
poetry rather than science. 
Let us return to the facts of direct observation. 
Infantile sexuality is, on the one hand, a self-gratifi- 
cation that is independent of the outer world ; and, 
on the other, the investment (cathexis) of the whole 
body with desire and gratification—skin, mucous 
membranes, muscles, intestines, sense organs. The 
former is “autoerotism”1 and the latter is “ pan- 
sexualism.” These tendencies of the child are 
described by Freud as “ polymorphically perverse,” 
but the term is open to objection. If children are 
universally autoerotic and pansexual, if these mani- 
festations are dependent upon general biological 
causes, the word “ perverse ” is a misnomer. We 
can guess at Freud’s reason for using it. The Drei 
Abhandlungen, though restrained in tone, is really a 
polemic against sanctimonious humbugs. It is pos- 
sible that Freud wanted to explode the very notion 
of the “ perverse.” 
Even the adult does not completely lose his 
pansexualist trend. But in grown-ups, sexual pleasure 
is mainly concentrated in the genital organs, and for 
this reason the infantile form of sexuality becomes in 
the adult what Freud has termed “ initial pleasure ” 
(in contradistinction to the “ terminal pleasure ” of 
1 This word was coined by Havelock Ellis. EROS 
detumescence). A kiss is initial pleasure. So is the 
eating of a good meal. A walk with one’s beloved, 
a little affectionate horseplay—these are constituents 
of initial pleasure. 
In some of my other writings,11 have distinguished 
between two forms of pleasure. There are certain 
pleasures, like that which we experience in a hot 
bath, which remain unchanged from start to finish. 
The bath is equally agreeable, and the pleasure lasts 
as long as we please. This pleasure is timeless, 
amorphous, and unchanging; it may be termed 
feminine. Pleasures of the other type are crescent; 
they rise to a sudden climax and end abruptly. In 
their climax they are akin to pain, and in their end 
they are akin to death. Freud’s distinction between 
initial pleasure and terminal pleasure corresponds to 
my own distinction between amorphous and passive 
pleasure, on the one hand, and formed and active 
pleasure, on the other. My classification leads back 
from Freud to Plato, whose sexual theory is built 
upon the distinction between being and becoming. 
According to Plato, Eros the god of the unresting 
urge, was the firstborn of the deep-bosomed and 
unchanging Gaia (the Earth) : the masculine issuing 
from the feminine. 
Many perversions are the outcome of a sort of 
frugality, which is content with initial pleasure and 
renounces terminal pleasure. We may regard in this 
light: sadism, and its counterpart true fetichism; 
inspectionism and exhibitionism ; palpationism. In 
all of these, the sexual impulse undergoes premature 
arrest, is arrested at a stage of pleasure where arrest 
1 For instance in Alles um Liebe, and elsewhere. 114 
SIGMUND FREUD 
is normal in childhood. Even homosexuality becomes 
more comprehensible in the light of the child’s 
indifference towards distinctions of sex. After some 
hesitation, Freud has decided in favour of explaining 
inversion (he prefers this term to the hybrid word 
homosexuality) through bisexuality.1 
If perversions and (as will be shown) all neuroses 
represent an arrest at an infantile stage or a regression 
to such a stage, we have still to answer the question, 
Why do neurotics and the sexually perverse suffer 
from infantilism ? To answer this question, Freud 
formulates his libido theory, which occupies the last 
third of the Drei Abhandlungen. He watches over 
this theory jealously, will not tolerate the smallest 
deviation from it, and fences it round with a palisade. 
It is to be left exactly as he has perfected it with 
marvellous perspicuity after twenty years’ continuous 
labour. But the theory of the libido has to bear the 
brunt of the hostile criticism of Freudianism. It 
was on account of differences concerning this theory 
that breaches occurred between Freud and three of 
the most noted among his scientific collaborators : 
Jung, Adler, and Stekel. We may, indeed, put 
down the breach with Breuer to the same account. 
At one time, when Freud had brought an analysis 
to a successful conclusion, he used to show the 
patient an engraving after a painting by Ingres, 
“ Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx.” The 
first description of the Oedipus motif as the basis of 
1 It should be noted that “ homosexuality ” is not perfectly synony- 
mous with the term “ inversion ” as used by Freud. Concerning all 
these sexual perversions, consult Stekel: Storungen des Trieb- und 
Affektlebens ; vol ii, Onanie und Homosexualitat; vol. v, Psycho- 
sexueller Infantilismus ; vol. vii, Der Fetischismus. EROS 
115 
mental conflicts is found in the original edition of 
Die Traumdeutung (pp. 185 et seq.) and therefore 
dates from 1900. Oedipus, son of Laius, king of 
Thebes, killed his father and married his mother 
Jocasta. Every son, so Freud teaches, is jealous of 
his father and loves his mother. Every daughter, 
adds Jung, inverting the parable, loves her father 
and is jealous of her mother—as in the case of Electra. 
The theory of the Oedipus complex has supplied the 
energy which has driven Freud’s triumphal car 
round the world. It was the proud privilege of the 
Viennese and of the Germans in general to mock at 
Freud for twenty years, or to ignore him. Elsewhere, 
he was acclaimed by those who were as if struck by 
the lightning of truth—and not by physicians alone, 
but by educationists, by serious-minded clerics, by 
sociologists, and, at length, by all who have a modicum 
of self-knowledge. 
The signs of the Oedipus complex are so plain 
that it seems difficult to-day to understand why the 
world had to wait until 1900 before a bold psychologist 
could discover this light for souls that have strayed 
from the path. Even more incomprehensible was 
the resistance of the dullards to the revelation, once 
it had been vouchsafed. Who of us is there who 
does not know sons embroiled with their fathers and 
over-tender towards their mothers ? Consider, again, 
many a grown-up daughter of your acquaintance 
who is proud at being taken for her father’s wife. 
How plainly is love for the father disclosed by the 
jealous hatred of the daughter for the stepmother 
when the widowed father remarries. Careful re- 
searches have shown that actual incest, sexual inter- 
course between persons within the prohibited degrees, 116 
SIGMUND FREUD 
is by no means rare. But psychical incest is universal. 
We are not aware of having experienced this incestuous 
passion, because we have repressed it from conscious- 
ness, have repressed it after severe struggles, which 
have likewise been forgotten. The idea of incest 
has become so repugnant to our minds that the mere 
formulation of the doctrine of the Oedipus complex 
arouses indignation. Yet from whom is the child 
to gain its experience of tenderness if not from the 
parents ? As the child grows older, restrictions are 
imposed by the canons of our civilisation, and these 
feelings of affection must be detached from the 
parents and must find other objects. One who fails 
to effect this detachment will have the under hand 
in the struggle of life, and will sail back before the 
wind into the realm of childhood. The Oedipus 
complex is, therefore, the nuclear complex of the 
neuroses; and every one of the conflicts of life 
revives in the neurotic “ the intolerable pain of the 
old wounds.” The soldier on a stricken field, wounded 
to death, and gasping out his life with the cry, 
“ Mother, Mother,” teaches us this. “ With the 
progress of psychoanalysis, the importance of the 
Oedipus complex has become ever more firmly 
established. The recognition of its reality is the 
shibboleth whereby we may distinguish the supporters 
of psychoanalysis from its adversaries.”1 
Among the various perversions which are normal 
to the amatory life of the child, incest would thus 
appear to be the most terrible. Parents who are 
too affectionate, expose their children to the danger 
of experiencing an Oedipus fixation. An only child 
will be hard put to it to escape neurosis. A child 
1 Drei Abhandlungen, 1922 edition, p. 89, EROS 
117 
often suffers severely when a little brother or sister 
is born, for it no longer occupies the first place in the 
parents’ affection. The family, with its demands 
and allurements, is apt to be the forcing-house of 
neurosis. On the other hand, we may often see that 
orphans are very liable to suffer from neurosis ; so 
are children brought up away from home ; so are 
illegitimate children. Excess of tenderness is harmful; 
but a lack of sufficient tenderness may be even worse. 
The outcast sees that others are treated with affection, 
and grows sick with longing. A German specialist 
in the diseases of childhood recently declared that 
children in foundling hospitals and similar places, 
though well cared for in other respects, often fall ill, 
and even die, simply from lack of being mothered. 
He called the illness “ Kinderheimkrankheit ”—insti- 
tutional disease. 
Nearly twenty years ago, when I first became a 
member of the Freudian circle, the Oedipus complex 
was a recent discovery, and occupied a leading place 
in our minds. We were full of the wonder of it, 
and we formed a little round table for the discussion 
of views that were still peculiar to ourselves. The 
echo from the outer world was not to come for some 
time yet. We knew that it would come ultimately, 
though we none of us foresaw the horrors in the 
form of Oedipus novels and Oedipus dramas which 
the future held in store. Freud was unlucky enough, 
when he unravelled the Oedipus complex, to present 
second-rate writers with a key enabling them, though 
quite without inspiration, to unlock the recesses of 
the mind. The misfortune is all the more undeserved 
inasmuch as Freud himself teaches that the work 
of the imaginative writer wells up from the uncon- 118 
SIGMUND FREUD 
scious, and is not derived from knowledge acquired 
from books. 
Thus we received Freud’s gift, and ploughed 
with his heifer, each after his own kind. Otto 
Rank compiled a comprehensive work Das Inzest- 
motiv in Dichtung und Sage, a book of seven hundred 
pages, which was not published until 1912. I give 
the titles of some of the chapters : Oedipus, Hamlet, 
Don Carlos; the Stepmother Theme, Don Carlos, 
Phaedra; the Struggle between Father and Son, 
The Robbers, The Tantalids ; Quarrels in the Younger 
Generation, Cain, Die Ahnfrau, Atreus and Thyestes. 
These selections will give some notion of the 
multifarious contents. 
The physicians of the round table conducted 
analyses. Following Freud’s example, they referred 
all neuroses to the Oedipus complex in one or other 
of its two forms, the father complex and the mother 
complex. “ Du siehst mit diesem Trank im Leibe 
bald Helena in jedem Weibe.” 1 
The analysts of that day have been charged with 
being excessively monotonous. The analyses lasted 
a very long time, and they all led to the same con- 
clusion. The critics were amused. “ Would it not 
be better,” they said, “ to make it plain at the very 
first consultation that the patient has committed 
incest with his mother and has tried to poison his 
father ? ” But surely it was our duty to work the 
soil thoroughly with this new tool! Not a grain of 
the new truth must fall on barren ground. 
Freud subsequently described another motif, which 
1 Faust, I, 2603-4. 
As soon as you have drunk this philtre, every woman will seem to 
you a Helen. EROS 
119 
plays its part in individual development before 
the Oedipus complex arises. The little boy (and 
doubtless the little girl as well) sees in the great, 
strict, powerful father—wearing sombre clothing, 
speaking with a deep voice, and appearing in the 
nursery only at long intervals—an ideal. The father 
is godlike, the object of an unconditional respect; 
the child wishes and endeavours to be like the father. 
Thus the boy loves the father before he comes to 
have any reason for hating the father. We see our 
little ones play at being father, see them knit their 
brows and speak commandingly in something which 
is as near as they can get to a bass voice. The 
root of the religious sentiment is to be found in this 
attitude towards the father. When the reasoning 
faculty begins to develop, the actual father becomes 
inadequate as an ideal, and his omnipotence is 
therefore projected into the skies. The only way of 
introducing the idea of God into the mind of a child 
is to talk of a father in heaven. 
When, in the next phase of development, the 
little boy comes to look upon his father as a rival, 
his tendency is to incorporate into his idea of himself 
the lofty qualities which he has imagined his father 
to possess. The psychological situation thus becomes 
obscure and complicated. At first the boy identifies 
himself with his father from affection; then he 
identifies himself with the father in order that he 
may be able to take the father’s place with the mother. 
Furthermore, the mother, first loved as the one 
who gives suck, now becomes the one whom the 
child holds responsible for its first experience of 
painful deprivation—that of weaning. Again, the 
mother is the first person to take in hand the education 120 
SIGMUND FREUD 
of the child, and education involves the renunciation of 
a great many pleasures ; this tends to arouse feelings 
of hatred towards the mother. The Oedipus complex, 
which was simple, becomes extremely intricate. 
These relationships are most obscure, and Stekel 
goes so far as to declare that hatred is older than 
love. But the easiest way of throwing light on the 
matter is to suppose that here, as elsewhere, the 
bipolarity of the feelings plays its part. Towards 
both its parents, a child feels hatred as well as love, 
and in every child these four sentiments are variously 
mingled according as individual inheritance and 
individual experience may vary. 
It grows ever plainer that identification is one 
of the main characteristics of love. Identification 
is also one of the main characteristics of hatred. 
There are dreams of a return to the mother’s womb. 
The opponents of psychoanalysis make fun of these 
dreams, but to ourselves they are an ever-renewed 
occasion for wonder. Imaginatively, the dreamer 
reenters the mother, thinks of himself as arising 
out of her, becomes of one flesh with her. There 
are also dreams of return to the father, and their 
discoverer speaks of these as “ spermatozoa dreams.” 
The name is badly chosen, for it makes too strong 
an appeal to the sense of the ridiculous. 
It is Freud’s way, after he has made an amazing 
assertion, to call a halt to himself, that he may 
consider how the critics will take it. He mitigates 
the hostility of his readers by confessing that he is 
himself very much surprised, and that he has objec- 
tions to make. Among Freud’s pupils, there is often 
a lack of such self-criticism. In this dark domain, 
the analysts of the second generation tread over- EROS 
121 
confidently, in a way which arouses the onlooker’s 
mistrust. I, too, call a halt. 
“ This is monstrous ! ” exclaim the child-lovers. 
“ What you say has a grain of truth in it, but you 
exaggerate grossly. You caricature. You make 
changelings and monsters of our children.” 
There is good reason for the protest. In normal 
children all these relationships and complexes are 
but lightly sketched; they are overcome without 
producing manifest injury; and they play no part 
in subsequent life. In other instances, however, 
the complexes of childhood, which have been appar- 
ently outgrown, become active once more. This 
happens when the life sustains such shocks that 
the soul, in alarm, seeks refuge in the unconscious— 
in the forgotten days of early childhood. In some, 
again, the sexual life of childhood is of such a char- 
acter that it cannot fail to eventuate in neurosis. 
Where a good many analysts display bias is in 
this, that they ignore the actual shocks, and are 
wholly concerned with disinterring the complexes 
of childhood. An untoward love affair, or any other 
grave deprivation, may induce a neurosis; and, 
when this happens, the neurosis will always exhibit 
some of the elementary characteristics of the amatory 
life of the child. It is our task to throw light upon 
the proximate determining cause of the neurosis, 
upon the actual deprivation. Freud’s more imme- 
diate followers are apt to turn aside from this task. 
Their interest is concentrated on the Oedipus com- 
plex ; of late, also, on the castration complex (see 
below); for a time, they were keenly interested in 
the narcissism of childhood. They make exhaustive 
analyses to learn what happened thirty years ago 122 
SIGMUND FREUD 
and more; but they do not learn, and they do not 
want to learn, what happened yesterday or the 
day before. That is why they often fail to secure 
good results. If a man is impotent because, in the 
unconscious, he detests his wife, we shall not help 
him much by convincing him that, long years ago, 
he was in love with his mother. He believes that 
he is devoted to his wife ; he loads her with presents ; 
he fancies he could not live without her. The 
analyst’s “ cruel ” duty is to drag him out of his 
“ heaven.” 
When Freud was blamed for disregarding the 
extant, the actual, he replied that the critics were 
asking him to do what he and Breuer had done in 
former days, and had given up.1 But in 1895, when 
he was still working with Breuer, Freud did not yet 
know that the actual solutions can, in many instances, 
be supplied to the patient only by making a detour 
leading through the experience of childhood. The 
extant morbific conflict is not disclosed until the 
materials dating from childhood have been exhumed 
from the unconscious. Often enough, the nature of 
the actual conflict speedily becomes apparent, but 
this conflict continues to exercise a noxious influence 
until it has been detached from its anchorage in the 
primary complexes. 
Before Freud appeared on the stage, the scientific 
explanation of neurosis was that it was all due to 
heredity and degeneration. The influence of heredity 
is undeniable, but the admission of this fact does 
not help us to cure our patient. He has his heritage, 
and we cannot alter it. But we have to bear in mind 
1 Sammlung, vol. iv, pp. 4 and 73. EROS 
123 
that qualities which have been acquired early in 
life get such a grip on the character that they may 
easily simulate the results of inheritance. For 
example, there is no proof whatever that religious 
trends are inborn. Religion and the conscience are 
instilled into the child mind at so early a date, and 
they are so intimately amalgamated with the most 
primal father complex, that they seem to be congenital. 
There are good grounds for Freud’s contention 
that all deviations from the mental norm are due 
to disturbances in the evolution of the sexual life 
of childhood. That is the explanation, not only of 
qualities which are defects from the social point of 
view, such as those which manifest themselves in 
the form of the neuroses and the perversions, but 
also of the artistic faculty and of genius in all its 
varieties. The fundamental cause of neurosis is 
supposed to be a premature and unduly vigorous 
development of the impulsive life (precocity). We 
may doubt whether debility of the impulsive life 
can ever induce neurosis. The weakness of the 
impulsive life displayed by neurotics is, in most cases 
at any rate, merely the sequel of a premature and 
excessive manifestation of instinctive activity. Such 
precocity is often artificially induced, especially in 
great towns, and when the teachers are themselves 
hysterically inclined. Unwise or vicious manifesta- 
tions of tenderness on the part of elders will foment 
the budding impulses. When the parents are 
hysterical, the child they rear can hardly escape 
neurosis, and the observer is apt to say that the 
illness is hereditary. It would be more correct 
to speak of it as contagious. No doubt, precocity 
of the instinctive life can be inherited, but we shall 124 
SIGMUND FREUD 
be wise to pay a great deal more attention to environ- 
ment than to inheritance. 
The poor little wretch with unduly active impulses 
will speedily come into conflict with environment. 
Such a child will always be wanting to do things 
that are forbidden, and things that are beyond a 
child’s powers. Here we encounter the inferiority 
complex. The sense of impotence is morbific. 
Freud’s collaborators offered two ideas to round 
off the circle of Freudian doctrine. After considerable 
hesitation, he accepted the idea of bisexuality. 
Alfred Adler’s contribution was the idea of inferiority 
struggling against overmastering forces. Freud could 
not digest this notion, and it has, therefore, continued 
to play the part of a foreign body in the wheelwork 
of the Freudian mechanisms. We shall see that 
much of what Freud has written since 1905 must be 
regarded as the expression of a defensive campaign 
against Adler and Adler’s leading idea. 
We have learned that, to begin with, Freud was 
hostile to the notion of bisexuality. Even to-day, I 
fancy, his mind is not free from a secret antagonism 
towards the notion. In 1907, Sadger maintained 
that all hysterical symptoms, and, indeed, all fantasies 
and dreams, were bisexual—that they all had a 
homosexual as well as a heterosexual root in the 
unconscious. The following year, Freud conceded a 
point, agreeing that the statement applied to a good 
many symptoms; but he refused to admit the 
universal validity of the principle.1 At this period 
he would still, at times, make fun of bisexuality, 
and warn us against accepting it with too much 
1 Sammlung, vol. ii, No. 5. EROS 
125 
enthusiasm. In a note added to the later editions 
of the Drei Abhandhmgen (p. 82), Freud speaks of 
the terms 44 masculine and feminine ” as lacking 
in clarity, and declares that if psychoanalysts use 
them, it must only be in the signification of active 
and passive. This is an attempt to explode the 
notion of bisexuality. On the same page he declares 
that the libido is always masculine. If that only 
means that it is active, he is not telling us very 
much. The libido is an impulse, and every impulse 
is active ; it impels. 
It is true that on the next page (p. 83) we find 
the passage: 44 Since I have become acquainted 
with the outlook of bisexuality, I have come to 
regard this factor as predominant here. I consider 
that the actually observed sexual manifestation of 
man and woman is hardly comprehensible unless 
we take bisexuality into account.” But to this is 
appended the before-mentioned note that, for psycho- 
analysts, masculine and feminine can signify nothing 
more than active and passive. One cannot but ask, 
44 Why so much fuss, then ! ” 
I am myself disinclined to lay great stress upon 
this notion of bisexuality. I agree, however, that 
on the platform where we cooperate with our patients, 
the idea of bisexuality is a good working hypothesis. 
The pregenital form of sexuality, that characterised 
by autoerotism and pansexualism, knows nothing 
as yet of the distinction between the sexes. In its 
origin, therefore, sexuality is not bisexual. Freud 
teaches that the sexual impulses can be transmuted 
into the highest achievements of mankind. To denote 
this process, he uses a word which is also found in 
Nietzsche’s writings, and speaks of 44 sublimation ” 126 
SIGMUND FREUD 
of the libido. Now this sublimation, likewise, knows 
nothing, or knows very little, of sex distinctions. 
But if the sexual impulse is not bisexual either in 
its initial or in its terminal stage, we cannot regard 
bisexuality as one of its essential characteristics. 
I look upon bisexuality as nothing more than one 
expression of the higher law of bipolarity, which 
will be fully considered in due course. 
When I was in Asia, in the huge continent where 
much has remained unchanged since the days of 
Abraham, and when I contrasted the infinity of Asia 
both in respect of time and space with our hustled 
Europe, the continent of petty subdivisions, I had 
a strong impression that Asia was feminine. 
Night is feminine when compared with day, in 
which the sun rises and sets. 
Ecstasy is feminine, and the dream is masculine. 
Such comparisons and such contrasts lie ready 
to our hand; they are an ornament to the work of 
the poets, but they are dangerous in science. Every- 
thing is bipolar. Sometimes we stand near one pole, 
and at other times near the other. These criticisms 
concern the theoretical validity of the notion of 
bisexuality. As a working hypothesis, I use it myself 
every day, like other analysts. 
Freud’s illustrious forerunner, the divine Plato, 
ignored the distinction between the sexes. For him, 
in the last analysis, love was love of the beautiful. 
Freud tells us that sexual impulses can be sublimated. 
This means that they can be desexualised for spiritual 
ends, for the ends we denote by the names of art, 
science, and religion; and, on a somewhat less lofty 
plane, for such ends as craftsmanship, professional 
work, politics, all that we know as culture. There EROS 
127 
- can be no talk of sexual distinctions within such 
sublimations. In them, there is neither sexuality 
nor bisexuality. No modern reader of Plato’s Sym- 
posium or of his Phcedrus can fail to be struck by the 
♦ way in which the author refers only to love felt for 
i young men, as if there were no heterosexual love, or 
as if the latter were a debased sentiment and unworthy 
of a philosopher’s attention. When, to-day, we con- 
template the libido in the light thrown on it by 
I Freud, when we study its beginnings in the autoerotic 
child and contemplate its end in the lofty altitudes 
of sublimation, we achieve the rebirth of the classical 
thought that Eros has no sex. The animal nature 
within us makes us force him beneath the yoke of 
the sexual, but his divine nature makes him aspire 
heavenward and strive to free himself from the 
sexual. Provisionally, and obscurely, let me formu- 
late the following proposition: The libido frees itself 
from sexuality by way of bisexuality (see below, 
p. 256). I believe that Freud is drawing nearer to 
this conception, and I am still looking forward to the 
book in which he will transcend us all by classical 
limpidity, and will give us imagery as beautiful as 
that of the Platonic simile of the two-in-hand : 
“ Of the nature of the soul, though her true form 
be ever a theme of large and more than mortal 
discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And 
let the figure be composite—a pair of winged horses 
and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the 
charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of 
noble descent, but those of other races are mixed ; 
the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one 
of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other 
is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving 128 
SIGMUND FREUD 
of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble 
to him.” 1 
As late as 1914, Freud dismissed this idea of the 
two-in-hand contemptuously, writing of the Zurich 
School of psychoanalysts : “ They have been able 
to hear one or two of the cultural overtones in the 
symphony of world happenings, but they are deaf 
to the elemental melody of the instinctive life.” 
In 1923 he writes in a different strain : “ Now that 
we can venture to analyse the ego, we shall be able 
to answer those whose moral sense has been outraged 
by our doctrines, those who insist that there must 
be a higher nature in man. ‘ Certainly,’ we shall 
reply, 4 and this is the higher nature, this ego-ideal 
or super-ego, which represents our parental relation- 
ship. As little children, we knew this higher nature, 
admired it, and dreaded it; subsequently, we incor- 
porated it into ourselves.’ ” 
I think that even Plato would have been satisfied 
by this admission. Through procreation and birth, 
we are indebted to our parents for the fleshly elements 
in our composition ; and through the impression that, 
in the very beginning of our days, they make on our 
budding minds, we are indebted to them for the 
spiritual elements. Thus Plato’s two horses are not 
coeval, but they both derive from the same source; 
they both come from our parents. I have already 
had occasion to point out how difficult it is to 
distinguish between inherited qualities, and qualities 
that are early acquired. 
1 Plato, Pliaedrus, 246.—The English version in the text is quoted 
from Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English, 
Clarendon Press, Oxford, third edition, 1892, vol. i, p. 452. CHAPTER NINE 
FREUD’S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
The first time I saw Freud, he was lecturing, the 
lecture being one of a series delivered on Saturday 
evenings from seven till nine. He was hard on fifty 
years of age, but still looked young and vigorous. 
The audience was scanty, barely sufficing to fill the 
first three rows. He has not given any lectures for 
several years now. Should he again wish to do so, 
he would have to take a very large hall. 
His black hair, slightly grizzled, was smooth 
and was parted on the left side. His beard was small, 
and was trimmed to a point. Many celebrities have 
large and piercing eyes, but Freud is an exception. 
Freud’s eyes are dark brown and lustrous; they 
have a scrutinising expression as they look up at 
one. He is slender, of medium height, brisk in his 
movements ; but his figure was already bowed when 
I first knew him. He had the student’s stoop. 
He spoke without notes for nearly two hours, 
and his hearers were enthralled. A later course 
than that of which I have been speaking was taken 
down in shorthand and subsequently published.1 
His method of exposition was that of the German 
humanist, lightened by a conversational tone which 
1 1915-1917. Vorlesungen, etc., see Bibliography. 130 
SIGMUND FREUD 
he had probably acquired in Paris. No pomposity 
and no mannerisms. There was a certain contrast 
between matter and style. Amiably, almost enticingly, 
he dealt with the representatives of traditional 
psychology, reminding us of the way in which Hauff’s 
Satan genially appeals to his victim Hasentreffer 
with the words : “ Come along over here ; it doesn’t 
hurt a bit! ” On one occasion, when he was speaking 
of Wundt, Freud referred to the incident in Ariosto’s 
Orlando Furioso, when a giant, in the heat of battle, 
has his head smitten off. But the giant is too busy 
to notice it, and goes on fighting. Wundt refused to 
admit the existence of the unconscious, although the 
interpretation of dreams had proved its reality. 
“We cannot help thinking,” said Freud, “ that the 
old psychology has been killed by my dream doctrine ; 
but the old psychology is quite unaware of the fact, 
and goes on teaching as usual.” 
Freud was fond of using the Socratic method. He 
would break off his formal exposition to ask questions 
or invite criticism. When objections were forthcoming, 
he would deal with them wittily and forcibly. 
After the lecture, which was delivered in the old 
psychiatric clinic of the General Hospital, we used 
to accompany Freud in triumph through the court- 
yards as far as the Alser Strasse. There, he usually 
took a cab to his home, where he would play a game 
of cards. On the way from the lecture hall to the 
street we always made ourselves as conspicuous as 
possible. Freud was generally in a cheerful mood. 
The Drei Abhandlungen and the Bruchstiick einer 
Hysterieanalyse had recently been published. We 
knew these books by heart, including all the footnotes ; 
we fully understood their significance, and we were PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
131 
as proud of ourselves as the pupils of Aristotle in 
the days before that philosopher’s works had become 
widely known. 
Freud once said that all his teaching was at 
everyone’s disposal. This implied, not only that 
he showered upon us the gifts of his genius, but 
that it was a matter of indifference to him if others 
used these gifts without acknowledgment. At that 
time I could not understand his utterance. Was 
he then so rich ? Or did he think himself perfectly 
secure, did he feel that he could apply to himself 
what the ancients applied to Homer when they 
said : “ People are more likely to steal Hercules’ 
club than to rob Homer of a single verse ” ? In 
actual fact, I was able to observe in subsequent 
years that many of Freud’s pupils would publish 
works without adequately acknowledging that the 
ideas in them were Freud’s. In instance I may 
mention Die Bedeutung des Vaters fiir das Schicksal 
des Einzelnen, by C. G. Jung; and Das Problem des 
Hamlet und der Oedipuskomplex, by Ernest Jones. 
Freud delighted in these studies. He had driven 
an adit deep into the mental life, and he needed 
collaborators who would line the walls of the tunnel 
with glazed bricks. 
Others are, then, entitled to use Freud’s ideas. 
He is so much opposed to his pupils coining 
independent ideas that he prefers to give them a 
superfluity from his own mint. One of these faithful 
disciples who has been in Freud’s good graces for 
decades has a stereotyped answer to the question 
why Freud’s pupils do not develop the master’s 
teaching : “ He has led the way everywhere ; there 
is nothing left for us to discover.” The orthodox 132 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Freudians have all succumbed to this hypnotic 
influence. 
In the year 1903 Freud founded a circle. Its 
members used to meet every Wednesday evening. 
It ultimately developed into the Viennese Psycho- 
analytical Society and gave birth to the daughter 
societies elsewhere. Its first members were Wilhelm 
Stekel, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, and Rudolf 
Reitler. Kahane and Reitler are both dead. Neither 
of them made any notable contributions to psycho- 
analysis. 
Kahane had been an intimate of Freud’s early 
days. He translated Charcot’s and Janet’s lectures 
into German. About fifteen years before his death 
a breach occurred between him and Freud. 
Since 1912, Stekel has been regarded by Freud 
with disfavour, but in earlier years his journalistic 
gifts had enabled him to do much towards making 
Freud’s theories widely known in Vienna and through- 
out Germany. His panegyrics were continually 
appearing in the daily press. No doubt Freud would 
eventually have made good without the aid of such 
propaganda, but Stekel’s services were none the 
less considerable at a time when courage was needed 
by those who proclaimed themselves psychoanalysts. 
Adler quitted the Freudian circle in 1911, owing 
to differences of opinion on scientific matters. To-day, 
therefore, none of those who were wont to attend 
the Wednesday meetings are to be found in the 
orthodox Freudian group. 
The circle founded in 1903 was soon joined by 
Paul Federn, Eduard Hitschmann, M. Steiner, and 
Isidor Sadger. Besides these regular attendants, 
there were a number of occasional visitors such as PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
133 
Friedjung, the specialist in diseases of childhood, 
Max Graf and David J. Bach the musical critics, 
and Hugo Heller, the bookseller. When I joined the 
circle, Otto Rank was already a member of it. He 
was then a very young man, without university 
training, who had attracted Freud’s notice by his 
book Der Kunstler. To-day he is a doctor of philosophy 
and Freud’s Eckermann.1 Rank has had quite 
exceptional opportunities for conversations with Freud, 
and it is to be hoped that he has kept careful notes. 
We foregathered in Freud’s waiting room, and 
sat round a long table. The door leading into the 
study was open, and through the doorway we had 
a glimpse of walls lined with well-filled bookshelves. 
Freud is a collector of antiques. In the waiting room 
there was a large Etruscan vase. On his desk are 
numerous statuettes, Egyptian for the most part. 
Everything in the house seemed important to us. 
The couch, and the arm-chair behind it, were the 
arena of Freud’s Nibelungen labours. For us each 
article was laden with symbolism from the neurotic 
brains which had transferred their cobwebs to them. 
Freud took the chair. We had all supped before 
coming, but at Freud’s we were refreshed with black 
coffee and cigars. The chairman smoked like a fur- 
nace. Proceedings usually began with the reading 
of a paper, which did not necessarily bear strictly on 
psychoanalysis. Discussion followed, and all were ex- 
pected to participate. The order in which we spoke 
during the discussion was decided by lot; Rank, who 
acted as secretary, arranged the drawing of the lots. 
The impression in my mind to-day is that Freud always 
1 An Englishman would have written “ Freud’s Boswell.” Ecker- 
mann was Goethe’s Boswell.—E. and C. P. 134 
SIGMUND FREUD 
spoke last. It is quite possible, however, that this 
is an illusion of memory, and that I merely ceased to 
attend after Freud had spoken. Roma locuta causa 
finita ! 
The evenings were sometimes rather dull. Freud’s 
design in the promotion of these gatherings was 
to have his own thoughts passed through the filter of 
other trained intelligences. It did not matter if the 
intelligences were mediocre. Indeed, he had little 
desire that these associates should be persons of 
strong individuality, that they should be critical 
and ambitious collaborators. The realm of psycho- 
analysis was his idea and his will, and he welcomed 
anyone who accepted his views. What he wanted 
was to look into a kaleidoscope lined with mirrors 
that would multiply the images he introduced into it. 
Especially enjoyable were the evenings on which 
Freud presented his own work in the nascent state. 
Here is a list of four of the most notable papers of 
the kind : (1) A Memory of Leonardo da Vinci’s 
Childhood ; (2) Delusion and Dream in W. Jensen’s 
Gradiva ; (3) Analysis of the Phobia of a five-year-old 
Boy ; (4) A Case of obsessional Neurosis. 
In this circle of intimates, Freud’s method was 
far more audacious than it was in a public lecture. 
He would begin by enunciating his main contentions 
categorically, so that they were apt to repel; then 
he would provide such a wealth of argument in support 
of them that his hearers could hardly fail to be con- 
vinced of their truth. Those who know Freud only 
through the written word will be far more ready to 
differ from him than were those who listened to the 
magic of his speech. Not that he is an orator, for 
he rarely raises his voice. Nevertheless, he is a Sieg- PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
135 
mund.1 He fascinates; overthrows his adversaries. 
Personally, I find his later writings less admirable 
than I found the earlier ones. But I am perfectly 
willing to admit that they are no less excellent, and 
that the reason why they please me less is that I have 
to read them in cold print, whereas before I used 
to learn from Freud’s living speech. 
As early as 1906, Freud secured extensive recog- 
nition in other lands. From Hungary came the 
support of S. Ferenczi of Budapesth. He has proved 
an extremely able psychoanalyst, and is one of Freud’s 
personal intimates. What especially impressed us 
was the respect for Freud and his theories displayed 
by the psychiatrists of Zurich. Bleuler, the head 
of the psychiatric clinic in that city, became an 
enthusiast for psychoanalysis ; so did C. G. Jung 
and some of the other assistants at the clinic (Maeder, 
Riklin, Abraham, and Eitington). Even a pastor of 
Zurich, Oskar Pfister, espoused our cause. This 
international attention consoled us for the silence 
of Vienna. Freud ceased to trouble about local 
recognition, and entered into lively correspondence 
with the Swiss psychoanalysts. Thus the first clinic 
for the use of the new explosives was founded in 
Switzerland. In the spring of 1908, the international 
supporters of the Freudian doctrine met in Salzburg 
for the first Psychoanalytical Congress. Among 
those who attended were adherents from Geneva, 
London, and the United States. 
I have never seen a more remarkable triumph 
1 In the spelling of Freud’s first name the “ e ” of “ Siegmund ” 
has been dropped. Wittels restores it here. Siegmund was the 
victorious hero of the ancient saga. There is also a word-play. “ Sieg- 
mund ” is conceived as meaning “ victorious-mouth.”—E. and C. P. 136 
SIGMUND FREUD 
than that secured by Freud at this congress. The 
Swiss, who are cautious folk, had a good many 
objections to raise; but Freud carried the critics 
off their feet by the impetus and the clearness of his 
utterances. It seemed to him that through the growth 
of the Zurich School his teachings would be given a 
footing in the domain of general science, and he had 
no foreboding of future disappointments. Freud’s 
Viennese pupils, too, made a good showing at the con- 
gress. Sadger was able to report the first case in which 
a homosexual had been cured by psycho-analysis. 
Stekel delivered an address on anxiety states. 
The ties that were formed with the Swiss psychia- 
trists were peculiarly fruitful in that at Zurich a 
start was made in the treatment of mental disorders 
by the new method. 44 The content of the psychosis ” 
was now seriously considered, whereas previously 
it had been regarded as altogether unmeaning, and 
as, therefore, outside the domain of science. Freud 
had had no access to psychiatric material. At Burg- 
holzli, near Zurich, it was now possible, with the aid 
of psychoanalysis, to win an entirely new understand- 
ing as to the nature of schizophrenia, paranoia, and 
melancholia. Nevertheless, the founder of psycho- 
analysis, in his essay Trauer und Melancholia,x and 
in the remarkable papers on The Paranoia of Schreber, 
the President of the Senate,2 was able to open new 
vistas in the province of mental disorders—vistas 
which others had never glimpsed, despite access to 
far more extensive material. 
In the autumn of 1909, Freud, accompanied by 
Jung, went to the United States, to lecture on psycho- 
analysis at the University of Worcester. Ferenczi 
1 Sammlung, iv, 20 8 Ibid., iii, 3 and 4. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
137 
travelled with them. When the party returned, 
we all had the impression that Freud had been 
somewhat disappointed by his American journey. 
The founder of psychoanalysis (which was growing 
more complicated day by day) was uneasy. He 
foresaw the coming storm, the “ Freud craze ” which 
rages to-day, not only in the States, but in all English' 
speaking lands. He also realised that those who 
became affected with this craze would preserve little 
more of his life’s work than the name and the most 
elementary connexions. Freud has been repeatedly 
urged to revisit the States. Fie could now go there 
as a man with a world-wide reputation, but he 
persistently refuses. An intimate of his assures 
me that Freud’s reason for declining is that the 
American diet did not agree with his digestion, 
which is permanently the worse for his trip to the 
States. I do not believe that the real explanation 
is of so trivial an order. I fancy that Freud dislikes 
being hopelessly misunderstood, and that he is too 
sincere to endure fulsome praise from persons who 
completely misunderstand him. 
I do not actually know what Freud, Jung, and 
Ferenczi talked about on the homeward voyage, but 
I think there is good reason to suppose that they 
discussed the need for a strict organisation of the 
psychoanalytical movement. Henceforward, Freud 
no longer treated psychoanalysis as a branch of 
pure science. The politics of psychoanalysis had 
begun. The three travellers took vows of mutual 
fidelity, agreeing to join forces in the defence of the 
doctrine against all danger. One of these dangers 
was that with which every scientific doctrine is 
threatened as soon as it becomes popular—the danger  SIGMUND FREUD 
of vulgarisation and misunderstanding. Another risk 
seemed especially imminent to Jung, who was afraid 
of the trend of some of Freud’s Viennese disciples, 
was afraid of the Viennese far-fetched interpretations. 
When Jung spoke of the Viennese disciples, he would 
be thinking primarily of Adler and Stekel, but 
secondarily of Sadger and the rest. It is probable 
that the Swiss were not entirely free from race 
prejudice. Freud, though he must have known 
the whole-souled devotion of his Viennese disciples, 
was at this time markedly drawn to Jung. His 
face beamed whenever he spoke of Jung : “ This is 
my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased ! ” 
At this period it was my privilege during the 
greater part of a year to watch Freud at work, for 
I was present when he was analysing a case of dementia 
praecox. It was because the patient was a dement, 
because her perceptions were so greatly dulled, that 
Freud could allow me to be there. But for the very 
same reason, I did not profit as much by this great 
opportunity as might have been expected. The 
treatment was not particularly successful. What 
I did gain was the advantage of studying the pene- 
tration with which Freud scanned the mind of the 
patient in the persistent hope that he would be able 
to lighten her darkness. 
In the spring of 1910 the second Psychoanalytical 
Congress took place. My memories of this Nurem- 
berg congress are less congenial than those of the 
Salzburg congress. The results of the recent excogi- 
tations of Freud, Jung, and Ferenczi now became 
manifest. Ferenczi proposed the foundation of an 
International Psychoanalytical Association. Jung 
was to be its perpetual president, with absolute power PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
139 
to appoint and depose analysts. All the scientific 
writings of the members of the Association were 
to be submitted to him for approval before publica- 
tion. The responsibility for the further development 
of psychoanalysis was to be taken out of the hands 
of Freud, the founder, and was to be entrusted to 
those of Jung. 
It can readily be imagined that the unsuspecting 
Viennese (“ We had no anticipation of such an 
onslaught ”) were utterly dismayed by these proposals. 
I doubt if powers so absolute have ever been entrusted 
to any one except the heads of certain Roman Catholic 
orders. A young and rapidly developing branch of 
science was to be placed under the rule of a youthful 
recruit. It ultimately transpired that Jung felt ill 
at ease in the psychoanalytical family. Subsequently, 
Freud attempted to explain his course of action on 
this occasion.1 Nothing can explain away the fact 
that the politics of psychoanalysis began with an 
attempt at a coup de main, which was, however, 
frustrated by the prompt and energetic opposition 
of the Viennese. 
Freud behaved like the Old Man of the primitive 
horde—was simultaneously ruthless and simple- 
minded. When he perceived that his Viennese pupils 
were up in arms, and that they were determined to 
resist Ferenczi’s proposal with all their might (this 
determination was especially conspicuous in the cases 
of Adler and Stekel, whose interests were more closely 
touched than those of any of the others), he postponed 
the vote until the next sitting. The three years’ 
struggle within the psychoanalytical camp had begun, 
the unedifying struggle that was to end in three great 
1 Sammlung, iv, 1. 140 
SIGMUND FREUD 
secessions. In its essence, it was a struggle for power 
much more than a dispute about scientific principles. 
Three, at least, of the protagonists—Freud, Jung, and 
Adler—had the lust of dominion. Stekel, I fancy, 
would have been willing to live and let live. 
On the afternoon of this memorable day, the 
Viennese analysts had a private meeting in the 
Grand Hotel at Nuremberg to discuss the outrageous 
situation. Of a sudden, Freud, who had not been 
invited to attend, put in an appearance. Never 
before had I seen him so greatly excited. Fie said : 
“ Most of you are Jews, and therefore you are incom- 
petent to win friends for the new teaching. Jews 
must be content with the modest role of preparing 
the ground. It is absolutely essential that I should 
form ties in the world of general science. I am getting 
on in years, and am weary of being perpetually 
attacked. We are all in danger.” Seizing his coat 
by the lapels, he said : “ They won’t even leave me 
a coat to my back. The Swiss will save us—will 
save me, and all of you as well.” 
The Viennese held out. In the end, an Inter- 
national Association with various local groups was 
founded, and Jung was appointed president of the 
International Association for two years. Adler and 
Stekel started a periodical which was to expound 
their scientific outlook.1 Freud signed the editorials. 
This had not been part of Adler’s and Stekel’s original 
design. 
Already at the Nuremberg congress one of the 
Swiss analysts took occasion to say that it was a 
mistake to lay so much stress upon sexuality, for 
this served merely to provoke opposition. The 
1 “ Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse,” 1910-1913. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
141 
movement would advance more smoothly if psycho- 
analysts were a little less blunt in their phraseology. 
Freud answered acrimoniously. It has ever been 
his way to dwell with inexorable frankness upon 
his conviction that sexuality, naked and unashamed, 
must be made the foundation of the theory of the 
neuroses. He would have sustained fewer attacks 
if he had been willing to mince matters now and again. 
But hear his own words : “ From the very first, in 
psychoanalysis, it has seemed better to speak of these 
love impulses as sexual impulses. Most 4 cultured 5 
persons have taken offence at this nomenclature, and 
wreak vengeance on psychoanalysis by stigmatising 
it as 4 pansexualism.’ Those who feel that sexuality 
is something that shames and debases human nature 
are, of course, at liberty to employ the more dis- 
tinguished terms 4 Eros ’ and 4 erotic.’ I could have 
employed these terms myself, and had I always used 
them I should have saved myself a great deal of 
friction. But I do not like to make concessions to 
weakness. I never know where they will end. We 
may yield, first, where words are concerned, and 
pass by degrees to the sacrifice of more important 
matters. I do not see what we shall gain by being 
ashamed of sexuality. The Greek word Eros, which 
is to spare our blushes, is merely the equivalent of 
the word love. He who can afford to wait, need 
make no concessions.”1 
Freud had come back from Salzburg in a thoroughly 
cheerful mood. After Nuremberg he was less easy 
in his mind, for his conscience pricked him on account 
of the way in which he had treated his Viennese 
1 Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, 1921.—The style of this 
book is fascinating in its brilliancy. 142 
SIGMUND FREUD 
disciples. It is true that these latter could not be 
described as a happy family. They fell foul of one 
another at their Wednesday gatherings, and fiercely 
contested one another’s claims to have done the best 
service on behalf of psychoanalysis. At this juncture, 
Freud, saying that his waiting room was too small, 
had the sittings removed to one of the halls of the 
Viennese Medical Society. Here the atmosphere 
wras chill and uncongenial—the personal touch was 
lacking. New members joined our circle. One of 
these, the late Viktor Tausk, was an extremely 
argumentative person. During the summer of that 
year I resigned from the Psychoanalytical Society. 
The body continues to meet every Wednesday. 
It has long since acquired quarters of its own, issues 
two periodicals, has given birth to a number of 
daughter societies, has established a psychoanalytical 
clinic in Vienna, and has inaugurated a psycho- 
analytical publishing house. I am told that there is 
still a good deal of bickering at the meetings of the 
Society, and it is reported that Freud recently 
remarked: “ The study of psychoanalysis seems 
to awaken people’s worst instincts ! ” I venture to 
demur. The trouble arises from the suppression of 
free criticism within the Society. Suppression makes 
people snappish. 
The members have metapsychological leanings, 
and I am afraid they are inclined to stray into 
scholastic paths. A simple student of natural science 
finds it hard to follow them here. Indeed, the game 
would hardly be worth the candle. Freud is treated 
as a demigod, or even as a god. No criticism of his 
utterances is permitted. Sadger tells us that Freud’s 
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie is the psycho- PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
143 
analyst’s Bible. This is no mere figure of speech. 
The faithful disciples regard one another’s books as 
of no account. They recognise no authority but 
Freud’s; they rarely read or quote one another. 
When they quote it is from the Master, that they may 
give the pure milk of the word. The medical element 
has passed into the background. The philosophers 
hold sway. 
Monroe Meyer, an American, came to Vienna to 
study psychoanalysis under Freud. He published 
the following dream, presumably his own: “I 
am in the act of eating a beefsteak. I put too large 
a piece into my mouth, and am in danger of being 
choked. I thrust my fingers into my mouth, and 
pull out the piece of meat.” This dream recurred 
six times during the night. There were intermediate 
fragments of dream, in which the dreamer was laughed 
at by two waiters because he could not swallow the 
piece of steak. Then he found himself attending 
a lecture. Some of his colleagues among the audience 
were talking across him, “ using a primitive language, 
perhaps Hungarian.” He complained to the lecturer 
that this chatter among the audience made it 
impossible for him to hear the lecture, and he begged 
the lecturer to intervene. Thereupon the two 
students who had been talking began to pinch him 
and to strike him. 
Here are the associations with daily happenings. 
The dreamer was having analytical sittings with 
Freud six times every week, but it had now been 
arranged that he was to have five sittings only. The 
sixfold repetition of the dream expresses the desire 
to go ®n having six sittings. Meyer’s interpretation 144 
SIGMUND FREUD 
runs: “The dream represents a pregnancy and 
parturition fantasy, and depicts a feminine attitude 
towards the father accompanied by jealousy of the 
mother.” 
Stekel comments as follows : “I will not dispute 
my colleague’s interpretation, but the intermediate 
fragments of the dream point in another direction. 
It seems to me that the beefsteak represents the 
indigestible analysis. My unfortunate colleague is 
compelled six times every week to swallow a wisdom 
which threatens to stifle him. The dream is the way 
in which his internal resistance to the analysis secures 
expression. . . . Psychoanalysis is to him a foreign 
language, and he feels himself misused by the master’s 
two advanced assistants (waiters).” 1 
Stekel’s interpretation, which seems convincing, 
should serve as a warning. Persons without medical 
qualification treat patients in the name of Freud, i 
This is monstrous, for the most profound of philo- 
sophers is incompetent, if without medical training, 
to distinguish cancer or tuberculosis from nervous 
disease. In the hands of scholastics and talmudists, 
psychoanalysis becomes so incomprehensible that 
it is lost to natural science. The domain will soon 
have to be reconquered.2 
1 “ Medizinische Klinik,” 1923, No. 11. 
a There is a remarkably close resemblance between the schisms of i 
the psychoanalytical schools and those of the Christian sectaries. It 
is well known that civil wars raged among the Christians over a single 
letter of the alphabet—the homoousian and the homoiousian contro- 
versy. In like manner, there is a fierce struggle between those who 
write “ psychoanalysis ” and those who write “ psychanalysis.” Philo- 
logical considerations would certainly lead us to prefer the shorter form 
The founder considers that the use of the “ o ” makes the word more 
euphonious, and its use is incumbent on all the faithful. Stekel writes | 
“ psychanalysis.” Bleuler and Pfister, who dropped the “ o ” for a 
time, have both been won back to “ psychoanalysis.” CHAPTER TEN 
ALFRED ADLER 
Adler was one of the ablest of Freud’s pupils.1 
He had but one notable weakness ; he could not ana- 
lyse. He found it difficult to discover the phenomena 
of the unconscious mental life. It was, in many cases, 
easy to amend his dream interpretations; in his 
study of his patients he could seldom find his way 
into regions which Freud and most of Freud’s other 
pupils could enter without difficulty. I do not think 
that Adler lacked talent. His inability was the 
expression of a lack of desire. 
Adler’s mind was dominated by a single idea, one 
which seemed to him of supreme importance, one 
whose development has continued to monopolise his 
attention. This idea was derived from Nietzsche, 
who spoke of the will-to-power. What do human 
beings desire ? What do all living creatures desire ? 
Power ! What distresses them more than anything 
else ? Weakness ! Inferiority ! One who is conscious 
of inferiority, driven by his lust of power, will passion- 
ately endeavour to excel, in order to relieve the 
intolerable sense of inferiority. By building up a 
psychical superstructure, Demosthenes the stammerer 
1 The following are Adler’s principal writings : Ueber den nervosen 
Charakter ; Das Problem der Homosexualitat; Praxis und Theori* 
der Individualpsychologie. 146 
SIGMUND FREUD 
becomes an orator; the myope becomes a painter; 
the paralytic becomes a Stilicho or a Torstensson. 
If the victory is secured, the inferiority is compensated, 
and more than compensated, by the psychical super- 
structure. Superiority has grown out of inferiority. 
The two generals I have named, both paralytics, 
were renowned, and dreaded, for the speed of their 
marches. 
Sometimes, however, one who suffers from a sense 
of inferiority despairs of victory. In that case he will 
take refuge in illness ; just as one who wishes to have 
nothing more to do with the world becomes a monk, 
takes refuge in a cloister. Such a flight into illness 
usually brings with it the advantage that the neurotic 
patient is able to tyrannise over his environment. 
He forces the members of his immediate circle to 
pay him attention, show him sympathy, spend money 
on him. Wrapped in his illness, he becomes a person 
of far more importance than he ever was in the days 
of health. 
Adler (himself a short and stumpy man !) hurled 
this group of systematised ideas into the intricate 
network of the Freudian mechanisms. I can still 
picture him at the round table, his eternal Virginia 1 
between his lips, talking always in the Viennese 
dialect, and perpetually returning to his idea of “ the 
inferiority of the organs.” It was obvious that he 
harboured some deep design. He expressed himself 
cautiously : “ Our science is still in its initial stages.” 
. . . “In the present state of our knowledge we 
cannot go quite so far as . . .” “At any rate, I 
should not myself presume . . .” 
1 In Austria, a particular sort of long, thin cigar is known as a 
“ Virginia.”—E. and C. P ALFRED ADLER 
147 
Thus he prowled, as a cat prowls around a bowl 
of cream. A struggle was going on within him. It 
was not a struggle for knowledge, seeing that he had 
his ideas ready finished in his mind. It was a struggle 
for the courage to bear testimony when he knew that 
this could not fail to lead to a breach between himself 
and Freud. It is no small matter to break with such 
a man as Freud. One cannot expect to encounter 
his like again. 
According to Adler, the child wants to be a man, 
and the woman also wants to be a man, because the 
man is stronger than the woman or the child. Not 
every man, howrever, is a real man, and men who 
feel themselves to be weak would like to become 
strong. In all weak creatures, therefore, the will-to- 
power expresses itself in the same fashion, in a way 
which Adler has rather unhappily named the “ mas- 
culine protest.” The term is unsatisfactory because 
the protest has nothing to do with the male sex, being 
just as vigorous in women and children as in men. 
Adler considers that all persons must be allowed 
the greatest possible freedom of action, that they 
may be spared the need for the masculine protest. 
Those who hold sway must wear a velvet glove on 
the iron hand, to conceal the hardness which hurts. 
These are excellent maxims. The reader will readily 
understand why Alder was strongly antagonistic 
to an essay of mine in which I opposed the idea that 
women should study medicine. Women wanted to be- 
come men ; let them follow their bent, said Adler. My 
convictions that women could only be happy as women, 
as the objects of masculine desire, and that the normal 
man desired in women gentleness and the feminine form 
of tenderness, seemed to Adler mere philistinism. 148 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Freud did his utmost to incorporate Adler’s 
master thought into his own teaching. He was 
ready to acknowledge the existence of ego impulses 
side by side with the sexual impulses which generate 
what are usually termed Freudian mechanisms. The 
ego impulses were to be mainly looked upon as 
aggressive impulses. 
Regarding Adler as ambitious (and probably with 
good reason), Freud treated him with marked distinc- 
tion. This offended other members of the circle 
without being enough to satisfy Adler. After the 
rumpus in Nuremberg, Freud appointed Adler chief of 
the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society. But it became 
ever more obvious that Adler had no interest in the 
Freudian edifice with its main pillars of repression, 
resistance, and transference. Freud put the matter 
as mildly as possible when he said that Adler took 
far too summary a view of the data of psychoanalysis. 
In actual fact, Adler repudiated these data. From a 
subsequent controversial essay of Freud’s I may quote 
an admirable passage, in which the affronted titan dis- 
plays his marvellous dialectical powers at their best: 
“ From the first, Adler had no understanding 
for the theory of repression. In one of our Viennese 
discussions, he expressed himself as follows: 4 If 
I ask where repression comes from, I am told that 
it is the outcome of civilisation. But if I ask where 
civilisation comes from, I am told that it is the 
outcome of repression. You see that it is nothing 
more than playing with words.’ A very small fraction 
of the shrewdness Adler has devoted to defending 
his idea of the neurotic constitution, would have 
sufficed to show him the way out of this vicious 
circle. Surely it is reasonable enough to suppose ALFRED ADLER 
149 
that civilisation is built upon the repressions effected 
by earlier generations ; and that each new generation 
is required to maintain this civilisation by recapitu- 
lating the same repressions. A child once asked : 
4 Where do eggs come from ? ’ The answer was : 
4 From hens.’ Thereupon the child asked : 4 Where 
do hens come from ? ’ This time the answer ran : 
4 From eggs.’ The child thought its elders were making 
fun of it, and burst into tears. But there had been 
no word-play on the part of the elders, who had 
answered the child’s questions quite truthfully. Adler’s 
utterances concerning the dream, 4 the shibboleth 
of psychoanalysis,’ are just as futile as the child’s 
tears.” 1 
But this was a later judgment. Down to the 
spring of 1911, Freud did his utmost, and perhaps 
attempted more than was in his power, in the hope 
of persuading the most exacting among his creditors 
to be considerate and patient. I describe Adler 
as a 44 creditor ” because it is impossible to deny 
that the sense of inferiority plays a great part, and 
often the decisive part, both in neurotic patients and 
in children. Moreover, he was continually pressing 
his claim with the question, 44 What about the sense 
of inferiority ? ” The conflict between will (the 
will-to-power) and can (inferiority) is obvious enough. 
What lies behind it ? Adler maintains that it is 
a primary phenomenon for him. The will-to-power 
is elemental. Freud, who did not agree, was not then 
in a position to formulate satisfactorily what he 
subsequently came to speak of as narcissism and as 
1 The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, pp. 47-48 (differ- 
ently worded in that translation).—E. and C. P. 150 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the castration complex. He wanted to gain time, 
but Adler grew more and more impatient. 
I have said more than once that Freud is rarely 
or never pleased when his collaborators develop 
independent ideas. This seems to throw a rather 
unfavourable light on the master’s character, and the 
harshness of our judgment is not sufficiently mitigated 
by the trite formula that we must not apply the same 
standards to the great ones of the earth and to lesser 
mortals. A peculiarity of the Freudian method of 
searching out the secrets of the human mind is that 
the observer must be left quite undisturbed. Freud 
is, indeed, a masterly dialectician, and is fully com- 
petent to deal with his adversaries. But he finds it 
a nuisance when lights other than his own are thrown 
athwart his path, or when others try to push him 
forward or to divert him from his chosen course. 
Whenever necessary he erects outworks to cut off 
inconvenient cross-lights. But when he has to do 
this, he feels that he is being made to waste his time, 
and that in due course he would have provided the 
necessary lights and would have placed them in 
the right quarter. Such sentiments in a man of 
genius account for the irritability which has so often 
led to the rupture of the personal and scientific ties 
between Freud and his intimates. 
In the spring of 1911, Freud asked Adler to give 
a connected exposition of his ideas. Adler agreed, 
and was allotted three of the Wednesday evenings. 
He was hopeful, for he expected that this formal 
interchange of views would bring about an enduring 
peace with Freud. He wanted to convince his teacher. 
The result belied his hopes. On the fourth evening, 
the general discussion began. The Freudian adepts ALFRED ADLER 
151 
made a mass attack on Adler, an attack almost 
unexampled for its ferocity even in the fiercely 
contested field of psychoanalytical controversy. I 
was no longer a member of the circle. Stekel told me 
that the onslaught produced on his mind the impression 
of being a concerted one. Freud had a sheaf of notes 
before him, and with gloomy mien seemed prepared 
to annihilate his adversary. 
The climax of the counter-attack came on the 
fifth evening, when a member of the Society pro- 
posed that Adler should be invited to leave that 
body, now that he had set himself in irreconcilable 
opposition to its chief. This was the not altogether 
creditable way in which Freud finally alienated the 
most notable among his disciples. Hitherto, Adler 
had been the favourite—but the Tarpeian Rock is 
adjacent to the Capitol. Adler’s resignation was 
accompanied by that of nine of his adherents. It 
should be noted that political influences played a 
part in these joint resignations. Adler and his nine 
friends were all socialists. 
Adler is not content with counterposing ego 
impulses and sexual impulses ; he goes further, and 
denies the elemental character of sexuality. His way 
of putting the matter implies that the signs of the 
working of the sexual impulse that are manifest in 
human relationships are symbolical merely. We speak 
of love, but we mean power. The very act of sexual 
intercourse is, according to Adler, to be regarded as an 
expression of the will-to-power. Adler’s presumptuous, 
his incredible, aim is to hurl Eros from the throne. 
I have watched Adler at work. He hardly 
troubles himself to study the patient’s unconscious 152 
SIGMUND FREUD 
ideas by the method of free associations or by the 
process of dream interpretation. He is convinced 
that the neuroses, however multiform their mani- 
festations, have but one object—they are all the 
expression of an ill-conceived attempt on the patient’s 
part to exalt himself above his fellows. Adler is 
continually trying to impress this notion on the 
patient’s mind. “ You bring your troubles upon 
yourself in pursuit of self-importance.” To a patient 
whose love for the mother wras so obvious that Adler 
could not deny its existence, he said : “All you want 
is to show that you are a thoroughly bad lot. You 
do not even respect your own mother.”—Once, 
when he was treating a young girl who refused food 
and had become terribly emaciated, he said to me : 
“ Just look at her ! See how she crouches there like 
a lioness, how she clings to her illness simply because 
she wants to play the tyrant in her home circle. 
What a pitiful waste of energy ! ” Now with irony, 
now with kindness, now with severity, he tries to 
make his patients use their own reason to convict 
them of absurdity. He says: “Many of those who 
come to consult me have been undergoing psycho- 
analytical treatment for years. They know the 
subject from A to Z: the Oedipus complex, and all 
the rest of it. But what they have never yet realised 
is that they find the sense of inferiority intolerable; 
and that for this reason they have taken refuge in 
illness, instead of putting up a fight, and overcoming 
their feeling of inferiority in some sensible way.” 
On one occasion, when he was in the vein, he sum- 
marised his views in popular phraseology, thus : “ Do 
you know how to find the key to all the neuroses ? 
The real question in the neurotic’s mind is : 4 How ALFRED ADLER 
am I going to become top dog ? ’ They are ill in 
order to spite some one.” 
Thus it is that this gifted man seems to ignore 
all the famous achievements of psychoanalysis. He 
is content with the cheap laurels which can be plucked 
by “ common sense ”—the common sense of those 
who see things as they have always been seen, and 
refuse a profound understanding that clashes with 
the trivial understanding of the eternal yesterday. 
Of course, there is an element of truth in Adler’s 
views. But Adler can only see the uppermost strata 
of the truth. He refuses to follow Freud when the 
latter delves beneath the surface. It was a common- 
place of neurology, long before the days of Adler, 
that hysterical patients use their illness as a means 
of enforcing respect. At this very day, the exponents 
of official medical science treat hysterical ailments 
by disregarding them, the aim being to deprive the 
illness of its motive. What Adler speaks of as the 
sense of inferiority is almost identical with what 
Janet speaks of as “ Le sentiment d’incompletude.” 
Adler has seized on this traditional view, and in his 
book The Neurotic Constitution, he expounds it 
brilliantly, and in a new setting. He incorporates 
a number of details which had previously been over- 
looked. Were it not for his monomania, he would 
have been a notable investigator. 
Every analyst is familiar with cases in which, for 
a considerable time, the progress of the analyses is 
arrested at the stage where Adler sees the very foun- 
dation of the neurosis. The analysis is always a 
struggle between doctor and patient. In this struggle 
the patient tries to avoid disclosing his symptoms 
and their roots, for he is afraid of being forced into 154 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the position of one who fights a rearguard action. 
Among pathogenic experiences, we often find humilia- 
tions by various kinds of corporal punishment, and 
also humiliations due to the patient’s own perform- 
ances having been excelled by brothers and sisters 
or by schoolfellows. One of my patients made a 
point of refusing to accept the solutions I propounded, 
although what I said was convincing to his reason. 
His expedient was to produce these same solutions 
a few days later, to enunciate them independently, 
as if they had been original (cryptomnesia, or sub- 
merged memory). I let him have his own way. 
Several times he admitted that there was nothing 
so distasteful to him as being forced to accept from 
me an accurate dream interpretation or some other 
solution. This aroused an extremely distressing sense 
of inferiority. The patient’s trouble was that he 
could not endure anyone to exercise authority over 
him. He always wanted to pose as being the better 
informed ; he had an obsessional urge to pass adverse 
judgments upon the masterpieces of art; and he 
described his associates as little better than idiots. 
Yet, all the time, he suffered from an overwhelming 
sense of inferiority. Castration complex and narcissism 
notwithstanding, the analyst finds it hard to treat 
such a patient—to begin with, at any rate—by any 
other method than Adler’s. 
Since his breach with Freud, Adler has done 
remarkably good work in the field of educational 
science. He teaches that those who have to deal with 
difficult children must try to discover the nature of 
the inferiority complex by which these children are 
affected. The sufferers must be guided in directions 
where they will become able to substitute a feeling 
of superiority for the feeling of inferiority. Adler ALFRED ADLER 
155 
speaks of his method as “ individual psychology,” 
and its main field is the pedagogical. An affectionate 
deference for the child’s individuality justifies the 
name Adler gives his method. 
There are some who believe that Freud might 
have been able to retain Adler’s talents in the service 
of psychoanalysis. They think that the humili- 
ating expulsion from the Society forced Adler into 
courses where the significance of sexuality is so 
utterly ignored. At the outset, they contend, Adler 
would have been willing to affiliate his doctrine 
concerning organ inferiority to Freud’s doctrine of the 
erogenic zones.—Freud, as is well known, describes cer- 
tain zones, such as the mucous membrane of the lips, that 
of the anus, etc., as subject to a libidinous investment or 
charge (cathexis). Adler contends that the libidinous 
investment occurs when the zones are “ inferior.” 
This amalgamation of the notions of “ erogenic ” 
and “ inferior ” is untenable. Some erogenic zones 
do arise through inferiority. For instance, dis- 
turbances of the process of evacuation of the rectum 
may favour the formation of an erogenic anal zone. 
There are, however, certain erogenic zones in con- 
nexion with which no association of inferiority is 
demonstrable or even conceivable. Freud emphasises 
the fact that, among neurotics, those who are markedly 
afflicted with inferiorities are certainly not in the 
majority. Good-looking women, and those who are 
greatly desired, seem especially prone to become the 
victims of neurosis. On the other hand, “ the great 
majority of ugly, malformed, crippled, and otherwise 
miserable specimens do not show any disposition 
to react by the development of neurosis.” 1 
1 The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, p. 47 (differently 
worded in that translation). 156 
SIGMUND FREUD 
It is never easy to say what would have happened, 
if only things had been different. All we can know 
is what actually has happened. We cannot even be 
certain why things happened as they did. In this 
particular instance, if we bear in mind that Adler 
had resolved from the very first to apply his doctrine 
of the sense of inferiority to the whole domain of the 
neurotic constitution (regardless of the fact that this 
involved straining the theory to an extreme), we 
can recognise the likelihood that, even had Freud 
not taken strong measures, Adler would a few years 
later have found himself just where he is to-day. He 
would have developed his “ individual psychology,” 
the psychology which places the dangerous and 
“ obscene ” sexual theory under an interdict, and 
may therefore be said to represent a psychology 
“ for mature youth.” Anyhow, the step whereby 
Freud put an end to his relationship with Adler had 
its heroic side, and we cannot refuse it the respect 
we pay to resolves that are both bold and painful. 
The breach occurred just at the time when Freud 
believed that he had become competent to explain 
the neurotic’s sense of inferiority in accordance with 
the general terms of the sexual theory. Long ere 
this he had discovered that the sexual intimidation 
to which we are exposed in early youth is the funda- 
mental cause of neurosis. The religious authorities 
threaten children with the fires of hell; the secular 
authorities often threaten them with amputation 
of the genital organs ; both the religious and the 
secular tyrants rage like berserkers against youngsters 
whenever masturbation is in question. Under the 
influence of Adler’s views, Freud had given psycho- 
analysis a new trend, so that what is spoken of as the ALFRED ADLER 
157 
castration complex has come to be regarded as the 
essential root of the feeling of inferiority. 
Unfortunately Freud, before he decided to over- 
whelm and replace Adler’s “ masculine protest ” 
by other concepts, had availed himself of the so-called 
ego impulses as a temporary expedient. By degrees 
this temporary edifice has been demolished by its 
own builder. But when we compare the classical 
achievements of Freud prior to 1911 with those of 
Freud after that critical year, we detect in the latter 
something crude and unsatisfactory, which I am 
inclined to ascribe to the influence of the indigestible 
Adler. For what do we know of the ego ? During 
most of his life Freud was an antimetaphysician. 
Surely he must have known that in our own Vienna 
the physicist Mach declared that the ego was beyond 
saving ! Even if the ego be a real entity, why should 
Freud father the aggressive impulses on the ego, 
and find a different origin for the sexual impulses ? 
And what are we to do about the moral impulses ? 
Owing to the reliance placed upon this theory of the 
ego impulses, Freud has had to devote twelve years 
to a campaign against his own lack of clarity and 
against the contradictions that have resulted from 
it. In each successive publication, the problem was 
stated in new terms ; and on each occasion it was 
made manifest once more that Freud felt ill at ease 
in the realm of the ego impulses. He has repeatedly 
declared that he is quite ready to abandon this part 
of his theory as soon as he can find a better.1 
Temporary structures, run up in haste as a refuge 
against criticism, have their inconveniences. They 
1 Vorlesungen, Taschenausgabe, p. 445 ; and Sammlung, vol iv, 
1922, pp. 82 et seq. 158 
SIGMUND FREUD 
spoil the view. Adler was not conciliated by this one. 
On the other hand, Jung’s universalisation of the 
concept of the libido was unacceptable to Freud, 
who was loath to abandon the idea of the ego impulses. 
None of these theories are essential to the practice of 
psychoanalysis. In Storungen des Trieb- und Ajfekt- 
lebenSy Stekel has shown that this practice can be 
carried on effectively by persons who do not cumber 
their minds with the questionable doctrine of the 
ego impulses or with the theory of the libido. 
Freud knows that all which is popularly termed 
the ego is the outcome of experience. We do not 
come into the world with an ego. The ego is some- 
thing which develops, and down to the end of life 
it remains in a state of flux. Little children speak 
of themselves in the third person, and develop this 
person according to the perceptions they make in 
the outer world. A huge bundle of such perceptions 
is aggregated by the child to form the idea of its own 
ego, this happening when the child is able to love the 
structure termed the ego, the structure imaginatively 
built from without into the soul (narcissism is this 
love of the ego). Let me quote from my book Die 
sexuelle Not: “ When I was still a little boy, I awoke 
one morning with the overmastering conviction that 
I was an 41.’ I knew that to outward appearance I 
was like other children, but I was confident that I 
was fundamentally different from them, and enor- 
mously more important. I stood in front of the 
mirror, looked at my image attentively, and addressed 
it many times by my name. My purpose manifestly 
was to build a bridge from this image in the outer 
world to myself, a bridge along which I could penetrate 
into my unfathomable ego. I do not remember ALFRED ADLER 
159 
whether I kissed my own image in the mirror, but 
I have seen other children kiss such images. They 
come to an accommodation with their ego and show 
it that they love it.” 
But if the ego be a construction, an artifact, an 
unreal product of the imagination, our impulses, on 
the other hand, are so essentially real that outside 
of them there is no reality; they alone “ work.” 1 
Whatever the ego may be, the impulses play with it 
as if it were a toy—as God plays with sun and moon 
and stars. That is why the notion of the ego impulses 
and the classification of impulses in terms of their 
relationship to so empty a notion, is an error which 
cannot be excused on any ground of convenience. The 
psychological cause of this error was Alfred Adler, 
and philosophical levity acted as godfather. Freud 
frankly owns to this levity : 
“ I agree that such ideas as that of an ego-libido, 
an ego-impulsive-energy, etc., are neither easy to 
grasp nor adequately equipped with content. . . . 
These ideas are not the essential foundation of the 
science [psychoanalysis] on which everything rests ; 
the essential foundation, the only foundation, is obser- 
vation. They are not the substratum but the pinnacles 
of the edifice, and they can be replaced or removed 
without injury to the rest of the building.” 8 
These utterances of a brilliant amateur philosopher 
will not satisfy every one. 
1 In German, “ reality ” is “ Wirklichkeit,” derivatively meaning 
something whose essence is that it works (wirkt).—E. and C. P. 
2 Sammlung, vol. iv, 1922, p. 83. CHAPTER ELEVEN 
THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
Castration has been extensively practised by stock- 
farmers, and this has kept a knowledge of the practice 
alive among western races, to which the castratior 
of men has become unfamiliar. Those, indeed, whc 
took part in the retreat of the German and Turkish 
army from Syria during 1918 learned that the 
Arabs made a practice of castrating their defeated 
enemies. The gentler-minded among the conquerors 
contented themselves with pedication. In both cases 
the aim was to humiliate the vanquished by emascula- 
tion, actual or symbolic. Since the days when 
Herodotus visited Asia Minor, moral outlooks in 
that part of the world have remained unchanged in 
this matter. But, until quite recently, we none ol 
us realised how extensive a part the idea of castration 1 
continues to play in the minds of civilised human 
beings—not in their conscious thoughts, but in the 
darkness of the unconscious, where elemental savagery 
persists. 
I have known a number of neurotic patients who 
were peculiarly ready to adopt the use of the word 
1 The term “ castration ” in psychoanalytical literature includes th 
idea of amputation of the penis as well as that of removal of the testicle! 
Indeed, when writing of castration anxiety, etc., analysts refer to th 
former rather than to the latter. Nor is the idea of castration anxiet; 
restricted to the male sex.—E. and C. P. THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
161 
castration as soon as they had heard me employ it. 
Their reminiscences then tended to assume some 
such form as the following : 4 4 My mother castrated 
me when I was a very little boy. But the one who 
especially castrated me was my paternal grandfather. 
. . .” Or they will report of a mistress who is no 
longer wholly congenial: 44 Yesterday Mitzi castrated 
me.” One unfamiliar with Freud’s expansion of 
the idea of castration, who should hear such phrases 
for the first time, would fancy that he must have 
found his way into a lunatic asylum ! 
It is to be presumed that all this is the outcome 
of a terrifying experience during childhood—of a 
threat to cut off the penis. The experience was so 
terrifying that it was repressed into the unconscious, 
but all the manifestations that Adler subsumes 
under the notions of inferiority and masculine protest 
are supposed to be sequels of such an experience. 
Of late years the orthodox Freudians have been 
busily engaged in reconstructing the theory of per- 
versions and neuroses upon the basic conception of 
castration anxiety (Oedipus complex + castration). 
They would have us suppose, therefore, that the 
threat of castration is one frequently uttered by 
elders to the children under their care, and that it is 
of decisive importance in the causation of subsequent 
neurosis. Girls are presumed to refer their bodily 
and social inferiority to the lack of the penis, the 
organ their little brothers possess. Boys, on the 
other hand, contemplating the female sexual organs, 
are apt to dread being turned into girls, and this 
dread gives a substantial reality to their elders’ 
threats. Penis envy in girls and penis anxiety in 
boys are postulated as the essential cause of neurosis. 162 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Or, rather, since the Oedipus complex is not to 
forfeit its position as the nuclear complex, castration 
is the terrible punishment inflicted on Oedipus for 
his crime. When Oedipus blinds himself in the 
Greek tragedy, this is a substitute for emasculation. 
Ostensibly, the neurotic merely feels himself to be 
inferior; in reality, he feels himself to have been 
castrated. 
Fantastic though all this may sound, many facts 
which support it force themselves on the analyst’s 
attention. We must never forget that Freud’s 
theories are not the outcome of speculation, but are 
based upon direct observation. (No doubt, inter- 
pretation and generalisation play their part.) Plait- 
cutters would seem to be persons whose impulse 
to mutilate has been transferred from the lower part 
of the body to the upper. I had a patient who was 
continually threatening to cut a tonsure in his elder 
brother’s hair when the latter was asleep. This 
obviously signified the intention to turn his brother 
into a monk, or, if you like to phrase it thus, 
to castrate his brother. The brother, likewise a 
neurotic, seems to have realised something of the 
sort, for the younger lad’s threats used to infuriate 
him, and he would cry : “If you do, I will strangle 
you ! ” 
I knew a man suffering from dementia paranoides 
who was operated upon for appendicitis. After the 
operation, he heard “ voices ” telling him that there 
had been no trace of inflammation of the appendix, 
and that he had been humbugged. His elder brother, 
said the “ voices,” had had him anaesthetised and 
castrated. This was a young man of family, whose 
elder brother stood in his path. He regarded the THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
163 
brother as his supplanter; the brother had castrated 
him. When we recall that lunatics live consciously 
in a mental world which exists also for the healthy, 
but in them is unconscious, we shall easily see how 
this instance fits into the Freudian classification. 
For hundreds of years a choir of castrates used 
to sing at St. Peter’s in Rome. These singers were 
men whose virility had been sacrificed to the glory 
of God. The celibacy of Catholic priests is a barbaric 
custom having a similar significance. Ritual circum- 
cision, as practised by Jews, Mohammedans, and 
others, is a mitigated sacrifice of virility in order 
to placate evil spirits. Thus castration and its 
derivatives still linger amid our civilisation. The 
description of ritual circumcision as a hygienic 
measure is nothing more than the rationalisation 
of an act really performed to placate demons. 
Freud opines that antisemitism has an unconscious 
root in the Jewish practice of ritual circumcision. 
The unconscious confounds circumcision with castra- 
tion, and therefore believes the Jews to be cruel. 
Those who castrate their own children are capable 
of committing any atrocity, and are therefore capable 
of committing ritual murder. The unconscious thus 
despises the Jews because they have been castrated, 
and at the same time dreads them because they 
castrate their children. 
This contention of Freud’s is amazing in its bold- 
ness. My own clinical experience does not justify 
me either in accepting it or in denying it. One of my 
patients (not a Jew) was a homosexual who from 
earliest childhood had had a fantasy of a gigantic 
penis without a foreskin. This might have been 
a symbol of the castrated father. The patient 164 
SIGMUND FREUD 
suffered from obsessions, and from a tormenting 
sense of inferiority. 
Stekel considers Freud’s explanation of morbid 
antisemitism to be erroneous. He believes that 
other unconscious determinants are operative. 
Jung once suggested that the reason why American 
whites hate and despise negroes is because the black 
man with the vigorous impulsive life symbolises 
for the white man the blackness of his own soul. 
The antisemite’s attitude towards the Jew may be 
a similar one. 
The reader who wishes fuller information regarding 
the castration complex, should consult the chapter 
devoted to that subject in Sadger’s Die Lehre von 
den Geschlechtsverirrungen, or should turn to Starke’s 
essay on the topic.1 In addition to much of remark- 
able interest, he will find a good deal that is far from 
easy to accept. Nevertheless, we must remember that 
many of Freud’s discoveries aroused almost universal 
dissent at the outset; and yet, in the end, others 
have been enabled to see what was at first obvious to 
Freud alone. What we have to ask is whether the 
unprejudiced analyst does or does not find the 
castration complex in the unconscious. Inasmuch 
as castration is so often practised in lower phases of 
civilisation, we certainly need not be surprised to 
find that it casts its shadow athwart the minds 
of neurotics. The question whether this shadow is 
always present—whether, like the Oedipus complex, 
it is an essential part of the mechanism of the neuroses, 
whether it is an invariable constituent of psycho- 
sexual infantilism—this is a question which I cannot 
venture to answer. As late as 1914, Freud was 
1 “ Internationale Zeitschrift fiir aerztliche Psychoanalyse,” 1922. THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
165 
teaching that the castration complex is not to be 
detected in every case of neurosis.1 
Stekel, who has access to a vast abundance of 
material and sifts it with marvellous skill, denies 
that the castration complex is of fundamental import- 
ance.—Boys in whom the sexual impulse awakens 
early are apt to envy the father the possession of 
his gigantic genital organs, and in their jealous 
fantasies they castrate the father. This analytical 
experience is in line with the notion of the primitive 
horde, as developed by Freud. The sons wish to 
destroy the father, who stands in their path. But 
when they cherish this wish they suffer from pricks 
of conscience. In the unconscious, the law of retalia- 
tion (an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth) 
holds sway. The son, therefore, who has unconsciously 
wished to castrate the father, unconsciously dooms 
himself to castration.—We see that Stekel is far 
from denying the existence of the castration complex. 
But he refuses to accept it as a universally valid 
principle. 
Freud understands by “ castration complex ” 
precisely what Adler understands by “ masculine 
protest.” According to Adler, every one of us wants 
to become top dog. When he cannot win his way 
to this position, he creeps, as it were, into the position 
of under dog, and suffers from a sense of inferiority. 
For Adler, therefore, the feeling of emasculation (when 
it exists) is merely a symbol of defeat in the struggle 
for power. According to Freud, behind such struggles 
lurks the will to castrate the antagonist. The little 
Oedipus wants to castrate his father in order to take 
the father’s place with the mother. Subsequently, 
1 Sammlung, vol. iv, p. 100. 166 
SIGMUND FREUD 
he wants to castrate his brothers, so that in the 
younger generation he may be the only competent 
male, the only effective owner of a harem. Ultimately, 
he wants to castrate all the men in the world, that 
he may be autocrat in the realm of love. Since the 
individual lacks the power to carry such wishes into 
effect, and since these wishes come into conflict 
with conscientious scruples, they are repressed. Then 
the little boy imaginatively castrates himself, as a 
punishment for his wishes. Thus operating in the 
unconscious, the complex exercises its influence upon 
consciousness in symbolic forms : giving rise to 
lust for power and to arrogance, on the one hand, 
and to the counterparts of these, over-scrupulousness, 
humility, the “ sentiment d’incompletude ” (Janet), 
on the other. The views of Freud and Adler are 
completely antithetical. Freud regards the will-to- 
power as nothing more than a symbol for the longing 
to castrate. Adler looks upon the will-to-power as 
a primary phenomenon, and considers castration 
(like all that is sexual) to be merely a phenomenal 
form of the elemental will, or a symbol thereof. 
On the face of the matter, most people will be 
inclined to agree with Adler, and will be estranged 
by Freud’s theory. But we should be cautious in 
coming to a decision, and should bear in mind how 
often time has proved Freud to be right. There are 
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed 
of in our wisdom of the schools. 
One of Sadger’s patients said : “ Death is the 
climax of castration. I can find no other way of 
describing it.” This is a dark saying, and might 
almost seem to have been spoken in mockery, but 
we find that the following considerations may be THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
167 
adduced in its support. He who dies, loses his ego; 
and yet the germ-plasm lives on in his children. 
On the other hand, one who has been castrated 
retains his short-lived ego, but his share of the 
germ-plasm, which had seemed predestined for immor- 
tality, perishes. The castrate dies eternal death; 
one who has been murdered dies a temporal death. 
Castration, therefore, is the only form of death which 
we can truly experience. We experience it because 
we outlive it. Dread of the loss of the germ-plasm 
may be regarded, in the sense of Schopenhauer’s 
metaphysic of sexual love, as a transcendental anxiety 
which surpasses the personal dread of death. Sadger’s 
patient should therefore have expressed his thought 
in the inverse way, saying: “ Castration is the 
climax of death.” In death, the thing that matters 
is the destruction of the germ-plasm. This thought 
enables us to understand why, in his latest publication 
(1923), Freud refers all forms of anxiety to castration 
anxiety, which is a transcendental dread of death. 
In the life of our familiar civilisation we have, indeed, 
little cause for explicit castration anxiety. Death 
threatens us in manifold forms ; but in our daily 
life we are hardly ever threatened with castration— 
not, at any rate, in adult life. 
The experience of savages may be different. 
Castration must have been discovered during the 
evolution of civilised man out of the ape-man by 
way of primitive man. Animals do not castrate one 
another. It was left for primitive man to discover 
the refinement which enables him to leave his enemy 
alive in a condition which is more than death. Primi- 
tive men fought over their women as stags fight for 
the possession of does, and cocks for the possession 168 
SIGMUND FREUD 
of hens. The first man who bit off or tore away his 
enemy’s genital organs had discovered castration. 
Subsequent experience would show that the enemy 
to whom this had been done was no longer a rival 
in love, but was all the more useful as a slave. The 
realisation would come that it was better to castrate 
one’s defeated enemy than to kill him. 
For thousands of years, a dread of castration may, 
with good reason, have been active among the fore- 
fathers of civilised men. The neurotic is the victim 
of regression. What the adherents of the Freudian 
school have adduced in support of the idea of the 
castration complex is too scanty and too devoid of 
universality to sustain all the symbolism of inferiority. 
Freud is aware of this, and that is why he appeals 
to phylogenesis, to racial history. Prior to 1910, 
hardly any mention of phylogenesis can be found in 
Freudian teaching. When some of the Freudians, 
and especially Jung, began to lay stress on phylo- 
genetic considerations, Freud became uneasy. He 
said that it was essential to make an exhaustive study 
of individual experience and individual inheritance 
before entering the nebulous domain of phylogenesis. 
The criticism was sound. Nevertheless, the castration 
complex cannot be saved without an extensive use 
of phylogenetic considerations. Virility secures its 
central expression in the penis. Its counterpart is 
the dread of castration, conjoined with the desire 
to castrate the rival. The dread and the desire 
may be an ancient heritage. 
We must not confuse possibilities with proved 
facts. Unquestionably, without troubling about the 
castration complex, psychoanalysis can in most 
cases put the patient on the road towards cure. THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
169 
This complex, if it be discoverable at all, is apt to be 
so deeply buried that the patient is cured, or dis- 
continues treatment, before we have disinterred it. 
Thus the question becomes one of purely theoretical 
interest; and it may more suitably be discussed in 
connexion with the general problem, why so much 
is to be referred to the sexual sphere. We reach 
the alleged “one-sidedness ” of the Freudian doctrine, 
and it behoves us to pay special attention to this 
matter. 
When people used to ask Freud why he laid 
exclusive stress upon sexual factors among the causes 
of the neuroses, and how he accounted for his peculiar 
views upon this matter, he would answer that he 
made no attempt to account for them. Sexual factors 
were continually forcing themselves on his attention. 
Like other students of natural science, he made it 
his business to describe what he saw. He would 
leave it to the philosophers to cudgel their brains 
in the endeavour to explain why a natural phenomenon 
occurs. He had no bias in the matter, and his doctrine 
was not one-sided. If there were bias or one-sidedness, 
it was in nature. His function was merely to discover 
and to describe. None the less, it is indubitable 
that Freud worked with preconceptions. He had 
intuitively recognised that Eros (who plays his part 
in every activity of all that creeps and all that flies) 
has a yet more notable significance in the case of 
man and man’s mental life. 
Man is preeminently distinguished from the 
lower animals by the enormous development of his 
libido. We are apt to differentiate man from other 
creatures in virtue of his upright gait, or his use of 170 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the hand, or his faculty of speech. An even more con- 
spicuous differential characteristic is man’s vigorous 
and persistent libido. In most of the lower animals, 
libido is only manifest during a brief rutting season. 
Man loves without intermission. He has emancipated 
love from the law of reproduction, for he loves a 
great deal more than is necessary to ensure repro- 
duction, and more even than is serviceable to 
reproduction. In some of the lower animals we 
already notice that the reproductive impulse finds 
expression in artistic forms, such as nest-building, 
dancing, song, and, actually, the formation of States. 
It has been demonstrated that certain human insti- 
tutions originate out of love. Speech is a development 
of song. Clothing was originally ornamental. The 
ardent males decked themselves to please the females. 
If any one should cling to the old delusion that all 
progress is the outcome of need, that necessity is 
invariably the mother of invention, we cannot do 
better than point to the pictures (some in black-and- 
white, and some coloured) on the walls of the cave- 
dwellings in southern France. These drawings, 
admirably finished and amazingly accurate, date 
from a period in which primitive man had not yet 
invented so simple a tool or weapon as the axe. 
Our ancestors possessed art before they possessed 
anything else. 
In harmony with these discoveries is the fact 
that the growth of the ape-man into man must be 
presumed to have taken place during a period when 
nature was bountiful—in late tertiary times. This 
was before the Glacial Epoch; the climate of Central 
Europe was sub-tropical; elephants roamed through 
the luxuriant forests. Art, like love, flourishes in THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
171 
the soil of abundance and luxury. In the historic 
age we note that the fine arts have always thriven 
best in the periods when luxury prevailed. 
All living things grow. As soon as the living 
creature has attained the limits of its individual 
growth, it undergoes a growth which transcends 
these limits, taking the form of reproduction. When 
the limits of reproduction (narrow limits, as far as the 
higher animals are concerned) have been reached, 
the urge towards growth still persists. Now that the 
material possibilities of growth have been exhausted, 
the creature grows mentally. The things that were 
originally intended to lure the female—beauty, song, 
artistry, strength—become ends in themselves. We 
can watch the process at work in a canary that sings 
in its cage, sings all the more heartily because the 
bird cannot gain the natural end of song—union 
with the female. The song becomes its own end, 
becomes art, becomes solace ; the love-yearning is 
diverted from the unattainable hen bird, and the 
song is irradiated with all the splendour of the libido. 
That which constrains the singing bird in the 
cage, constrains man likewise, impelling him towards 
a thousandfold manifestations of art and civilisation. 
A good many years ago, I attempted a detailed 
exposition of the way in which the primitive culture 
of mankind arose, during the late tertiary period, 
out of love and plenty.1 The Ice Age partly anni- 
1 Cf. Otto Rank, Der Kiinstler, Vienna, 1907.—My own books on 
this topic are, Tragische Motive, Berlin, 1911 ; and Alles um Liebe, 
Berlin, 1912.—A few months after the publication of the last-named 
work, Ferenczi included my conception of the Ice Age as a modifier of 
civilisation in a paper published in the “ Internationale Zeitschrift fur 
aerztliche Psychoanalyse ” under the title Entwicklungsstufen des 
Wirklichkeitssinnes. My name was not mentioned ! 172 
SIGMUND FREUD 
hilated and partly transformed this love civilisation, 
so that to-day many people regard civilisation as 
the offspring of need. At any rate, as far as the arts 
are concerned, it is plain enough that they are out- 
growths of the love-yearning—that they are a reservoir 
alike for the artist and for the amateur of the arts. 
The libido is yet more intimately connected with 
religion and ritual. Inasmuch as even atheists look 
upon religion as something exalted, whereas most 
people regard sexual desire as base (the former 
being the divine and the latter the animal in man !), 
impatience is apt to be aroused by the demonstration 
of the close connexion between sexuality and religion. 
An otherwise intelligent psychiatrist maintains that 
such phrases as “ the bride of Christ ” and “ Christ, 
the beloved bridegroom 5 5 have nothing to do with 
sexuality, and have merely been coined because 
language has no more beautiful expressions for a 
sublime feeling. In like manner, the medieval councils 
of the church were able to persuade themselves 
that the Song of Solomon, with its glorification of 
the body of a girl, was not referring to a woman in 
the flesh, but to the holy city of Jerusalem. Nothing 
but this little artifice could have secured for the 
obnoxious poem its place among the canonical books. 
Now that the perversions known as sadism and 
masochism have been described, it has become 
difficult to regard the self-castigation of monks and 
nuns and the burnings and rackings inflicted under 
the aegis of the Inquisition as anything else than 
sexual. Since, on the other hand, no one will deny 
the religious enthusiasm of inquisitors, Jesuits, and 
penitents, I should have thought it hard to ignore 
the intimate connexion between religious practices THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
173 
and sexuality. But repression, and the obstinate 
resistance of the unconscious, are potent enemies of 
truth. 
The every-day occupations of mankind are less 
obviously tinged with sexuality, but even here the 
cloven hoof is continually peeping out. Property 
is sexualised through and through. It is not by 
chance that we use words derived from the same 
root when we speak of one man as having a “ com- 
petence,” and of another as being sexually “ potent.” 
We “ breed ” children ; and we say that “ money 
breeds money.” We love our property as we love 
wife and child ; the property remains when we die, 
and so do the children. A wife was the first object 
suitable to become property. A man had to win her 
from rivals, and to defend his possession of her 
against rivals; thus she became the first of his 
goods—long before he had any other goods. To-day 
we express the value of our property in terms of 
gold. The unconscious, however, has so profound 
a contempt for this yellow metal that, in dreams, 
gold is always a symbol for faeces ; just as, in the 
legends, Satan’s gold always changes into excrement. 
What money and property signify to our inner self, 
is likewise disclosed in dreams. Here, money always 
means love. To dream “ he owes me money ” means 
“ he does not love me enough.” The valuation of 
love in terms of money, and the falsification of love 
by money, are familiar experiences in waking life 
as well. 
A man must be a veritable Comstock if he fails 
to note that the drunkard who caresses his bottle is 
inspired with the same sort of feelings as the lover 
who caresses his mistress. The miser runs his fingers 174 
SIGMUND FREUD 
through his gold, as a Romeo runs his fingers through 
the tresses of his beloved. In a word, the most 
important thing in life, the most fundamental of 
our experiences, is love. Who knows not this ? . . . 
The other things that we do are delightful to us only 
when we sexualise them. Unless we sexualise them, 
we do them solely when compelled and under more 
or less conscious protest (the pleasure principle 
versus the reality principle). In the folk-lore of 
every nation we learn of a paradise in which men 
lived for pleasure alone. Man was driven forth 
from this paradise by the Ice Age. We must never 
forget that hunger, which now holds us in thrall, 
did not yet exist for the men of the tertiary epoch, 
and was the creation of a subsequent time. 
Each one of us has his days in paradise. The 
infant lives for nothing but pleasure, until the struggles 
of education begin. We are all born in Arcady. 
When the troubles of life become too keen, we turn 
back to the sources of memory and grow childlike. 
Confusing and multiform are the manifestations of 
neurosis, but common to them all is the flight into 
childhood. Away from money, from ambition, from 
fraud, from disillusionment, the neurotic returns 
into a day when there was no money, when there 
were no tax-gatherers, and no commercial crises. 
The only conflicts known to the age of childhood 
concern the desire for tenderness, and the desire 
to exercise power over immediate associates. That 
is why the neurotic translates all his experiences 
into the affective language of childhood. Money is 
love, or excrement. Every living hindrance (persons 
in authority, rivals of all kinds) is impersonated 
as the father who was our rival in our mother’s THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 
175 
affections. The whole of life, on the other hand, 
life which has to be conquered, is represented as the 
mother. In the folk-speech this is still perfectly plain. 
To the peasant, his mother is the earth, whose favour 
he woos. 
I consider that we grow up under protest. Only 
under protest do we become dwellers in the world 
of reality. We should all prefer to remain children. 
Who can take this life of ours seriously ? In it we 
are exiles. Nowhere are we at home except in paradise. 
We are born for love, but life castrates us. This is 
the castration complex. CHAPTER TWELVE 
CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
From 1910 onwards, I had no intimate persons 
knowledge of the politics of psychoanalysis. I hav 
been told that Jung looked askance at Adler an 
Stekel, Freud’s most distinguished pupils, and tha 
the two latter were sacrificed because of Freud’ 
devotion to his Swiss recruit. I should have thoughl 
rather, that the abrupt dismissal of Adler was brough 
about by the danger that the Zurich contingent woul 
find Adler’s non-sexual theory more to their taste tha: 
Freud’s own views, which were not altogether “ re 
spectable ” in the eyes of Swiss Protestants. Freu 
certainly had a way of treating his pupils like childre: 
with an alternation of rewards and punishments 
and by keeping them out of bad company. Perhap 
the Swiss were not to be allowed to see that ther 
was some one who had a preferential explanatioi 
to that afforded by the libido; one whose doctrin 
of the neurotic constitution was so simple, and dii 
not involve any appeal to sexual factors. 44 Why doe 
a man become a paederast ? ”—■“ To put women ii 
their place! ” 44 Why is a wife bedridden wit] 
paralysis ? ”—44 To put her husband in his place !: 
. . . The Zurichers must be safeguarded agains 
contagion. 
But these Swiss recruits were to prove Freud’ CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
177 
greatest disappointment. I made Jung’s acquaintance 
at the Salzburg congress. He was tall and upright 
of figure, like a young Siegfried. He had a bullet 
head with closely-cropped hair, was clean-shaven, 
and wore gold-rimmed spectacles. My feeling about 
Siegfrieds is like that of Hebbel’s Hagen—they smack 
too much of the dragon! I have several times 
been struck by Freud’s fondness for bullet heads. 
His devotion to Jung was, however, altogether ex- 
ceptional. To this man, Freud was lavish with his 
intellectual gifts, so that Jung has been able to live 
ever since upon the master’s brilliant suggestions. 
Soon recognising Jung’s inability 44 to endure 
another’s authority,” Freud threw over in Jung’s 
favour the faithful Viennese collaborators, proposing 
to make them subordinate to this new adherent— 
as if it were possible to win over an egoist by granting 
all his demands. I am entitled to say that the 
ambiguous attitude of the Zurichers was patent 
to me as early as 1910. Some of the older members 
of the Psychoanalytical Association will perhaps 
recall that I said after the Nuremberg congress: 
44 Freud does not think much of us, his Viennese 
pupils. If he knew the Swiss as well as he knows 
us, he would like them still less ! ” 
The third Psychoanalytical Congress was held at 
Weimar, in September 1911. Jung took the chair. 
The congress appears to have run a smooth course. 
Adler had been dismissed. Freud had a great deal 
to say—presumably apropos of his splendid analysis 
of the paranoia of Schreber, the President of the 
Senate—concerning the sun; and concerning the eagle, 
the only creature able to look at the sun. Stekel 
aroused applause by the reminder that Freud had 178 
SIGMUND FREUD 
left in Vienna an eagle [Adler] who had dared to 
look at the sun. 
A fourth Psychoanalytical Congress was held 
at Munich in 1913. Here Jung was again president, 
but for the last time. Now the proceedings were 
stormy. Jung’s Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido 
had appeared 1; and Jung’s colleague Maeder read 
a paper upon the dream, 2 an exposition of an outlook 
he had long been considering. The dream, he held, 
gave expression to the divine in man as well as to 
the animal. The Oedipus complex and all the other 
discoveries of psychoanalysis in the sexual field 
were not what they seemed ; they were only symbols. 
It will readily be understood that Freud was ill at 
ease. It was the second part of Jung’s Psychology 
of the Unconscious which especially troubled him. 
Hardly had he cut off one of the Hydra’s heads, 
the head that passed by the name of Alfred Adler, 
when two new heads (Jung and Maeder) sprouted in 
its place. Considerably annoyed, he declared at the 
congress that the work and inferences of the Swiss 
could “ not be regarded as legitimate developments 
of psychoanalysis.” Nevertheless, three-fifths of those 
present voted in favour of Jung’s re-election as presi- 
dent of the International Association, the appointment 
being for another two years—during which Jung 
actually held this post. Since then, the Viennese 
School and the Zurich School have worked apart. 
The breach between them has continually widened, 
and the Viennese deny the right of the Zurichers 
to speak of themselves as analysts. 
1 “Jahrbtich fiir Psychoanalyse,” 1911, 1912 (Englished as The 
Psychology of the Unconscious). 
2 Ueber das Traumproblem, Vienna, 1910. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
179 
Soon Freud was to lose Stekel as well. Then, like 
Wallenstein, he could say of himself: 
Den Schmuck der Zweige habt ihr abgehauen, 
Da steh ich, ein entlaubter Stamm ! Doch innen 
Im Marke lebt die schaffende Gewalt, 
Die sprossend eine Welt aus sich geboren. . . . 
Gewohnt wohl sind sie unter mir zu siegen, 
Nicht gegen mich—wenn Haupt und Glieder sich trennen, 
Da wird sich zeigen, wo die Seele wohnte.1 
In February 1914, he declared proudly, in words 
that remind us of Schiller’s : “ Men are strong so 
long as they represent a strong idea. They become 
powerless when they oppose it. Psychoanalysis 
will be able to bear this loss, and will gain new 
adherents in place of those who have been lost. I 
can only conclude with the wish that the fates may 
prepare an easy ascension for those who have found 
their sojourn in the underworld of psychoanalysis 
uncomfortable. May it be vouchsafed to the others 
to bring to a happy conclusion their labours in the 
depths.” 2 
The classical and almost cheerful sentences which 
close a lengthy polemic report may produce a false 
impression. We cannot doubt that Freud had been 
greatly disappointed, and that, excellent sleeper 
1 You have hewn off the glory of the boughs, 
And I stand here a naked tree-trunk ! But within, 
In the pith, there lives the creative force that can give birth 
To a world of sprouting verdure . . . 
They are wont to conquer under me, 
Not against me—when head and limbs are severed, 
We learn where the soul dwelt. 
a The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, p. 58.—The English 
version is slightly modified from A. A. Brill’s translation. 180 
SIGMUND FREUD 
though he is reputed to be, he must have had a good 
many broken nights over this affair. 
In the early days of his psychoanalytical activities 
Jung’s writings were those of one who had whole- 
heartedly accepted Freud’s teachings. Freud supplied 
the ideas and Jung expounded them with remarkable 
skill. But Jung has a proud stomach. The moment 
must have come in which he said : “Am I to be only 
a satellite ? Am I always to stand in the shadow of 
a great name ? ” Such secessions lead us far into 
the tragedy of Judas. (A differentiation occurs, 
inspired by dread lest there should be too complete 
an identification.) In his own domain, Freud was 
incomparable. He himself says, modestly enough, 
that the leap he had made fifteen years earlier was 
not one which could be made a second time. What he 
does not say is that his mission was unique, and that 
while he lived he must necessarily be its supreme 
leader. No other can take the reins as long as Freud 
is there. Ambitious disciples, therefore, those anxious 
to shine with an independent light, must look to 
right and to left in search of country over which 
the chief’s gaze has not extended. That was why 
Adler conceived the idea of the “ masculine protest,” 
and that was why Jung came to advocate the 
“ genetic ” conception of the libido. It will be shown 
that Jung’s outlook has considerable importance, both 
heuristieally and philosophically. But Freud, with 
a firm grip on the reins, was unwilling to leave the 
road along which he had been driving for twenty 
years. The magnificent confidence with which he 
holds fast to his convictions would mark him out as a 
classicist, were it not that the daimons which rule in 
his depths had predestined him to be a romanticist. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
181 
Adler said that the will-to-power was the driving 
force among human beings. Sexuality (the libido) 
was no more than a partial manifestation of this will. 
Jung, on the other hand, contended that sexuality 
(the libido) had originally been all in all, but that a 
part of this primal energy had been desexualised 
during the progress of human civilisation, and that 
this part was now counterposed to the energy that 
had remained sexual, was distinct from and alien 
to the latter. In a sense, then, both Adler and Jung 
are monists, and their outlooks are but superficially 
divergent. In reality they both have in mind some- 
thing which a greater than either of them, namely 
Schopenhauer, named Will. 
Jung incorporated his views in a comprehensive 
work, the before-mentioned Wandlungen und Symbole 
der Libido, the two parts of which were published at 
an interval of a year and a half. This book was 
written by a man of mark, by one who is profoundly 
versed in the literature and the mythology of all 
ages and all lands. But it is a fatiguing book to 
read, owing to the way in which the flow of the thought 
is continually being broken by quotations. These 
quotations have so weighty a content that they 
strain the framework. In the first part of the book, 
Jung is still being towed in Freud’s wake. In the 
second part, however, the libido is created genetically 
and is desexualised in the way already indicated. 
Jung, before he wrote this book, had successfully 
mastered an idea to which Freud had given expression 
in the first edition of Die Traumdeutung—the idea 
that the unconscious appertains to an old and derelict 
stage of thought; and that it is to this stage that 182 
SIGMUND FREUD 
dreams, and the fantasies of the neurotic, belong. 
The Swiss spoke of unconscious mentation as 
“ archaic.” All the workers in this school busy them- 
selves to show that mental patients and neurotics 
reproduce in every detail the myths, cosmogonies, 
and primitive conceptions of the early ages of man. 
They endeavour to turn the discovery to practical 
account. They track out such archaic images in 
the minds of their patients, and expound these images 
to the latter. I find it hard to understand what 
benefit a patient can derive from being told : “ There 
it is once more ! This idea of yours represents the 
Aztec god Vitzliputzli! ” Presumably the patient 
will be somewhat astonished, and perhaps rather 
crestfallen to learn that his thoughts have been 
straying along such outworn paths. But how can it 
help him (I paraphrase Ferenczi’s apt criticism) to 
have one unknown, his own aberrant self, explained 
in terms of another unknown whose name is Vitzli- 
putzli ? 
By way of the cult of the archaic, the Swiss come 
to the cult of the Calvinistic—they preach. Jung’s 
conception of religion is obscure. If I understand 
him aright, there are two kinds of religion. One of 
these is merely the transformation of erotic impulses 
into religious activity. This religion, says Jung, is 
base and contemptible. “ The unconscious recasting 
of the erotic into something religious, lays itself 
open to the reproach of a sentimental and ethically 
worthless pose.” 1 
Besides this “ worthless ” religion, Jung recognises 
another form of religion, one in which the whole 
personality is tinged with religious emotion. 
1 Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 82 CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
“ Whoever, on the other hand, to his conscious 
sin just as consciously places religion in opposition, 
does something the greatness of which cannot be 
denied.” 1 
It seems hardly credible that the man who penned 
this sentence could have had the advantage of a 
lively interchange of ideas with Freud throughout 
a period of nearly five years. One who can write in 
such a way seems to have no conception of the 
dynamic of the unconscious. As Ferenczi justly 
remarks in his criticism of the passage, it is utterly 
devoid of psychology. The statement is pure 
theology. 
Jung asked himself what force could have com- 
pelled the primal sexuality to desexualise itself (in 
part) so that the part of the libido which has remained 
sexual is counterposed by another kind of libido— 
by Freud termed ego impulse—which, before the days 
of Jung, no one had been able to recognise as an 
offspring of the primal sexual libido. He considered 
it unthinkable that this failure of others to discern 
the force which antagonises sexuality could be the 
outcome of an external resistance, of a concrete 
obstacle. He inferred, therefore, that there must 
be an internal resistance, something within the human 
mind which works against sexuality, much as the 
divine works against the animal. Setting out from 
these two apodictic utterances, first that an external 
resistance was unthinkable, and secondly that an 
inner and elemental moral influence was at work, 
Jung was able to sail with a fair wind away from the 
land of evil psychoanalysis to the land of good (Swiss) 
psychoanalysis. From the Freudian doctrine, which 
1 Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 82. 184 
SIGMUND FREUD 
aims at ridding the world of the Moloch of sexual 
hypocrisy, he could make his way back to Christianity 
and the old morality—which have beyond question 
done many good things in their time, but assuredly 
it is not the purpose either of psychoanalysis or of 
Sigmund Freud to support the ascetic morality of 
the old creed. 
Jung is doubtless right in his contention that 
Christianity compelled civilised man to sublimate 
a considerable part of his sexuality. Religious prac- 
tices comprise a fraction of such sublimation, but it 
is hard to define the point at which civilised sublima- 
tion ceases and hysteria begins. Consider, again, 
the three maxims : that work is a blessing ; that 
work is the most precious thing in the world ; and 
that by unceasing work we win, not only the heaven 
from which no traveller returns, but heaven on earth. 
All these maxims are the gifts of Christianity. But 
Christianity itself was a gift of poverty. Like 
Buddhism, it was engendered in the womb of an 
impoverished people. When the classical world 
adopted Christianity, poverty was the determining 
cause. Sensual joys are always discarded when the 
world is too poor to enjoy them. Delight in them is 
reborn (the Renaissance) when the world grows 
rich once more—as the western world was enriched 
by the discovery of America, by the opening of the sea 
route to the Indies, and by the overthrow of Europe’s 
Mohammedan competitors by Genghis Khan and 
his Tartar hordes. Unfortunately, the transcendental 
arguments of the Christians against unbridled 
sensuality were unexpectedly reinforced by one of 
the gifts Columbus brought back from America— 
syphilis, which has poisoned our blood ever since. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
185 
In my view, therefore, the external force, which 
to Jung seems unthinkable, is plainly manifest 
behind Christianity. Everyone knows it—need has 
castrated us ! The first great castration of sexuality 
was effected by the Ice Age. Psychoanalysis has 
revealed that in the unconscious we never cease 
protesting against this castration. Although the 
protest is often unconscious, it is absolutely real; 
and for my part I find it almost inconceivable that 
any one who has practised psychoanalysis can 
maintain that the manifestations of unconscious 
sexuality have a merely symbolical significance. 
The Oedipus complex is as real as anything in the 
world. A moment’s reflection enables me to recall 
dozens of instances in which this reality was incon- 
testable. 
I will content myself with a few examples from 
my own recent practice. A man came from abroad 
for treatment in a Viennese sanatorium. His mother 
accompanied him on the journey. The mother was 
sixty; the patient was thirty-five, married, with 
two children. He was an agriculturist. 
“ Where is your wife ? ” 
“ She makes me nervous. When I am ill—I 
suffer from debility, sleeplessness, and hypochondria 
—I get on better with my mother.” 
In the course of the analysis, the patient informed 
me that he had always been a “ mother’s darling,” 
and that he had a preference for the society of elderly 
women. He remembered an old washerwoman, who, 
after she had done her day’s work, used to wash 
her feet in the courtyard. To do this, she kilted 
her petticoats above the knee. The scene exercised 
a sort of magical lure upon the patient, who was 186 
SIGMUND FREUD 
then fifteen years old. He would crouch for hours 
at a window lest he should miss the chance of seeing 
the old woman at her toilet. When he was rewarded 
for his pains, he would become sexually excited, 
and would masturbate. 
The same patient told me that he was sent to a 
university in a large town. The woman where he 
lodged had a pretty niece who was quite disposed 
to be responsive to any advances he might make. 
But as far as she was concerned, he was a laggard in 
love, not wishing—so he said—to harm an innocent 
girl. (A rationalisation of his relative impotence !) 
However, he flirted with her, and this excited him. 
He thereupon satisfied his desires in a liaison with the 
aunt, an elderly woman past the change of life. 
Perhaps such records have little interest to psycho- 
analysts whose notebooks are full of similar ones. 
But the Zurich School denies the reality of the Oedipus 
complex, and I therefore propose to give additional 
examples. 
A young man inclined to melancholia told me 
that when he was seven years old his widowed mother 
had made up her mind to marry again. He had spent 
many sleepless nights wondering what he could do 
to dissuade her. At length he decided to write to 
her (he was away at a boarding school) suggesting 
that she might be content with a baby’s comforter 
which he had picked up in some nursery. Many 
people will say that the boy must have been an 
infamous little wretch. I am inclined, rather, to be 
touched by the pathetic resolve of this little Oedipus. 
The same man was only satisfactorily potent once 
in his life, and that was with—his wife’s mother. 
When the old lady died suddenly, the man left his CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
187 
wife, who no longer had the smallest interest for him. 
Since then he has been a mysogynist, unfit for work, 
and melancholy. 
Here is a third instance. A young blacksmith, 
twenty-six years old, boards with his mother and 
his stepfather, the mother’s second marriage having 
taken place five years earlier. The two men quarrel 
every evening. Nevertheless, the patient cannot 
bear to think of leaving his present quarters. He 
remembers having slept in the same bed with his 
mother up to the age of twelve. Once his mother 
noticed that the boy had an erection, and exclaimed, 
in her wisdom : “You ought to be ashamed of 
yourself! ” 
I could give plenty of examples of the other 
element in the Oedipus complex, hostility to the 
father. Since, however, the complete Oedipus com- 
plex may assume any one of four forms, and since 
various mixed types exist, I had better restrain my 
pen. There are some analysts, like Stekel, who will 
not agree that the Oedipus complex is the central 
feature of neurosis ; but no analyst can doubt the 
reality of this complex. How, then, are we to explain 
that the Zurichers, none the less, deny its reality. 
(Pfister, who follows Freud, is an exception.) We 
can only explain it by having recourse to psycho- 
analysis. Truths clear as daylight are repressed if 
they are distasteful. The Siegfried of Burgholzli 
regards the Oedipus complex as a dragon. Calvin 
and Freud cannot live together in the same heart. 
The Swiss have plumped for their national hero. 
But Rousseau, too, is a national hero of Switzer- 
land. In a work published in 1918, Jung deplores 
that town-dwellers and the industrial proletariat 188 
SIGMUND FREUD 
have lost touch with the soil, from which the peasant 
daily draws new energy and fresh moral strength. 
But the notion that the countryman is more moral 
than the townsman savours of mysticism. Were 
the great moralists, the great founders of religion, 
men of peasant stock ? The peasant is apt to be 
spiteful, vindictive, miserly, quarrelsome, litigious, 
and brutal. Proportionally to the population, sexual 
offences are commoner in the country than in the 
town. Freud tells us that among nineteenth-century 
authors, Zola was preeminent for his knowledge of 
neuroses. Those who wish to study a truthful portrait 
of the peasant, may turn to the pages of La Terre. 
In political matters, the peasant is reactionary; 
and the territorial nobles, to whom political reaction 
is advantageous, esteem the peasantry for this very 
reason. Persons of pious disposition must always 
have something which they can regard as sacred. 
But it is surely rather stupid for those who have 
described “ work ” as sacred, to establish a hierarchy, 
and to declare that the work of the peasant is more 
sacred than that of the urban proletarian. 
In 1921, Jung published a comprehensive study 
entitled Psychologische Typen. His aim in this book 
is to show how those who accept his methods can 
classify their patients according to type. After 
the analysis, the patient can be directed along the 
right path, each according to his particular type 
being shown the road by which he can best climb 
upwards. The analysand is not merely to be freed 
from his unconscious complexes, but is to be given 
good advice for his journey. By the Zurichers, this 
is termed “ psychosynthesis.” Now, the human CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
189 
mind is a complicated structure, its phenomenology 
is obscure, and its analysis is therefore difficult. 
But when we go further than analysis, and attempt 
a synthesis, we are obviously opening the door to 
all kinds of arbitrary procedures. One adviser may 
look upon Christianity as sublime, while another 
may regard its influence as pernicious. One may 
believe that we ought to return to the soil, in the sense 
of a return to primitive methods of agriculture; 
another may hold that the advance of mankind will 
best be promoted by the application of the most 
highly developed methods of modern technique in 
the backward province of agricultural production. 
It is likely that psychoanalysis will always be open 
to the objection that it still fails to probe the inner- 
most recesses of the mind. Nevertheless, if properly 
employed (i.e. without preconceptions) it can only 
bring to light the actual contents of the mind. The 
revelation does not invariably contribute to the 
patient’s comfort; but at any rate it is a truthful 
revelation, and has the ennobling qualities that 
attach to truth. In many cases, the doctor will 
find it necessary to be something more than an 
analyst; he will have to be an educator as well. Freud 
admitted as much in his address to the fifth Psycho- 
analytical Congress held at Budapesth, in September 
1918. But it is a hazardous venture to dignify such 
educational efforts with the proud name of psycho- 
synthesis, and thus to imply that they are as valuable 
as, and perhaps even more valuable than, psycho- 
analysis. The latter, at any rate, is a science ; but 
psychosynthesis may easily degenerate into unmean- 
ing babble. Inasmuch as psychoanalysis is difficult, 
whereas babbling is easy, there will always be more 190 
SIGMUND FREUD 
babblers than analysts. Freud complains that the 
Zurichers, in their study of the unconscious, merely 
scratch the surface of the ground ; and that as soon 
as they have done this they overwhelm the unfortunate 
patient with a flood of good counsel. There are too 
many oriental prophets loose in Europe to-day; 
there are schools of wisdom, devotion, and uplift. 
Jung is the director of one of these schools—a good 
one of its kind, for Jung is talented and erudite. 
His treatments last a long time, one or two years ; 
and he makes his patients promise to reconsult 
him at regular intervals. I think that the orthodox 
Freudians are justified in their hostility to this notion 
of a synthetical psychoanalysis, and in their complaint 
that the very name is a contradiction in terms. 
Freud considers that analysis is the fundamental 
matter. He has repeatedly declared that, for him, 
therapeutical successes occupy a secondary place 
among his interests as the founder of psychoanalysis 
and as the explorer of the depths of the unconscious. 
To the patient, no doubt, the cure is of supreme 
importance; it is in the hope of a cure that he 
consults the analyst and pays the analyst’s fees. 
Nevertheless, the scientific appraisement of medical 
successes is impracticable. Every doctor, and in 
especial, every neurologist, knows full well that a 
cure proves nothing. The variable factor of suggestion 
—which is an element in the psychoanalytical “ trans- 
ference ”—is, usually, the decisive matter here. 
But the psychoanalyst, when probing the patient’s 
forgotten experiences, makes it his rule to deprive 
the transference of its power by continually disclosing 
it at work.1 
1 Vide supra, pp. 93 et seq. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
191 
Quite recently, therefore, Freud has reiterated 
his view that the psychoanalyst must shun the tempta- 
tion of playing prophet and saviour to his patient. 
The aim of the analysis should be “ not to make 
the morbid reactions impossible, but to endow the 
patient’s ego with the freedom of self-determination.”1 
So rigid, so cruel a restriction of the task of analysis 
may be theoretically conceivable. In practice, how- 
ever, the analyst is compelled to work for a cure. 
It suffices that he shall be aware of the point at 
which science ceases and hocus-pocus begins—for 
the art of medicine (as distinguished from the science) 
cannot be completely freed from hocus-pocus. 
In the first instance, Freud left the criticism of 
the Zurich innovations in the hands of his pupils— 
and Stekel, though himself already under the ban, 
was one of the critics.2 But in the very month in 
which Freud broke with Jung and the other Swiss 
disciples, he wrote the closing passages of Totem 
und Tabu. This was in September 1913, at Rome, 
whither the admirer of Roman grandeur had with- 
drawn after the storm in Munich. Jung had attacked 
several of Freud’s teachings, and Freud’s sorest 
wound had been caused by the denial of the reality 
of the Oedipus complex. In Totem und Tabu, Freud 
wreaked a scientific vengeance upon Jung, following 
the latter into the domain of folk-psychology, and 
there annihilating Jung on his own vantage ground. 
In 1910 there had appeared the four volumes of 
J. G. Frazer’s Totemism and Exogamy. By one of 
those happy chances which are apt to occur at the 
1 Das Ich und das Es, p. 64. 
2 Fortschritte der Traumdeutung, “ Zentralblatt fiir Psycho- 
analyse,” iv, 1914. 192 
SIGMUND FREUD 
right moment in the lives of great men, Freud’s 
attention was drawn to this book. In it, and else- 
where, Freud found abundant materials enabling 
him to explain primitive religion and primitive 
society in terms of the tangible reality of the Oedipus 
complex. Jung’s materials were derived from ancient 
and almost incomprehensible sagas ; Freud’s materials 
were drawn from the study of South Sea islanders, 
whose life and doings are open to direct observation 
to-day. The savage’s dread of incest is manifest, 
and primitive social institutions are full of barriers 
against incest. Now, why should there be such 
barriers unless there is a strong urge towards 
incest—an urge which is suppressed by savages as 
anti-social ? 
Totem und Tabu found admirers in circles far 
wider than those of the customary admirers of 
“ Freudian mechanisms.” Freud was demonstrating 
archaic manifestations which need not be hunted 
up in the musty legends of antiquity, but can be 
studied at first hand in the mental life of savages 
and neurotics. Freud had not secured such universal 
approval since the appearance of Zur Psychopathologie 
des Alltagslebens. His own satisfaction with the 
book was shown by its reissue unaltered when a 
second edition was called for seven years later. In 
this volume we find the first mention of the primitive 
horde, or rather, the first Freudian elaboration of 
the idea. The sons, weary of the father’s tyranny, 
rebel and kill him. Freud took it as a matter of 
course that the children, being cannibals, would 
have eaten their murdered sire. Stekel says that 
Freud has the primitive-horde complex. He is the 
Old Man, afraid of his disciples. It must be admitted CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
193 
that the behaviour of Adler and Jung has to some 
extent justified the master’s anxiety.1 
Since the Zurichers denied the reality of sexual 
manifestations emanating from the unconscious, it 
was impossible to come to terms with them. They 
had turned their backs on the truth. Had they been 
content to affirm the existence of moral tendencies 
in the unconscious (the tendencies which Silberer 
speaks of as “ anagogic ”), their labours would have 
led to the permanent enrichment of psychoanalysis. 
For nearly ten years, Freud’s stubbornness—no 
milder word can be employed here—made him 
decline to recognise that the Zurichers were furnishing 
an important contribution. His earlier investigations 
had disclosed the instinctive human being to be an 
unsocial egoist, and he clung to this conception. 
He could not bring himself to admit the reality of 
the anagogic until ten years of habituation to the 
secession of the Zurichers had been superadded 
to the ten years of his original researches. In the 
interim, as Freud himself phrases it, “ psychoanalysis 
was continually being charged with paying no heed 
to the loftier, the moral, the super-egoistic elements 
in human beings.” Freud regards this accusation 
as unjust. For my part I think there are good grounds 
for it, although I sympathise with Freud’s feeling 
that he did not come into the world to supply ammu- 
nition for moralising doctrinaires. In his latest book, 
Freud has abandoned his former untenable position. 
Human beings have lived a social life for so many 
generations that the need to comply with social 
1 In all humility, I want to take this opportunity of pointing out 
that I myself anticipated Freud in the description of the Freudian 
phase of the primitive horde. This was in 1912. Cf. Alles um Liebe, 
p. 44. 194 
SIGMUND FREUD 
demands has become instinctive (the impulse towards 
such compliance arising out of “ the it,” if we use 
Groddeck’s quaint phraseology).1 The “ cultural 
overtones ” are now an integral constituent of the 
mind; through the practice and the heritage of 
millennia, they have acquired the force of a cate- 
gorical imperative. The sexual impulse serves to 
secure the survival of the species, and for that reason 
it must transcend the intellectual control of the 
individual. In like manner, social demands must 
transcend the intellectual control of the individual, 
for the human being does not merely will to live, 
but he wills also to live in society. Without social 
life, man is inconceivable. He is under the control 
of instinct, not only as a sexual being, but also as a 
civilised being. 
We may, perhaps, point out that the moral 
impulses (conscience, ego-ideal, super-ego) in the 
unconscious are in the more superficial strata—if 
we are to talk of stratification at all. But at whatever 
levels, these moral impulses exist. There are pro- 
foundly religious persons who are not aware of being 
religious; in actual life they may play the part 
of Satanists, and may suffer intensely from an 
unconscious conflict because of their inward religious 
convictions. Kant says with truth that we can hardly 
imagine a criminal who is not inwardly aware that 
he is a wrongdoer. 
Unconscious religious impulses are among the 
most deeply hidden of the complexes. The patient 
finds it harder to disclose them than the most dread 
secrets, harder to disclose them than criminal and 
perverse trends. It seems as if he were profoundly 
1 Groddeck, Das Buch vom Es. CARL GUSTAV JUNG 
195 
humiliated by having to admit that he is endowed 
with religious inclinations.1 Psychoanalysis always 
discloses impulses that repudiate civilisation sooner 
than it discloses impulses that affirm civilisation. 
That is why Freud took so long to recognise the 
existence of the latter. He claims the privileges of 
a cautious and unprejudiced investigator. The Swiss 
analysts approached the unconscious with a prior 
conviction that it must contain moral elements. 
Inasmuch as this conviction happened to be right, 
they discovered these moral elements sooner than 
Freud discovered them. 
In reality, moreover, Freud was not unprejudiced. 
He worked with the prior conviction that the content 
of the unconscious was animal, and nothing more. 
Had he held another view, he could not have failed 
to find the super-ego in the unconscious much sooner 
than he actually found it. When the Zurichers fell 
away, and when, in their secession, they repudiated 
almost all the acquisitions of psychoanalysis, Freud 
was not in the mood to learn anything from these 
renegades. We have here a fresh demonstration of 
the fact that the thoughts of others do not help, 
but rather hinder, this marvellous man’s thought- 
process. When others try to introduce their thoughts 
into his system, he denies them hospitality. He can 
only come back to such thoughts after a long detour, 
and by way of cryptomnesia. 
The all-embracing law of bipolarity compels us 
to postulate the existence of criminal trends at the 
1 Stekel holds that fetichism is the patient’s unconscious religion. 
Cf. Fetischismus, 1923—a work remarkable for its analytical insight as 
well as for its abundance of material. 196 
SIGMUND FREUD 
same level in the unconscious as that at which we 
find moral trends. These conflicting trends are mutual 
counterparts. It is not easy to decide whether these 
criminal impulses, which are certainly of very frequent 
occurrence, are, at a still lower stage, referable to 
sexual wishes.1 This much is certain, that crimin- 
ality is definitely impulsive. So, in like manner, 
are such anarchistic protests as a longing for the 
unrestricted gratification of sexual desire. 
1 Stekel, Impulshandlungen, 1922. CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
NARCISSISM 
In the Psychology of the Unconscious, a book which 
was to be momentous in its influence upon the rela- 
tionships between Freud and Jung, the latter extended 
the idea of the libido far beyond the domain of the 
sexual. When he did so, Jung believed that Freud 
himself, in a work published in 1911,1 had amplified 
the concept of libido that had been expounded some 
years earlier in the Drei Abhandlungen. Through the 
instrumentality of Ferenczi, Freud definitely repudi- 
ated this allegation. Freud followed up the statement 
in person a year later. The vehemence of Ferenczi’s 
repudiation is all the more remarkable, seeing that 
the Hungarian analyst pauses in the midst of his 
animadversions upon Jung to remark that he himself, 
before Jung, had wanted to expand the concept 
of the libido. Freud, he said, had been opposed to 
the notion, and he (Ferenczi), as a good disciple, had 
complied. In my own book, Alles um Liehe, I deduced 
the origin of civilisation from a concept of the libido 
which, for my then purposes, it was not necessary 
to desexualise. I treated of the libido as sexual, 
although to outward appearance it might assume 
1 Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen iiber einen autobiographisch 
beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia, “ Jahrbuch fiir Psychoanalyse,” 
vol. iii, 1911.—Republished in Sammlung, vol. iii, No. 3. 198 
SIGMUND FREUD 
other forms. I am, in fact, of opinion that the 
monism which both Jung and I have introduced into 
the conception of human impulses is plainly manifest 
in Freud’s first formulation of 1905. Inasmuch as 
Freud substantially admits this to-day, we must 
interpret his opposition to Ferenczi and Jung in their 
attempts to enlarge the concept of the libido as mean- 
ing nothing more than this : “ Let me alone. I shall 
myself expand the concept of the libido when the 
time is ripe ! ” 
But the time was already ripe in 1905. If the libido 
can be sublimated, if it can be turned away from 
a sexual object, if its energy can be utilised in other 
directions (ranging from the collection of postage 
stamps to the writing of the Ninth Symphony), it 
is difficult to see what activity of the human mind 
can take place without the intervention of the libido. 
Two things were obvious in 1905. First of all, the 
libido was a transmutable form of energy. Secondly, 
everything that civilised human beings undertake, 
even in domains that seem to have nothing to do 
with the sexual life, is in one way or another connected 
with the libido. “We cannot get on without the 
assumption that there is a transmutable form of 
energy,” writes Freud in 1923. But in 1907 and 1908 
I published essays in which I discussed the transmuta- 
tion of affect, which I already regarded as one of the 
most important of Freud’s discoveries. 
Nevertheless Freud, who had pointed out such 
paths to us lesser mortals, continued for many years 
to maintain against us that there were quite distinct 
forms of impulse, ranking equally with the libido, 
and furnishing the energy for the characteristically 
“ civilised ” activities of human beings. Such cultural NARCISSISM 
199 
activities were undertaken with more passion, were 
in a sense transfigured, when the libido was part of 
their driving force; but the libido could not be 
invoked as an adequate explanation of all the activities 
of man. Thus Freud clung to his dualism, and 
contemptuously rejected Jung’s “ genetic ” theory 
of the libido. At that time, Freud was still free from 
metaphysical leanings. He would not go so far as 
to deny that the sexual impulse and the impulse to 
seek food might have had common roots far back in 
the history of the human race. But such a contention 
was of trifling importance. With mordant humour, 
Freud wrote: “ This contention relates to things 
which are so remote from the problems of direct 
observation, and have so little content of real know- 
ledge, that we waste our time equally in affirming 
them or in denying them. It may be said that such 
a primitive identity has no more bearing upon our 
analytical interests, than the primitive kinship of 
all the races of man has a bearing upon the legal 
proof of kinship demanded of one who would make 
good his claim to an inheritance.” 1 
Thus did the master chase away from the steps 
of his throne the analysts who were in search of a 
philosophy. The libido was at work everywhere. 
If Freud’s teaching was to be accepted, human 
character, even, was formed in accordance with the 
erogenic zones. The triad, cleanliness, miserliness, 
and pedantry, was connected with the working of 
the anal zone. Ambition was a urethral-erotic 
character trait. Doubtless there was another force, 
of which Freud could not say much more than that 
1 Sammlung, iv, Zur Einfiihrung des Narzissmus, p. 83 of second 
edition, 1922. 200 
SIGMUND FREUD 
it existed. He did not even know whether it was a 
single force or an aggregate of forces. But whenever 
he was censured for making sexuality the universal 
motive energy, he could answer: “Have I not broken 
with my favourite pupil precisely because he wished to 
refer everything to the working of the libido ? I am fully 
aware that there are ego impulses as well as libido.” 
In his latest publications (1920-1923), however, 
Freud, somewhat ruefully, ascribes an all-embracing 
significance to Eros. The ego impulses are dismissed 
to the oblivion which has long been their due. From 
the epistemological point of view, as I showed on 
pp. 157 et seq., they have always been impracticable 
conceptions. As far as the actual work of psycho- 
analysis is concerned, they are superfluous. Un- 
doubtedly Freud is right in his contention that epis- 
temological questions are not of much importance 
upon the plane on which, as doctors, we work with our 
patients. In any case, even on this plane, phenomena 
have come to light which make the assumption of 
ego impulses needless. Freud and his followers sub- 
sume these phenomena under the name “ narcissism.” 
To-day, few analysts will deny that the fiction of the 
ego is created by narcissism. 
The word narcissism was coined by Havelock 
Ellis.1 The concept, Freud tells us, was the out- 
1 It is true that Freud writes (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexual- 
theorie, 5th edition, p. 81): “ The term narcissism was not coined by 
Naecke, but by Havelock Ellis.” This statement is not perfectly 
correct. Ellis described the perversion, but Naecke supplied the name. 
We have the direct authority of Ellis for this assertion. He writes to 
us on March 16, 1924 : “ I described the perversion, as a variety of 
autoerotism, with cases, in ‘ The Alienist and Neurologist,’ invoking 
the name of Narcissus. Naecke, with whom I was in close touch, 
reproduced my description, and added an * ismus ’ to Narcissus. 
I think one should say that the term is due to Havelock Ellis and 
Naecke.”—E. and C. P. NARCISSISM 
201 
growth of certain ideas propounded by the psycho- 
analyst Abraham, who at one time lived in Zurich, 
but for more than fifteen years has been at work in 
Berlin. Abraham is a meritorious investigator, and 
I should be the last to deprive him of any credit 
which is his due. But Freud is cryptomnesic, not 
only in respect of matters which he regards as his 
own, but also in respect of ideas which he fathers 
upon his pupils when they really originated with 
himself. The conception of narcissism is so far- 
reaching, and it is so characteristically stamped with 
the Freudian imprint, that posterity will be loath 
to dissociate it from Freud’s immediate personality.1 
However this may be, narcissism was first studied, 
not in the neurotic patients who constituted Freud’s 
clinical material, but in those suffering from mental 
disorder, who were available for examination in 
Zurich. One of the essential distinctions between 
mental disorder and neurosis is that in some forms 
of mental disorder the patient has lost all interest 
in the outer world. That is why an effective contact 
with lunatics is so difficult. They have undergone 
“ introversion.” Let me make this characteristic 
of mental disorder more intelligible by a comparison 
with the mental life of the sane. Lunatics behave 
like dreamers, in that they are quite alone in the 
world. But the sane dreamer can be awakened, 
whereas nothing can shake the lunatic out of his 
dream. The lover, again, behaves in many respects 
1 Concerning this question, Freud writes to me as follows : “ I 
have never maintained that narcissism was not my own independent 
discovery. I have merely pointed out that earlier writers have hinted 
at it.” It would seem, therefore, that I must have misunderstood what 
Freud said in his lectures (Vorlesungen, Taschenausgabe, p. 438.— 
Cf. English translation, Introductory Lectures, pp. 346-7.) 202 
SIGMUND FREUD 
like a lunatic. He has but one interest in the universe. 
Dead to all other interests, he enormously over- 
* 
estimates the importance of the only one left to him. 
The hypochondriac may be chosen as a third instance. 
He cares for absolutely nothing outside his liver, 
or whatever other organ he may fancy to be the cause 
of his troubles. 
These examples make it needless to give a detailed 
definition of narcissism. Where do all the desires 
of the lover converge ? Upon the person of his 
beloved. In the case of the lunatic, who has lost all 
interest in objective happenings, where do the desires 
converge ? Upon his own person. Freud writes : 
“ The subject’s ego is invested with libido.” But 
since the ego does not really exist, it will be better 
to say that narcissism creates the ego, exalts and 
debases it, according to the amount of libido left 
available for this nebulous object—which in reality 
consists only of an aggregate of perceptions, promoted 
by the libido to become the concept of the ego. 
No human being and no ego is conceivable without 
narcissism. It was discovered by the study of 
extreme instances, as in lunacy, the love passion, 
and hypochondria—which last, in its more accen- 
tuated forms, is lunacy. But every one is in love 
with himself. He possesses in his libido a transmutable 
energy, with the aid of which he has brought to 
pass the most splendid achievements of civilisation. 
Nevertheless, the first and most obvious application 
of the libido is towards one’s own self—body and 
spirit. While a man prizes his beloved, and passion- 
ately overestimates her value, there is another object 
of libido which he overvalues even more grossly, 
more persistently, and with yet greater conviction. NARCISSISM 
203 
He values himself at a higher rate than any outward 
object of sexual desire. There are few exceptions 
to this generalisation, and they belong to the domain 
of mental disorder. The most conspicuous example 
of excessive valuation of the self is seen in megalo- 
mania. But we are all megalomaniacs, and are only 
ashamed—of one another. We need but take the 
first steps in analysis, we need merely “ scratch ” 
the surface of the mind, and narcissism comes to 
light. Since all things are bipolar, there is always a 
factor of underestimation as a counterpart to the 
factor of over estimation. A certain degree of the 
sense of inferiority attaches to narcissism as its 
antipole. 
When they hit upon the concept of narcissism, 
the Freudians opened a new window through which 
light could penetrate into the dark recesses of the 
mind. Since this occurred at a comparatively late 
stage in the development of psychoanalytical theory, 
all the other parts of the theory had to be reconsidered 
in the new light. The ego impulses had been an 
ill-considered defence against Alfred Adler. Nar- 
cissism, on the other hand, was a successful refuta- 
tion of the Zurichers ; a resexualisation of Eros, 
whom they had desexualised. 
Freud had always taught that the neurosis and 
its symptoms really depicted the patient’s sexual 
life. Every neurotic detaches part of his libido 
from the outer world, and directs its energy inward. 
The hypochondriac, whose trouble is on the border- 
line between neurosis and lunacy, invests his own body 
with libido where he fancies his body to be diseased ; 
the affected organ is treated like an erogenic zone, 
has become the hypochondriac’s genital organ. This 204 
SIGMUND FREUD 
explains the perfect seriousness and the invincible 
obstinacy with which a hypochondriac clings to his 
false estimates. Where we are dealing with love, again, 
we find that the individual is proof against experience, 
and that rational considerations have no influence 
on him. The hypochondriac is closely akin to the 
melancholiac—and, indeed, every narcissist is melan- 
choly. Can any one who is in love with himself find 
satisfaction ? The prototype of all narcissists is the 
youth in the Greek saga, who sadly contemplates his 
image in the pool. 
We find that the most adequate cause for grief 
exists when a much-loved person has died. Some 
of the survivor’s libido has then, willy-nilly, been 
set free, and must find other objects to invest. The 
grief only lasts until such other objects have been 
found. I knew a man who had been greatly devoted 
to his wife. When she died, he bought a motor car, 
and toured at top speed all over the country. As 
travelling companions, he had now one fair lady, 
and now another, and this aroused unfavourable 
comment from those who had regarded him as a 
devoted husband. But a year later he was over- 
whelmed with the most profound grief, which his 
well-wishers now regarded as a trifle exaggerated. 
During the first year after his bereavement, he had 
been trying to run away from his grief, and had 
endeavoured to effect a forcible transfer of the liberated 
libido, to bring about its attachment to new objects. 
He would only admit his grief when this attempt 
had failed. 
Freud explains the difference between grief and 
melancholia as follows : The mourner, one whose 
trouble is grief, tries to transfer to other objects NARCISSISM 
205 
the love that has been set free by the loss of the 
beloved. The melancholiac, on the other hand, is, as 
it were, struck by lightning owing to his loss. As 
though the energy had been short-circuited, the 
liberated libido turns back from the lost object towards 
the ego. This phenomenon is not so often seen in 
cases of bereavement as when the loss has taken some 
other form. Frequently the loss which has induced 
melancholia is one which the patient is loath to 
acknowledge, and in many cases it is one which 
he has repressed from his own consciousness. His 
self-accusations, his feeling that life is no longer 
worth living, and his conviction that he is a lost 
being, are, according to Freud, nothing but narcissistic 
paraphrases of complaints against others. The melan- 
choliac, having lost a beloved person, has incorporated 
the lost one’s personality into his own ego. 
One of my patients, a wealthy man, was persistent 
in his complaints that life had become intolerable, 
and that he was ruined. The reason for his distress 
was that, by the laws of his country, he was compelled 
to cede a few acres of land. It did not console him 
in the least to be told that there was still left to him 
a large estate, with several houses, a motor car, and 
so on, and so on. Now, six months before, this man 
had lost his only daughter—by marriage. She was 
the “ piece of land ” of which he had been deprived. 
But it is not considered good form to bewail the 
fact that one’s daughter has made a good marriage. 
For a time he had not been able to find any way of 
rationalising his melancholy. 
Inasmuch as the efficacy of psychoanalysis depends 
upon transference, and inasmuch as in cases of mental 
disorder the inwardly directed narcissistic libido is 206 
SIGMUND FREUD 
but little disposed to undergo transference upon the 
analyst, the result is that, in certain forms of dementia, 
melancholia, and hypochondria, and in cases of 
delusion of persecution, megalomania, delusion of 
reference, etc., at an early stage of the analysis we 
encounter (to use Freud’s term) an insuperable 
obstacle. The distinction between such mental dis- 
orders, on the one hand, and hysteria and obsessional 
neurosis, on the other, seemed so important to the 
founder of psychoanalysis that he classed the two 
latter as “ transference neuroses ” ; whereas the 
types of mental disorder just enumerated were 
denominated “ narcissistic neuroses.” 
If only it were not necessary to classify ! The 
extreme types of narcissism are doubtless incurable. 
But we are all narcissistic to a degree; every one 
may exhibit a certain measure of hypochondria; 
not one of us is free from delusion of reference. 
As far as the neuroses are concerned, in every one 
of us at a given time the mood tends a little to- 
wards exaltation or towards depression. Seeing that 
melancholia is in many cases curable by bringing 
about a transference upon the analyst, the boundary 
line between narcissistic neuroses and transference 
neuroses is blurred. For most of those afflicted with 
severe psychoneuroses, the “ end of the world ” 
has taken place. This is what made so strong an 
impression on Freud in the case of Schreber, the 
President of the Senate. We must be careful not to 
take this phrase “ the end of the world ” too literally. 
The 4 4 destruction of the world ” conceals what has 
really been destroyed. We may recall, in this con- 
nexion, Alfred Adler’s brilliant remark that neurotics 
are fond of play-acting, and that their 44 end of the NARCISSISM 
207 
world ” is a fiction whose foundations can be under- 
mined by bringing about a transference. Freud 
makes an apt remark when he says that there are 
‘two different mechanisms whereby a person may 
become dead to the world. “ There are the cases in 
which all the libidinal cathexis (investment) flows 
away towards the beloved object, and those in which 
it all flows back towards the ego.” For two persons 
'who are ardently in love with one another, the rest 
of the world is non-existent. Each has lost himself 
or herself in the other—“ anti-narcissism.” 
The counterpart of narcissism (we have just 
touched upon the matter in this reference to ardent 
lovers) is “ identification ” with another person. The 
essence of love is identification. “ Each becomes con- 
scious only in and through the other.” Great poets 
have always described the love sentiment in this way. 
To the bodily union in the love act, to the transference 
of the sexual products, there corresponds a spiritual 
union and a spiritual transference. Even the infant 
loves already by identification. He imitates every- 
thing. He learns by imitating those he loves. He 
identifies himself with the father and with the mother ; 
identifies himself to a lesser degree with all the 
members of his environment; until ultimately, after 
the lapse of a few years, by this persistent swallowing 
of others, he has expanded his own ego to such 
dimensions that he can love it. At long last, he 
identifies himself with himself. 
The concept of autoerotism was familiar in psycho- 
analysis long before that of narcissism. The idea 
was taken from the sexual life of the infant, all of 
whose sexual pleasures are derived from its own 
body and from all parts thereof. Narcissism can 208 
SIGMUND FREUD 
best be understood by regarding it as a spiritual 
amplification of bodily autoerotism. In 1914, Freud 
actually formulated the notion of “a primary libidinal 
cathexis of the ego, from which subsequently libido 
was directed towards outward objects.” In the 
course of subsequent years, however, Freud came to 
realise more and more that the ego, if it exists at all, 
is at any rate not brought by the child into the world, 
but comes into existence later. Recently, he has 
described the ego as originating through identification. 
According to Freud’s account of the matter in 1923, 
the libido is first outwardly directed. From objects, 
it is then withdrawn towards the ego. This withdrawal, 
towards the ego, of the libido which had been out- 
wardly directed, is termed by Freud “ secondary 
narcissism.” But, in that case, I do not know what 
is left of primary narcissism. In my view, there is 
only one kind of narcissism, and the only ego is a 
narcissistic ego. Thus the ego would be no more 
than a postulate, which manifests itself as an ego 
in order to supply a tangible substratum for the 
narcissistic libido. 
Some may find this exposition difficult to under- 
stand, so I will put the matter in a more popular 
way. I knew a lady of pleasure named Bella von M., 
whose quarters for the night were sometimes in one 
barrack and sometimes in another. This was long 
before the war and its upshot had destroyed the 
Austro-Hungarian synthesis of nations. When she 
had passed the night in the cavalry barrack, she 
would talk next morning with the Hungarian accent 
of the hussars. After a sojourn in the infantry 
barrack, she spoke German like a Bohemian. WTien 
she had been visiting the uhlans, her accent was NARCISSISM 
209 
Polish. Thus she invariably identified herself with 
her latest intimate, and there might have seemed to 
be a risk of her ultimately becoming a typical example 
of “ multiple personality.” In her case, there was 
little scope for narcissism ; the direction of her libido 
was almost exclusively outward. In conformity 
with this, her ego was scantily developed. From 
day to day she was an ephemeron living in the shadow 
of her last lover’s personality, the lover who was to 
be forgotten as soon as a new evening began. But 
when the previous night’s lover had been forgotten, 
Bella von M., about whom there was nothing real— 
not even her name—could not go on living. If one 
has no narcissism, one has no ego, and that is terrible. 
For this reason she was constrained to hasten to the 
nearest barrack, in order to find an object for her 
libido. 
A respectable girl does not behave in this way. 
She has an ego, “ and loves it, and has good cause to 
love it.” 
There are many women who have no ego, and 
therefore no anchorage. Some women, on the other 
hand, have too much ego in the narcissistic sense, 
and are consequently incapable of genuine love. 
In 1907 I described this type of woman under the 
name of the “ child-woman.” 1 At that time I knew 
nothing of narcissism. I explained the child-woman 
as one who, owing to the premature development of 
beauty, had prematurely become the object of desire. 
Thus the beautiful child had failed to develop into 
a woman, and had remained a child, as she had been 
when she had first become the object of desire (for 
to be desired is the biological purpose of the woman). 
1 Die sexuelle Not. 210 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Such a woman, therefore, remains simple, childishly ** 
beautiful, and childishly free from inhibitions. She 
flies from one man’s hand to another, and early 
perishes. Venereal diseases and tuberculosis1 lie 
in wait for her, and the men who are at first eager 
to woo her favour, come to regard her as a harlot ,1 
because she can keep faith with no one. At that 
time the substratum of my thought in this matter 
was the concept of infantile autoerotism, but I 
developed from it a part of the idea which subse- 
quently came to be called narcissism. I read the 
essay to Freud before it was published. 
To-day, the attractive force which the child- 
woman exercises, and also the peculiar nature of her 
sexuality, are easier to understand than they were 
in 1907. I said then that the child-woman was 
the primitive woman. In 1914, writing of “ the 
commonest and perhaps the most typical woman,” 
Freud described the following love mechanism : 
“ Woman, especially when conspicuous for beauty, 
possesses a self-sufficiency which compensates her 
for the fact that convention forbids her the free choice 
of the object of love. Strictly speaking, such women « 
love themselves alone, love themselves as intensely 
as a man loves them. Their love need does not take 
the form of loving another, but of being loved; 
and they like the man who satisfies this condition. 
The significance of such a type of women in the . 
amatory life of men is very great. They exercise a 
powerful attraction upon men, not only for aesthetic 
reasons (inasmuch as they are usually beautiful), 
but also because of interesting psychological constella- 
tions. . . . But this great charm of the narcissistic 
1 “ Phthisicus semper salax ! ” NARCISSISM 
211 
woman has its seamy side. Much of the dissatisfaction 
of male lovers, their doubts concerning the reality 
of woman’s love, and their complaints concerning 
the enigmatic nature of women, arise out of this 
incongruency in the objects of their affection.” 1 
In this passage, Freud comes to a view which 
he had not yet adopted in 1907. When I read my 
paper on the child-woman at a meeting of the Psycho- 
analytical Society, Freud said that this type must 
be sharply distinguished from the civilised woman. 
The child-woman was nothing but a “ drab.” The 
study of narcissism has modified my own outlook 
since then, and I realise that the great hetaira can 
never love any one but herself. Her motto is e*a> 
ovk exo/iai—I possess, but I am not possessed. 
Yet she continually needs fresh assurances that she 
is lovable ; she needs beautiful dresses, ornaments, 
and her mirror; she needs that many men shall tell 
her that she is the most beautiful woman in the 
world. When such assurances are lacking, or when 
her competitors win successes, the hetaira is greatly 
discomposed; for, though she is narcissistic, her 
narcissism is not fixed, and is carried away on the 
ebb of each departing day. She must always be more 
and have more than anyone else. This wish of hers 
makes her resemble the man in one of Hauff’s tales 
whom the devil had promised that he should always 
have twice as much in his pocket as the richest 
farmer in the village. On one occasion, this man was 
playing cards with the village Croesus, and won all 
the cash the Croesus had with him. The loser, wishing 
to continue the game, proposed to borrow some money 
from the winner, but the latter now found that he 
1 Sammlung, iv, 96. 212 
SIGMUND FREUD 
had not even a penny left in his pocket. The devil’s 
promise had been that he was always to have twice 
as much as Croesus, and since Croesus’ pockets were 
empty, his own contained—twice nothing. Thus 
is it, too, with the ego of the great courtesan. Such 
an ego exists only as the reflex of wooing, or as 
success over a rival. This is what I term the narcissism 
of inferiority. 
Inasmuch as a permanent fixation on the beloved 
can only come about through an overflow of the 
lover’s personality into that of the beloved, a great „ 
love always presupposes a vigorous ego. That is 
why I consider the idea of the ego and the idea of 
narcissism to be identical. What we love and worship 
in another is our own ego, which we have exteriorised 
into the other’s personality. We must think a great 
deal of ourselves if we are to be able strongly and 
enduringly to love our own ego when it has assumed 
the form of the beloved. This is quite beyond the 
competence of such as Bella von M. Child-women 
cannot develop an ego, and therefore they cannot 
love. 
There is something else which I have failed to - 
discover in Freud’s writings, but which has been 
made clear to me by the study of Stekel’s book on 
homosexuality. The immense success of women who 
are ardently desired and greatly loved depends upon 
homosexual impulses in men. The hetaira-cult of 
our days is no less homosexual than was that of 
classical Greece. What a man loves in the hetaira 
is the other men who have lain and will lie in her 
arms. Since the homosexual impulse is unconscious, 
it cannot manifest itself in the form of direct love for 
another man. We must not imagine that the men NARCISSISM 
whose desires always turn towards especially beautiful 
women are men of a peculiarly virile type. They love 
such women because they know that beauty will 
attract the glances of other men towards these women. 
This leads us to Hebbel’s Candaules motif, which has 
been discussed by Sadger in Friedrich Hebbel, ein 
psychoanalytischer Versuch, and by myself in Tragische 
Motive. I have also published a novel in which the 
Candaules motif forms the central feature, 1 but 
this was written at a time when I was myself still 
unaware of my hero’s unconscious homosexuality.2 
What I have been saying as to the homosexuality 
of men whose only love interest is in very beautiful 
women, forms so assured a part of our knowledge 
that I feel justified in inferring homosexuality wrhen 
a patient tells me, usually with great pride, that 
he has never loved and possessed any but beautiful 
women. I then say to the patient: “ What you want 
is that these women should please, not only yourself, 
but also another man, one with whom you are in love, 
though perhaps without knowing it.” 
In these instances, the analysis invariably discloses 
the existence of such a man ; and it is a great advan- 
tage to the patient when the hidden homosexuality 
is brought into the focus of consciousness. We cannot 
strive against the invisible. 
Just as Sadger was the first who made use of 
psychoanalysis for the cure of homosexuality, whereas 
Freud has not even to-day wholly abandoned the 
opinion that this trend is constitutional (Steinach’s 
view), so likewise Sadger was the first to recognise 
1 Wittels, Der Juwelier von Bagdad. 
fh 2 Cf. also Freud, Ueber die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des 
Liebeslebens, Sammlung, iv, 18 and 14. 214 
SIGMUND FREUD 
that narcissism belongs to the same order of pheno- 
mena as homosexuality. The narcissist, in his search 
for the object of love, pauses where the object seems 
most like to himself. It is natural that this should 
tend to be a person of his own sex, one who possesses 
the same kind of genital organs as the self-enamoured 
narcissist. No doubt the psychological structure of 
homosexuality is extremely complicated. There are 
some homosexuals who have undergone fixation on 
the mother, and who can only secure release from 
that fixation by identifying themselves with the 
mother. They thus feel themselves to be women, 
and their desires turn towards man as a complement. 
This mechanism was described by Freud in 1921.1 
In such little matters, it is no longer possible to speak 
of priority in psychoanalysis. Thousands of investi- 
gators are at work, and simultaneous discoveries are 
frequent. 
Thus identification has two distinct forms. In 
one of these, the object is swallowed, and therewith 
the narcissist is complete. In the second case, the 
ego flows away into the other person, and the love 
for the ego (narcissism) has to follow the ego like a 
shadow.—But the reader is aware that I incline to 
regard the ego as the shadow of narcissism. 
Freud makes some very striking observations 
regarding the love felt for one’s own child. This 
love, he says, is narcissism. Conventional inhibitions 
restrict us in the manifestation of love for ourselves, 
but no such restrictions are imposed on the love 
we feel for our children. The children are portions 
of ourselves, and yet we are permitted to love them 
without being charged with egoism. Still, people 
1 Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, p. 73. NARCISSISM 
215 
guess what is in the wind when parents are over- 
affectionate, and such parents are the butt of 
popular wit. 
“ There is a tendency for the narcissist to attach 
to the child all the cultural acquirements which the 
former has wrested from his narcissism, and to 
renew in the child the claim to long-relinquished 
privileges. The child is to have a better time of it 
than the parent, is not to be subjected to the restric- 
tions which have hampered the parent’s life . . . 
In the child’s person, the narcissist arrogates to 
himself the title 4 His Majesty the Baby.’ The child 
is to fulfil the parent’s unfulfilled dream wishes ; 
is to become a great man and a hero, where the father 
has failed to become one; or (if a girl) is to have a 
prince for husband as a belated compensation to 
the mother. The weak point in the narcissistic 
system is the longing for the immortality of the ego, 
which is menaced by inexorable reality. This longing 
takes refuge in the personality of the child. The 
touching fondness of parents for their children, 
itself an essentially childlike sentiment, is only the 
parents’ renascent narcissism, whose original nature 
is plainly manifest even when thus metamorphosed 
into the love of an external object.” 1 
1 The quotation in the text, from Sammlung, iv, p. 99, is merely 
a repetition. The following passage from Die Traumdeutung, first 
edition, p. 275, shows that Freud was already on the track of narcissism 
before 1900 : “ It is easy to perceive that the suppressed megalomania 
of the father is in the latter’s mind transferred upon the children. 
Indeed, there is good reason to believe that this is one of the ways in 
which the suppression of megalomania—a necessity of practical every- 
day life—is usually effected.” CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
WILHELM STEKEL 
The breach with Stekel occurred between the Weimar 
congress and the Munich congress. During these 
years there must have been smouldering some of the 
hatred which was to culminate in the rupture. Still, 
I have no proof of this assertion, and I know that 
several times Freud has broken with old friends 
in similar fashion. At the beginning of the century, 
he cut adrift from Breuer and Fliess ; towards 1912 
he severed his relationships with Adler, Stekel, 
Kahane, and Jung. In the cases of Adler and Jung 
there were, no doubt, insuperable differences anent 
scientific matters ; but as far as the quarrel with 
Stekel was concerned, the reasons were mainly 
personal. There were differences upon matters of 
theory as well, but no important principles were 
involved, and it would have been an advantage to the 
psychoanalytical cause if the two men could have 
continued to exchange ideas. In his writings, Freud 
tells the world plainly why he broke with Adler and 
Jung. As regards Stekel, all he says is that the breach 
was caused by “ matters which it is hardly possible 
to make public.” The very reticence of this phrase- 
ology is what makes it so offensive. The reader 
might imagine that on one of the Wednesday evenings 
Stekel had been caught pocketing the spoons ! Even WILHELM STEKEL 
217 
more spiteful is the passage in which Freud refers 
to “ Stekel, so serviceable to begin with, and after- 
wards so utterly untrustworthy.” If Freud or one 
of his more immediate pupils finds it necessary to 
quote Stekel (such quotations are made as seldom as 
possible), the quotation is always accompanied by an 
expression of regret that this abominable name has 
to be introduced. 
For my part, I am greatly indebted to Wilhelm 
Stekel. Alone among the psychoanalysts he has 
continued to befriend me during the years in which 
outward, and perhaps inward, circumstances have 
prevented my making any notable contribution to 
psychoanalytical science. I agree, therefore, that 
I may be prejudiced in his favour, and that I am not 
in a position to give an unbiased opinion in this 
affair of Stekel versus Freud. Still, I shall explain 
matters as I see them. 
I need not dwell on Stekel’s services in the diffu- 
sion of Freud’s ideas throughout the German press. 
He no longer contributes in this way to periodicals. 
At the outset he was one of those who were immeasur- 
ably impressed by Freud’s researches. Who could 
help being amazed by them ? Even Janet, who 
described Freud’s discovery as a bad joke, was, funda- 
mentally, no less astonished than Freud’s own disciples. 
It was those that were devoid of critical faculty, those 
that swallowed everything or rejected everything 
in block, who displayed poverty of intelligence. The 
faithful disciples were never able to get over their 
initial astonishment. Stekel recovered from it. He 
shook off the hypnotic influence that had emanated 
from Freud’s imposing personality. This was the 
cause of the trouble.  SIGMUND FREUD 
218 
When I say that Stekel criticised some of Freud’s 
contentions, I am telling only half the story, and the 
less weighty half. The most important thing about 
Stekel seems to me to be the confidence with which 
he has moved along the roads first opened up by 
Freud. Thus Stekel unrestingly exploited the new 
scientific domain, and this aroused the hostility of the 
other disciples, and ultimately the hostility of the 
master himself—the man who, somewhat hesitatingly, 
had been the first to enter these dark recesses and 
to illuminate them with the torch of his research. 
Stekel is so fully convinced of the soundness of what 
he has accepted from among the Freudian doctrines, 
that he continues to build on this foundation without 
troubling himself about questions of principle, critical 
objections, and queries as to method. His relation- 
ship to Freud may be compared with the relationship 
of the epoch of Rubens to the epoch of Michelangelo. 
For Michelangelo the perspective foreshortening of 
the human body always remained a problem. In 
the case of Rubens, the mastery of all these fore- 
shortenings had become a self-evident presupposition 
of the painter’s art. There was no longer any struggle 
to secure the draftsman’s technique; wherefore, at 
times, the self-confidence of Rubens’ work annoys 
the beholder. 
Stekel was once described by a hostile critic as 
a man who carried something demoniacal in his 
waistcoat pocket. He is, in fact, so intimately 
acquainted with the daimons of the dream that he 
will face a combat with them fearlessly. Freud had 
to take a great deal of trouble to prove the general 
thesis that the dream has a hidden meaning, and 
his mission was to defend the discovery of the dream WILHELM STEKEL 
219 
language against a world of enemies. Stekel’s mission 
was different. He is quite unconcerned about those 
who refuse to admit that dreams have a mean- 
ing. He sets forth boldly to navigate the sub- 
terranean waters, and has made a whole series of 
discoveries in the field of dream interpretation. 
At first, even Freud’s pupils laughed at many of 
these; but, undeterred by the mockery of the 
dull-witted, he has succeeded in making dream sym- 
bolism, which Freud had only hinted at, the very 
centre of dream interpretation. He was the first 
to recognise the death symbolism of the dream.1 
Not until 1922 did Freud accept Stekel’s notion of 
death symbolism, with a proviso that showed the 
acceptance to be distasteful.2 I can remember 
Stekel’s first contributions to the discussions of the 
Psychoanalytical Society. He explained the signifi- 
cance of 44 right ” and 44 left ” in dreams ; referred 
to the bisexuality of dream symbols ; was the first 
to explain dreams of return to the father ; and so on. 
Whenever he announced such discoveries, he was told 
that they were 44 exaggerations ” which could only 
bring discredit upon psychoanalysis. The Zurichers, 
when they criticised the Viennese 44 far-fetched inter- 
pretations,” were thinking especially of Stekel. 
The fact is that Stekel has an unrivalled gift 
for dream interpretation. He does not confine him- 
self to the narrow path pointed out by Freud, but 
discloses the significance of the dream by a peculiar 
form of insight which many people speak of 
as intuition. Having interpreted thousands upon 
thousands of dreams, he has become to a certain 
1 Refer back to the examples given on pp. 82-3 and 103. 
2 “ Imago,” viii, 1. 220 
SIGMUND FREUD 
extent independent of the data contributed by the 
dreamer. Those who know how unwilling, owing to the 
resistance, the patient usually is to give the necessary 
associations to his dreams, will understand the value 
of this faculty of Stekel’s. Of course, the method has 
its dangers, and it is easy to go astray. No matter. 
The misses count for nothing ; the hits remain. 
Thus an analysis by Stekel involves an active 
participation of the patient. Again and again, the 
latter feels that the shafts hit the mark, until at 
length he is impelled to disclose that which, when the 
passive form of psychoanalysis is alone practised, is 
often withheld until analyser and analysand have 
both lost patience. This explains Stekel’s practical 
successes. Freud is a man of genius, but Stekel 
is a better dream interpreter than Freud. Stekel 
describes himself as the dwarf standing on the giant’s 
shoulders. Now that he is banned by the orthodox 
Freudians, he sometimes amuses himself by reinter- 
preting a dream published, with an interpretation, 
by Freud or by one of the faithful. When this happens, 
Stekel’s reinterpretation always has so remarkable 
a verisimilitude, that the original interpretation 
promptly falls to the ground. On p. 144 I gave 
Stekel’s reinterpretation of a dream of Monroe Meyer’s. 
Here is another instance of reinterpretation. One 
of Freud’s patients, a woman, dreamed of her deceased 
father, who appeared, and said to her in a menacing 
tone : 44 It is half-past eleven, it is a quarter to 
twelve.” Freud tells us that the dreamer had been 
one of the auditors of an observation to the effect that 
something of primitive man (Urmensch) lingers on 
in us all. When the father spoke of half-past eleven 
(halb zwolf Uhr) and a quarter to twelve (dreiviertel WILHELM STEKEL 
221 
zwftlf Uhr), the dreamer, in virtue of one of those 
puns which are common in dreams, was making of 
her father an Uhrmensch (clock-man), i.e. Urmensch 
(primitive man)—this being a wish-fulfilment, the 
fulfilment of her wish that he might be living on in 
her, and therefore not be really dead. 
Stekel’s explanation of the dream was very 
different. The twelfth hour is the last hour. The 
father appears in order to warn the child. He says 
nothing more than that it is time, high time—half- 
past eleven, a quarter to twelve—to begin something, 
or finish something, or repeat something. 
This critic made himself such a nuisance with 
his reinterpretations that the orthodox Freudians 
began to hesitate before publishing their interpreta- 
tions, which were often strained. Much of what 
they wring from dreams by a process wdiich amounts 
to distortion, vanishes into nothingness in the light 
of Stekel’s intuition. 
The reader will readily understand that the 
Psychoanalytical Society must have found a person 
with such uncanny talents a very inconvenient 
member. Imagine a circle of arithmeticians, labori- 
ously working out difficult sums with the aid of 
pencil and paper; but among them is a master 
of mental arithmetic, who jumps to the right solution 
with perfect ease. This is very annoying to the 
plodders ; and is, in fact, unscientific, for the scientist 
is not content with mere results, but wants to bear 
the burden and heat of the day on the way thither- 
ward. It would require a good deal more patience 
than Freud and his disciples possess, to tolerate a 
man with Stekel’s talents in their company. 
Add to this, that Stekel does not merely funravel 222 
SIGMUND FREUD 
the dream symbolism, but that he likewise adroitly 
disinters the actual conflicts from the patient’s 
unconscious. In an astonishingly short time, during 
which he is mainly concerned with the study of the 
patient’s dreams, he will often be able to tell the ‘ 
latter in plain words what the conflicts are. When 
he makes a mistake, which of course happens 
now and again, he is always ready to dismount 
and try a fresh horse. In this way he advances as a 
skilful man, and one who knows other men—far - 
outstripping those who become analysts because they 
are really aloof from the world, and are incompetent, 
man to man, and without machinery, to find their 
way into a sick soul. 
I concede the point that Stekel is commonplace 
when compared with Freud. This is because he is 
in closer touch with the everyday world than such 
a man as Freud, who stands on a peak apart. But 
inasmuch as the experiences that determine our 
illnesses are for the most part everyday and trivial, 
a physician who is at home in the trivial world will 
often cure us quickly where the titan will fail. 
Of late years there has been much talk concerning 
the “ active method ” of psychoanalysis. The Swiss 
analysts mean by this what they also term “ psycho- 
synthesis,” which has been discussed on pages 188-190. 
Freud considers that we are quite active enough if 
we persistently strive to overcome the patient’s 
resistance and to disclose the transference. Also, 
says Freud, we must as far as may be lead the patient 
into a situation in which he will find his illness 
inconvenient; but this is a form of activity to which 
life imposes narrow limits.1 Stekel understands by 
1 Sammlung, v, No. 3. WILHELM STEKEL 
223 
active psychotherapeutics a persistent bombardment 
of the patient by the active unravelling of his com- 
plexes. This method is certainly dangerous, and in 
unskilled hands quite impracticable. Furthermore, 
analyses thus conducted have no demonstrative 
i force to confirm the accuracy of psychoanalytical 
laws, since they are based on an assumption that 
these laws are accurate. For a long time yet we shall 
have to counter the arguments of opponents who 
know nothing whatever of psychoanalysis. In so 
far as such persons are teachable, they can only be 
taught by practical experience. Besides, even Freud 
has not yet furnished us with a complete and entirely 
convincing analysis. 
Stekel decided to adopt an active method of 
psychoanalysis because experience had shown him 
that passive analyses, those in which the physician 
interferes to a minimum extent, drag on too long. 
Very lengthy analyses are undesirable, were it only 
because few patients can spare time and money for 
them; but there are additional objections. In course 
of time, the transference upon the analyst assumes 
such a form that the patient gets a fixation upon the 
doctor. Furthermore, where can the patient find 
any one to take him so seriously as to be willing to 
listen and interpret for an hour day after day without 
end ? Psychoanalysis, in such instances, itself becomes 
a disease, replacing the neurosis, which perhaps 
has already lasted for years. Stekel will not continue 
an analysis longer than a few months—from three 
to six. Nothing more can be done with anyone who 
is not cured within that space of time. In some 
cases, when progress has been arrested, we have 
tried the effect of exchanging patients. I have  SIGMUND FREUD 
224 
taken over Stekel’s analysands, and he has still 
more often done the same for me. In this way we 
have tried to outwit the transference, usually with 
good results. 
Analyses extending back into the days when the 
patient was in his mother’s womb are a heroic under- 
taking. Freud’s incomparable patience, thanks to 
which he has made some of his most splendid dis- 
coveries, is a glorious achievement of the human spirit. 
But this is not a road along which all the lesser 
analysts should try to follow him. The interests of 
pure science and those of medical practice are in 
conflict here, as Freud himself has frequently admitted. 
Stekel is a practitioner, not a systematist. He 
juxtaposes the data of his experience without feeling 
impelled to force them into the framework of a 
system. His works are comprehensive. Doubtless, 
in composing them he has certain directives ; but he 
is always willing to abandon these directives for 
new ones, and to respond to fresh stimuli. Thus he 
never loses touch with the multiform pulses of life. 
His lack of metaphysical tastes will displease a good 
many readers. But each man must follow his own 
bent. If Stekel has no leanings towards metapsy- 
chology, and is disinclined to formulate a system, 
this is because his talents lie in other fields. Whereas 
the rigidly orthodox Freudians seem to be drawing 
more and more away from medicine and from the 
direct observation of nature, Stekel goes on studying 
cases, more cases, and nothing but cases, concerning 
which he has already published hundreds upon 
hundreds of reports. The number sounds prepos- 
terous. It is in truth not quite so large as the 
foregoing statement suggests. Many individual cases WILHELM STEKEL 
appear more than once in his records, being contem- 
plated from different aspects. Nevertheless, the 
volcanic character of his working powers can be 
neither denied nor imitated. 
Stekel’s books are easier to understand than most 
of the publications of the orthodox Freudians. For 
a good many years, now, doctors and others who 
have taken to the study of Freudian psychoanalysis, 
have reached that study by a circuitous route (if 
it be circuitous)—by the reading of Stekel’s works. 
Able thinkers who have no intimate connexion with 
Freudianism, form the impression that of all Freud’s 
pupils, Stekel is the most successful, and is the 
logical inheritor of psychoanalysis. An enormous 
work by Stekel, planned for ten volumes, is now in 
course of issue. Seven of these volumes, comprising 
about four thousand pages, have already been pub- 
lished. Never before, unless it be in the fictional 
series of such writers as Balzac and Zola, has any 
one attempted to present so complete a picture 
and to effect so far-reaching an analysis of all human 
passions. The work is a psychoanalytical encyclo- 
paedia. No analyst can ignore this monument. 
The contempt with which the orthodox Freudians 
regard, or rather, feign to regard, Stekel is in amusing 
contrast with these facts. I learn from Stekel that, 
after the expulsion of Adler, Freud said to him : 
“ I have made a pygmy great, but I have overlooked 
a giant close at hand. A single one among the many 
dream symbols you have discovered is worth more 
than the whole ‘Adlerei ’ put together.” No doubt 
Freud will have forgotten this utterance But Stekel 
has an agate bowl which Freud sent him from Carls- 
bad in 1911. It was accompanied by a letter con- 
225 226 
SIGMUND FREUD 
taining the words : “I cannot conceive that anything 
could ever come between us.” Very soon afterwards 
he was to write of Stekel as “so serviceable to begin 
with, and afterwards so utterly untrustworthy.” 
What a cruel turn of fate ! It does indeed seem to be 
predestined (I have no thought of irony) that trees 
shall not grow too far heavenward. How vast an 
influence these two men might have exercised on one 
another in the way of reciprocal stimulation! I 
know, of course, that Freud’s figure is one of those 
which loom athwart the centuries, so that I can 
hardly speak of Stekel in the same breath. But I 
know, likewise, that Freud’s character received a 
permanent twist from his relationship with Nephew 
John (supra, pp. 15, 19, and 45)—and that never, 
while life endures, will Freud be able to shake off this 
Old Man of the Sea. 
Jung and Adler were ambitious, and they did 
not feel strong enough to win laurels from psycho- 
analysis in the field preempted by Freud. That is 
why they tried to divert the current of Freudian 
doctrine into new channels. But Stekel has both 
feet firmly planted upon the ground of psycho- 
analysis. He is ready and willing to go on working 
at the edifice whose foundations have been well 
and truly laid by Freud. He has cleared away some 
of the minor outworks, and this erstwhile disciple 
will not enter the ring where Freud’s libido theory 
is housed. He works with the concepts of repression, 
resistance, and transference. He interprets dreams 
by methods which he has, indeed, elaborated, but 
which would have been unthinkable had it not been 
for the previous work of Freud. For Stekel, likewise, 
psychosexual infantilism and the sexuality of child- WILHELM STEKEL 
227 
hood remain matters of preponderant importance. 
In such circumstances, no unprejudiced person can 
fail to admit that Stekel’s work is the legitimate 
offspring of Freud’s teaching. The word “ legitimate ” 
; may have an unpleasant connotation. I borrow it 
from Freud, who has used it several times in connexion 
with the growth of psychoanalysis.1 
It was somewhere about 1910 when Freud’s 
pupils began to promote the master to the rank of 
Pope, and Stekel ran counter on several occasions 
to the dogma of infallibility. He denied that anxiety 
could be the direct outcome of preventive intercourse, 
without the intermediation of a mental conflict 
(supra p. 48). He also denied the primary injurious- 
ness of masturbation. Stekel does not believe that 
there are any “ actual neuroses,” in the sense in which 
the term is used by Freud. When I add that in the 
matter of homosexuality Stekel considers that con- 
genital influences are practically inoperative, I have 
mentioned the third of the three points on which 
Stekel already differed from Freud more than ten 
years ago. In all three respects, Stekel’s view comes 
as a deliverance. He delivers man from the doom 
of hereditary taint, inasmuch as he contends that 
relief can always be given by psychoanalysis. Since 
all human beings masturbate, Stekel’s energetic 
insistence on his view that masturbation is harmless, 
removes an ancient incubus from those who learn 
his opinions. 
Towards 1910, Freud said that Stekel was inclined 
to overstrain psychical explanations. Freud was 
nurtured in the physiological, the organic, school 
of medicine, and has not been able to free his mind 
1 Cf. Sammlung, vol. iv, pp. 69 and 80.  SIGMUND FREUD 
228 
completely from the influence of early teachings. 
He tells us of mental conflicts in the unconscious. 
But he does not dare to be radical; he does not 
dare to cut the soul loose from all its moorings in 
the organic. Where he has shown timidity, Stekel 
has shown courage. Nevertheless, the theories which 
ten years ago led to a breach with Stekel are in 
favour to-day, provided they are put forward, not 
by Stekel, but by Groddeck—a man who kicks over 
all the traces of critical restraint.1 
Stekel describes illnesses which wre might term 
“ actual neuroses,” if that name were not already 
bespoken. He concentrates his attention upon the 
patient’s actual mental conflicts. He knows that 
everyone cherishes a secret ideal in the unconscious, 
and that every one harbours a protest against reality. 
This secret ideal, this real character of the individual, 
is formed in early childhood ; the Oedipus complex, 
narcissism, and the castration complex, contribute 
in varying degrees to its formation. Moreover, in 
many cases one can only happen upon the actual 
ideal in the unconscious by approaching it, as it were, 
from the rear, when we have made a great detour 
through the patient’s childhood. But the most 
important matter in psychoanalysis is the tension 
between the secret wishes and the manifest life. 
The Oedipus complex lies hidden in us all; but, with 
few exceptions, what unfits us for life is some actual 
conflict. 
One of Freud’s younger followers recently de- 
clared that brief analyses, though they might relieve 
symptoms, could never cure the neurotic tempera- 
ment. This profound saying is doubtless true! 
1 Das Buch vom Es. WILHELM STEKEL 
229 
Let me remind the reader of the melancholiac who was 
unconsciously mourning the loss of his eldest daughter, 
recently married. When, after a brief analysis, I 
made this man realise the nature of the conflict which 
was unfitting him for daily life, it is undeniable that 
I had merely relieved a symptom, had dispelled his 
melancholy mood. If I had wanted to immunise 
the patient’s nervous mechanism against the possi- 
bility of relapse, a very protracted analysis would 
have been essential—and even then success would 
have been doubtful. Still, the precise causative 
factors will not recur ; this father will not again have 
to give in marriage the eldest daughter whose youth- 
ful charms were, in his unconscious, a substitute for 
the fading beauties of a wife no longer found alluring. 
The practitioner may, as a rule, be well content if 
he can relieve such distressing symptoms. The other 
alternative is that adopted by the analyst who was 
unable to cure an attack of writer’s cramp. But the 
analysis went on for a very long time, until ultimately 
the patient lost his sense of illness, and was able 
to put up with the symptom. 
What had happened in that case ? The analyst 
had failed to discover the secret mental conflict 
which the writer’s cramp symbolised. On the other 
hand, he had induced a vigorous transference, had 
installed a second neurosis to take its place beside 
the writer’s cramp. The second neurosis may be 
called by the name of the analyst. The patient finds 
himself able to put up with his illness because thereby 
he can show his gratitude to the beloved analyst, 
who has taken such an infinite amount of trouble. 
Is that the sort of “ cure ” on account of which any 
analyst should wish to plume himself ? 230 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Stekel, in his persistent search for the actual i 
conflict, has come across the faith in the “ great, 
historic mission,” which reaches its acme in the 
Messianic neurosis. Incredibly large is the number of 
persons, modest to all outward seeming, who secretly 4 
believe themselves to have a great historic mission. . 
The paucity of their actual achievements is often in 
ludicrous contrast with the splendour of their imagin- 
ings. They suffer from the severe tension between 
what they do and what they would like to do. The - 
resemblance between this formulation and Adler’s , 
is obvious. 
Quite peculiar to Stekel, however, is, I believe, 
the discovery of a mechanism which is definitely 
opposed to repression. He terms it the 44 annulling „ 
mechanism ” (Annullierungsmechanismus). Repressed 
ideas are unknown to the conscious, but they operate 
though they are unknown. On the other hand, there 
are ideas known to the conscious which remain 
inoperative because the unconscious does not recognise 
them, disowns them, annuls them. For instance, 
there are married men who, of course, know perfectly 
well that they are married, whose dreams show that 
in the unconscious they are unmarried. The 
unconscious has annulled the wife. A moment’s 
reflection shows us that this mechanism is continually 
at work in our daily life. When two persons whose *1 
lives are ostensibly intertwined associate in a moody 
silence, it is obvious that each has annulled the other. 
In this dangerous way, one will annul the other for a 
long time, until, in accordance with the will of the 
unconscious, each comes to mean nothing to the other 
even in the realm of consciousness. 
Another great service of Stekel’s, one whose WILHELM STEKEL 
231 
importance grows increasingly manifest as the volumes 
of his great work succeed one another, is the elabora- 
tion of the idea that everyone, and in particular 
every neurotic, has a peculiar form of sexual gratifica- 
tion which is alone adequate. “ Normal ” sexual 
intercourse does not carry with it any guarantee that 
it furnishes adequate sexual gratification. That is 
how we answer our neurotic patients when they 
tell us that the sexual theory must be false, seeing 
that they have practised normal sexual intercourse 
and are none the less “ nervous.” Sometimes, the 
practice of normal sexual intercourse may be posi- 
tively harmful, may engender nervous troubles, if 
it should conflict in some way with the form of sexual 
gratification which is unconsciously felt to be alone 
adequate. Thus Stekel (he does not stand by himself 
in this) has explained Don Juan and Casanova, 
and also the Messalina types among women, as 
persons eternally ungratified, living and dying in the 
vain search for the conditions of adequate sexual 
gratification. 
But what Stekel was the first to recognise was 
that, in these cases, larval homosexuality is the pre- 
dominant factor. People hardly realise, as yet, 
that unconscious homosexuality is tending more 
and more to become the undertone of our epoch. 
Women must no longer be women ; they must 
become men, and we talk of “ feminism.” Their 
inborn rotundity of form no longer pleases ; they 
must be lean and sinewy like men. They must cut 
their hair short. If possible, they must discard what 
used to be regarded as a hereditary feeling, the sense 
of shame. Far be it from me to play the moralist. 
I am not appraising these things, but merely recording  SIGMUND FREUD 
them. The masculinisation of woman is of old date, 
and its primary determinant was need. Well-to-do 
women had no other occupation than to love 
themselves and their husbands, and to bring up their 
children. Need, poverty—and the oldest manifesta- « 
tion of this was at the coming of the Ice Age— . 
constrained them to work like men. But the mascu- 
linisation of women to which I am now referring has 
nothing to do with the hunger need. Sexual need 
is the offspring of our altered conditions of life, which ; 
have shattered all settled relationships. The old 
moral codes, Christianity, the morals of family life— 
how much longer are they likely to endure ? A 
great revaluation is in progress. But it is not alto- 
gether agreeable to live in the No Man’s Land between 
two ethical worlds. We can no longer believe in 
the old ; and yet we shrink from the new, being still 
entangled in the old. We swim in the waters of a 
huge wave; we suffer from unceasing tensions 
between can, may, must, shall, and will. That is 
why the age in which we live is under the evil star of 
neurosis. 
Psychoanalysts used to regard the repression of 
sexuality as the only cause of neurosis. Stekel has 
drawn attention to the Satanists (the leading figure, 
the most tragical figure, among them is that of 
Nietzsche), who perish from the working of their « 
inward and suppressed moral and religious feelings. 
The ostensible cause of the breach between Freud 
and Stekel, in so far as I know anything about 
it, is too trifling to be worth recording. But the real , 
cause bulks all the more largely. If Freud had paid 
keener heed, he would have realised that the Zurichers’ WILHELM STEKEL 
233 
attacks on Stekel were really aimed through the pupil 
at the master. In like manner, Freud was breaking 
with a part of himself when he abruptly severed all 
relationships with the man who had been his collabo- 
rator since 1896. Stekel could do without pricks of 
conscience everything which Freud was censured for 
doing, above all by the German intellectuals. Stekel 
could be one-sided, could generalise particular obser- 
vations, could fail to pay attention to the phenomen- 
ology of the mind, could ignore the data of philosophy. 
But Freud was tormented by his conscience, was 
tormented by an unescapable ego-ideal which had 
been introduced into his mind by such teachers as 
Meynert and Briicke. He wanted to shake off part 
of his own ego, and succeeded in doing this when he 
began to hate Stekel. Projection explains the affective 
hatred with which, for years now, Freud has regarded 
his ex-disciple. To him Stekel seems unduly care- 
free, too regardless of criticism, in a realm which 
Freud discovered—without persistently believing in it. 
After the expulsion of the fragment of the ego 
which is symbolised by Stekel, Freud turned to 
metaphysics, to what he calls metapsychology. He 
turned with a fervour which implied a longing to 
make up for lost time, and entered a domain into 
which Stekel, a man utterly averse from meta- 
physics, will certainly not follow him. There Freud 
is safe from the instrusion of that other ego, which 
to him has now become a thing of evil, as to the 
Christianised pagans the household gods they had 
formerly worshipped became evil demons. CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
The transferability of the libido is, perhaps, the most 
important principle of our mental life. Everything 
that comprises “ Freudian mechanisms ” is based 
upon it. That towards which the libido is directed 
becomes bright and congenial, and that from which 
the libido is withdrawn grows dark. It even flows 
out of the otherwise circumscribed individual, flows 
afar, and conquers the world. It returns from 
afar, laden with experiences like the bee laden 
with honey; is reabsorbed; becomes the ego, that 
fiction which in primitive philosophy was taken for 
reality. 
Freud teaches that there is a super-ego, which 
arises through identification with the father-imago. 
But something more than the super-ego (also termed 
the ego-ideal) originates through identification. Freud 
will not shrink much longer from regarding the entire 
fiction of the ego as an identification with the father, 
the mother, and the whole living environment. At 
first everything is imitated ; subsequently, that which 
is constructed by imitation is loved as the ego 
(narcissism), and through self-love it is detached 
from the environment (differentiated). 
A missionary to the Indies in whose good faith 
I have full confidence told me of the following experi- FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
235 
ence. It happened when he was preaching in an Indian 
village. He noticed that his congregation, which was 
listening devoutly, suppressed a laugh. Turning 
round to look for the cause of the merriment, he saw 
that a large monkey had taken up its position behind 
him, and was imitating all his gestures. On another 
occasion, when he came to unlock the door of his 
church, he found a monkey in the pulpit, making as 
if to preach, while half a dozen other monkeys were 
sitting in the choir wagging their heads. Thus the 
animals were imitating men’s incomprehensible doings. 
What distinguishes them from men is merely their 
incapacity to construct an ego on the basis of such an 
imitation. Their mental activity is like a photograph 
which has not yet been fixed. Man’s advance upon 
the lower animals has been the development of this 
capacity for fixation. That is why Goethe says of 
the human being : “ He can give durability to the 
fleeting moment.” 
The “ tu,” likewise, is only recognised through 
love. Without love there is no tu, for in the image of 
the ego-fiction we create the tu as a fiction of the 
second grade. That which we do not love, is for us a 
third person, an alien He or She. Freud would 
probably not hesitate to identify the He and the She 
with those figures which loom in our environment 
from birth onwards, gigantic, seemingly eternal, and 
at first incomprehensible—to identify the He with the 
father and the She with the mother. He and She 
are there before we have built up our ego. We swallow 
parts of these incomprehensible structures, and out 
of them we make our ego. The rest of the He or 
the She, except for an incomprehensible residue, is 
transformed by love into a tu.  SIGMUND FREUD 
As soon as we realise that we live amid fictions, 
and that we cannot even count upon the apparently 
incontestable reality of the ego and the tu, we under- 
stand and can find a justification for every doubt, on 
the one hand, and every superstition, on the other. 
The savage constructs a world for himself after his 
own image. He lends his ego, not only to the tu, 
the whole living creature, but also to the tree, the 
spring, the wind, which he thus endows with a spirit 
like his own (animism) : 
Wo jetzt nur, wie unsere Weisen sagen, 
Seelenlos ein Feuerball sich dreht, 
Lenkte damals seinen gold’nen Wagen 
Helios in stiller Majestat. 
Diese Hohen fiillten Oreaden, 
Eine Dryas lebt’ in jenem Baum, 
Aus den Urnen lieblicher Najaden 
Sprang der Strome Silberschaum.1 
Inasmuch as the savage thus breathes the breath 
of life into lifeless matter, and inasmuch as out of the 
divisible he creates the indivisible (the individual), 
he exercises a godlike omnipotence. Only because 
we have lost faith in it, do we ourselves lack this 
omnipotence; but in reality there lingers on in us 
all a certain measure of faith in the “ omnipotence 
1 Where now, as our sages tell us, 
Nothing but a soulless ball of fire moves, 
Of old, Helios, in his majesty, 
Drove his golden chariot. 
These heights were peopled by Oreads, 
A Dryad dwelt in that tree, 
The silver waters of the streams 
Flowed forth from the urns of graceful Naiads. 
—From Schiller’s Die Gotter Griechenlands.—Here, in truth, we 
have passed beyond the level of animism, and climbed up on to that of 
religion. Freud draws an apt distinction between the three stages : 
animism, religion, and science. FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
of thought.” 1 Folk-lore is full of evidences of this 
faith (the evil eye, the superstitious belief that certain 
actions are unlucky, etc.). Inwardly, too, we are 
convinced of our immortality. Although we know 
full well that our life has its term, we cannot make 
up our minds to give credence to this doom. One of 
the greatest minds of all the ages assures us that 
our essence, at least, is indestructible.2 How little 
we have advanced beyond the stage of animism 
is made especially plain by our recognition of an ego— 
which Nietzsche rejected as “ a leading astray by 
grammar.” The greater part of our fancied omnipo- 
tence has had to yield to the dictates of inexorable 
logic; but the faith lives on in the unconscious, 
and from that secure vantage-ground it continues 
to operate. 
Here is the dream of a man suffering from 
obsessional neurosis : “I say to my father, ‘ This 
child is not viable.’ We draw near, and see that 
the child is dead. My father says sadly to me, ‘ If 
you know that you have such a power, why do you 
use it ? 5 ” 
The source and the limits of our omnipotence are 
found in the transferability and detachability of 
the libido. At the bounds where this capacity ends, 
there lurk doubt, anxiety, and death. The saying, 
“ Where faith is, there love is,” can for our purposes 
be inverted thus : “ Where love is, there faith is.” 
Freud considers that all doubt originates in doubt of 
love. Thus Hamlet writes to Ophelia : 
1 The phrase was used by one of Freud’s patients. Cf. Sammlung, 
iii, 2 ; cf., also, Totem und Tabu. 
2 Schopenhauer, in Ueber den Tod und die Unzerstorbarkeit unseres 
Wesens an sich. 238 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Doubt thou the stars are fire ; 
Doubt that the sun doth move ; 
Doubt truth to be a liar ; 
But never doubt my. love. 
What would be left unshaken, if I had to doubt 
your love ? 1 
Since all love arises out of parental love, this 
doubt of love begins with the child’s first doubt of 
the parents. It begins with a doubt of that first 
He or She who is the measure of all things for the 
growing boy or girl. Such doubts destroy a child’s 
faith in the gods. 
Da ich ein Kind war, . . . 
kehrt ich mein verirrtes Auge 
zur Sonne, als wenn driiber war’ 
ein Ohr zu horen meine Klage, 
ein Herz wie meins, 
sich des Bedrangten zu erbarmen.2 
Not only can an affect be displaced ; it can be 
transformed into its opposite. Freud considers that 
the paranoiac’s delusion of persecution arises from 
such an inversion. The mechanism works in several 
acts. Act One : the paranoiac loves a heterosexual 
partner. Act Two: the homosexual inclination 
is repressed as forbidden. Act Three: its return 
into consciousness is hindered by two checks. The 
first of these is : “ He does not love me, but hates 
and persecutes me.” The second is: “I do not 
love him, but hate him because he persecutes me.” 
1 Sammlung, iii, Chapter Two, first edition, 1913, p. 191. 
2 When I was a child, . . . 
I turned my wandering gaze 
towards the sun, fancying there to find, 
an ear to hear my plaint, 
a heart, like mine, 
to pity the distressed. FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
239 
This is a typical Freudian mechanism. Judas is 
a paranoiac. So is Alexander the Great, when he 
throws his spear at Clitus. So is Saul in his mal- 
treatment of David. Definite insanity is seen only 
in exceptional instances ; but none except the dullest, 
or the most clear-sighted, of human beings are free 
from the influence of this mechanism. I am not sure 
whether the inclination out of which paranoia issues 
is always homosexual. Perhaps any forbidden trend 
can engender the same mechanism. Fjvery inclination 
can do it and every aversion as well. 
One of my patients was a butcher, who believed 
that his cook was mixing powdered glass with his food. 
He was also afraid that inadvertently he might poison 
his customers by supplying them with tainted meat. 
He would often run after them, wishing to buy back 
the meat they had just purchased. When one of 
his children was bitten by a dog, which was really 
quite free from the suspicion of rabies, he was frenzied 
with alarm; and although the Pasteur treatment 
was promptly applied, he continued to dread the 
onset of hydrophobia. Though generally regarded as 
a most kind-hearted and good-natured fellow, he 
would sometimes look at people in a way that made 
their flesh creep. During the course of the analysis, 
when selecting something to fidget with from among 
the various objects on my writing-table, he invariably 
showed a preference for a huge paper-knife. This is 
what Freud terms a “ symptomatic act.” My patient’s 
unconscious was full of murderous thoughts, and 
betrayed itself thus. 
During the last few months he had lost about 
forty pounds in weight, the ostensible trouble being 
an affection of the gall-bladder. This is why he had  SIGMUND FREUD 
240 
come to me for treatment. He suffered from sleep- 
lessness, was continually thinking about his illness, 
and was depressed and suicidally inclined. In his 
relations with his wife he suffered from relative 
impotence. His illness had made him quite incom- 
petent to look after his business. There was no 
organic disease in the gall-bladder; the trouble was 
nothing but hypochondria. 
The suicidal inclinations had two distinct causes. 
In the first place, they were the outcome of 
homicidal inclinations towards the wife, inclinations 
transferred upon his own ego. The dread of injuring 
his customers was a displaced homicidal idea. The 
dread of the cook, who was a substitute for the wife, 
was an inversion ; he imagined that she wished to 
kill him, whereas really he wished to kill her. 
The determinants comprising the second group 
were connected with the patient’s twin brother. 1 
The two men had jointly inherited the business from 
their father. After my patient’s marriage, there 
were persistent quarrels. In the end the brother 
broke off the partnership, was paid for his share of 
the business, and opened a rival establishment. 
When I add that the patient had left an efficient 
manager alone in the house with his wife while he 
himself was visiting one sanatorium after another, 
the reader wdll secure a fuller insight into the homo- 
sexual elements in the case, and into the working 1 
of Hebbel’s Candaules motif. 
In this case, a whole series of Freudian mechanisms 
was operative. The lost sexual object was the brother. 
The libido that had been attached to him had been , 
withdrawn into the patient’s own personality (melan- 
cholia). Through the gall-bladder trouble, which FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
241 
may after all have had a fraction of organic sub- 
stratum (this being what Freud terms a “ somatic 
response ”), this portion of libido had been symbolised 
within the patient’s own body and had undergone 
fixation there (hypochondria). He wished for the 
death of his wife because it was on her account that 
the breach with the beloved brother occurred. 
No one thinks of suicide unless he has wished for 
another’s death. His suicide is the punishment for 
the death wish. That conclusion was forced upon 
Freud and Stekel by their analytical experience, 1 
and Stekel has illustrated it by reports of numerous 
cases. This explanation throws a remarkable light 
on many of the suicides sung by the poets. Neurotics, 
in especial, are in grave peril when any of their near 
and dear ones die. If the neurotic was very fond of 
the deceased, there was always an admixture (usually 
unconscious) of hatred in the passion. The neurotic’s 
tempestuous love, the love that seems so exaggerated 
to a dispassionate observer, is also hatred, the love 
and the hatred being counterparts separated out by 
breaking up the neutral feeling of indifference. Every 
night in his dreams the neurotic kills the beloved. 
When the beloved spouse, father, brother, or friend, 
actually dies, the unconscious, confident of its own 
omnipotence, holds itself responsible for the death. 
A widow kills herself beside her husband’s grave. 
Who understands this ? The men of India under- 
stood it when, by the institution of suttee, they 
endeavoured to protect themselves against their 
wives’ ill-wishes. 
A young married woman, apparently attached 
* Diskussionen der Wiener psychoanalytischen Vereinigung : Ueber 
den Selbstmord, Wiesbaden, 1911. 242 
SIGMUND FREUD 
to her husband, becomes affected with feelings of 
self-reproach, thoughts of suicide, and ideas that , 
the world is going to rack and ruin. Her husband 
has just returned home from a long stay in hospital. 
He comes back cured. During the months of his 
absence, his wife has held up valiantly, but now she 
falls ill in her turn. Every one imagines that her 
illness is due to nervous exhaustion, the result of 
prolonged anxiety about her husband’s health. But 
for happy people there is no such thing as nervous 
exhaustion. What is hidden from every one, and 
even from the sufferer, is that she has secretly been 
hoping that she would soon be quit of her husband. 
Her illness is due to his recovery. The death wish has 
turned back upon the wisher. 
No doubt, these are detestable mechanisms; 
but a thing does not cease to exist because it is 
detestable. In the case of the butcher, the illness 
began one day when his wife had a miscarriage and 
a flooding. Thereupon the suppressed death wish 
tended so forcibly to thrust its way into consciousness 
that the man’s moral sense could only be satisfied 
by shifting the wish on to himself. The wish for his 
wife’s death became a suicidal impulse. 
The mind, at its deeper levels, is not only 
malicious; at these levels, the law of retaliation 
prevails with inexorable force. An eye for an eye 
and a tooth for a tooth would seem to have been the 
most primitive, the most elemental, notion of justice. 
The conscience of the unconscious is so strict that it 
is apt, in accordance with the law of retaliation, to 
sentence the offender to suicide for crimes that have 
been committed only in the imagination. The neu- 
rotic’s symptoms usually furnish a close imitation of FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
243 
the offence that has to be atoned for. The patient 
who was doing penance for the supposed premature 
burial of his sister (supra pp. 90 et seq.) suffered 
from dyspnoea, an obsessive urge to inhale dust, a 
sense of suffocation, and syncopal attacks. The only 
way of understanding and unravelling the neurotic’s 
symptoms is to call to our aid the principle of retalia- 
tion (substitution). 
Offences committed against the neurotic patient 
by others, real or imaginary offences, are likewise 
imitated. The neurotic behaves like a child. “ When 
the doctor examines a child’s throat, or performs 
some trifling operation on the little patient, this 
alarming experience will certainly be rehearsed the 
next time the child is at play.” 1 I knew a boy who 
wanted to go to the Danube to watch the steamboats. 
His father refused to let him go. The youngster 
got into a rage, and said : “ When I grow up, I 
shan’t let my children go and look at the steamboats, 
so there ! ” 
It is but one step from comedy to tragedy. I was 
acquainted once with a young man who was illegiti- 
mate. In every place where he chanced to be living, 
he would have a love affair, with consequences, 
and would trouble himself as little about his own 
illegitimate children as his father had troubled about 
him. Such is the curse of bad actions. The 
unconscious repays evil with evil, but not on the 
evildoer more than another—any one will serve its 
turn. In this respect it resembles the jealous God 
who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation.2 
1 Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, p. 13. 
2 Cf. Freud, Das Ich und das Es, p. 56.  SIGMUND FREUD 
244 
Very remarkable is the mechanism which works 
so as to win pleasure without incurring blame (Stekel). k 
When a woman who is sexually assaulted faints, 
the working of such a mechanism is obvious. She 
ought to resist to the uttermost for the sake of her 
“ honour.” The faint relieves her of this responsibility. 
A great many husbands would gladly be rid of 
their wives, a great many lovers would gladly be rid 
of their mistresses without feeling themselves to 
blame. One of the favourite mechanisms in such 
cases is for the man to make himself so disagreeable 
that the woman is moved to break the tie. He is 
bearish; comes late to appointments, or does not 
come at all. In a manner which may be more or 
less artful according to the extent to which hys- 
teria underlies his conduct, he will undermine the 
intimacy until the other party takes the initiative in 
a separation. 
The Freudian mechanisms lead us through Hades. 
The reader’s progress through the land of the shades 
has been swifter than that of Dante when Virgil 
guided him through the Inferno. But in this brief 
passage it will have become plain that the psycho- 
analytical Hades is no less vast and no less terrible. 
The last Freudian mechanism I have to describe will 
show the “ Genealogy of Morals ” in a new light. 
Whence do conscience and self-condemnation spring ? « 
What is the origin of the consciousness of guilt which 
flourishes alike in neurotics and in the healthy, f 
nowadays, as weeds sprout among the corn ? 
During the greater part of his life, Freud wrote of 3 
the unconscious as if it were solely bestial. It is > 
difficult to say how far Nietzsche’s outlooks may have FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
245 
influenced Freud in this matter. Nietzsche’s super- 
man is one who kills from pure delight, one to whom 
the sense of guilt is unknown. This “ blond beast ” 
(but why blond ; why a Siegfried, and not, rather, a 
negro ?) corresponds to the Old Man of the Freudian 
primitive horde. To the Old Man everything is 
permissible. Like Cronus, he devours his own chil- 
dren ; he kills his wives to intensify the titillation of 
his senses. He can blame others, but is himself free 
from blame. His children revolt. Those who had 
no rights, those who were ever at fault, slay the Old 
Man, tear him limb from limb, devour his remains, 
and themselves become Fathers of primitive hordes. 
But they lack the perfect self-satisfaction of the 
original Old Man. With his flesh they have assimilated 
a fraction of his menacing personality, and throughout 
their lives this eyes them askance and creates in 
them a consciousness of guilt. Since they killed 
their father, they know the fate that awaits them at 
the hands of their own children. For this reason 
they suppress the “ instinct of freedom ” (Nietzsche); 
and they do this, not only in their children, but also 
in themselves, hoping that freedom may be shuffled 
out of the world. “ This instinct of freedom, forcibly 
made latent; this suppressed instinct of freedom, 
thrust into the background, prisoned in the inner 
man, and ultimately able to find vent only within 
itself—this, and nothing else, is in its beginnings what 
we know as a bad conscience.” 1 Nietzsche’s blond 
beast who murders from pure delight without a 
sense of guilt, and Freud’s Old Man of the primitive 
horde, are kindred visions. Their poetical value is con- 
siderable, but their scientific value is small. Popper- 
1 Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. 246 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Lynkeus writes : “ I can only see what exists now. I 
do not know what used to exist in former days.” 
The deduction is that the genealogy of morals, 
as worked out by Freud ontogenetically from a study 
of the individual childhood of each one of us, is far 
more important than a mythological and imaginative 
reconstruction of the primitive horde. The child’s first 
ideal is the father (it would be more prudent to say, 
“ the parents ”); the great, strong, omnipotent, 
and omniscient father. The little boy would like to 
have the splendid qualities of his father. He tries to 
play the father, to identify himself with the father, 
to become incorporated with the father. Inevitably 
these attempts fail. In a subsequent phase of 
development, the boy feels that the father is a rival 
in the mother’s love, a rival of whom he would fain 
rid himself. “ When Father dies, I shall marry 
Mother ! ” The formation of the Oedipus complex 
has begun. But the boy finds it hard to enter into 
the lists with one who up to now has been regarded as 
the embodiment of omnipotence and morality. He 
therefore despoils his father of all these qualities ; 
and the sublime outward ideal is transformed into 
an inward ideal, which lives and works in the un- 
conscious throughout life. Beside the ego, there is 
created another fiction, the super-ego. This super- 
ego is the swallowed father (the parents, authority). 
Ethics, religion, moral judgments, all develop out of 
the super-ego. 
Freud describes ; he does not appraise. In this 
respect he differs from Nietzsche. But, of course, 
he cannot prevent others who listen to his teachings 
from forming judgments of value. We have to enquire 
what religious or ethical system is most accordant FREUDIAN MECHANISMS 
247 
with the genealogy of morals as described by Freud. 
Immediately we think of the teachings of Confucius, 
for whom reverence towards fathers and forefathers 
was the one and only transcendental law. 
44 Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy 
days may be long in the land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee.” With this ordinance the Jews, 
likewise, made the law of filial piety supreme among 
their commandments. We must not forget that 
Freud, one of the most notable geniuses of our day, 
was born and trained in a Jewish environment. 
Every one knows how important a part the family 
plays in Jewish life. 
The prevalence of antisemitism creates in the 
minds of the Jews a passionate “ Why ? ” In 
favourable circumstance, this urgent questioning may 
have results of considerable scientific importance. 
It has certainly a good deal to do with the genesis 
of the revolutionary sentiments which are so wide- 
spread among the Jews. 
Freud relates : “ I must have been about ten 
or twelve years old when my father began to take 
me with him on his walks, and to tell me his views 
concerning things in general. On one occasion, 
when he wished to show me that I was living in better 
times than those of his own youth, he said to me : 
4 When I was a lad I went for a walk one Sabbath 
through the streets of Freiberg, in my best clothes, 
and wearing a new fur cap. A Christian came by, 
knocked my cap into the mud, and cried, “ Jew, 
get off the pavement! ”—4 What did you do ? ’— 
41 stepped into the roadway and picked up my cap,’ 
said my father quietly. To me, the boy whose father 
was leading him by the hand, the conduct of the 248 
SIGMUND FREUD 
big strong man seemed anything but heroic. In my 
imagination, I contrasted the situation with one 
much more to my taste. I recalled the scene when 
Hannibal’s father had made his son swear upon the 
altar eternal hostility to Rome. Thenceforward, 
Hannibal had a place in my fantasies.” 1 
Hannibal, the Semitic general, became the revo- 
lutionary-minded lad’s favourite hero, because Hanni- 
bal had made himself dreaded by the Romans. 
Another heroic figure that has always loomed large 
before Freud’s imagination is that of Cromwell, 
the regicide. 
When Freud’s own children were growing up, 
their father’s mind was much exercised by the question 
how he could save them from the sense of inferiority, 
whose dangers were so well known to him. He appears 
to think that the nationalist idea is a good antidote 
to the sense of inferiority. For many years, now, he 
has been a member of the Jewish freemason’s lodge 
Bene Brith. May there not be good reason to suppose 
that the cult of filial piety, after the Confucian model, 
would be a better, a nobler, a more aristocratic way 
of counteracting the sense of inferiority—one much 
less open to objection ? For ages the Jews have 
instinctively followed this road. Nationalism is a 
mere imitation, and an imitation that follows the 
path of a transient historical phenomenon. Affec- 
tionate veneration for the parents, on the other 
hand, above all while they are still living, is the 
conscious acceptance of a deep-seated unconscious 
mechanism—a bridge leading from the ego-ideal to 
its origin. We are paying our primal creditors when 
we discharge our debt to our parents. 
1 Traumdeutung, p. 158 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
BIPOLARITY 
Apart from its overwhelming inclination to use 
metaphors and symbols, the language of the dream 
differs in other respects from the language of 
consciousness. In the dream, there is no sharp 
distinction between alternatives. To consciousness, 
a thing must be either A or not-A ; must be either 
black or white ; must be either two or three. To 
conscious thought, it is either day or night, and not 
day and night at one and the same time. In the 
dream, these alternatives seem to be harmoniously 
combined. Freud has shown that, in the dream, 
black often signifies white, the small represents 
the great, up means down ; in a word, that opposites 
may symbolise one another. In 1909 he referred 
to a pamphlet that had been published in 1884 by 
Abel the philologist. Abel had shown that in primitive 
tongues (just as in the dream) opposites can be 
denoted by the same word. Thus, in the hieroglyphic 
writing of ancient Egypt, the same character may 
represent both light and darkness. Per se, therefore, 
this character denotes merely a certain degree of 
lightness or darkness in the abstract, and we have to 
learn from the context whether the word signifies 
light or dark on this particular occasion. The 
report of the linguistic expert confirmed Freud in his 250 
SIGMUND FREUD 
view that in dreams we are using an archaic language, 
one which fulfils the needs of the dream, but has 
become inadequate for the needs of our waking life. 
I am told that Abel’s views are out of date. How- 
ever this may be, the unification of opposites certainly 
plays its part in our mental life, in great things as 
well as small. To describe the phenomenon, Stekel 
speaks of the “ bipolarity ” of all mental happenings. 
Bleuler, says Stekel, wishing to describe a similar 
phenomenon (whose full import was hidden from 
Bleuler), made use of the word “ ambivalency.” 
Ambivalency is a much less apt term than bipolarity, 
but the orthodox Freudians make it a point of honour 
to use only the former term, in the hope that Stekel’s 
better expression will lapse into oblivion. One 
inconvenience of this yielding to the impulse of hatred 
has been that the orthodox Freudians have failed 
to clarify their own ideas on the subject, so that they 
cannot use the concept of bipolarity with the requisite 
precision. The term ambivalency was borrowed from 
chemistry. Certain elements can combine with two 
different elements. They are ambivalent. In like 
manner, the idea of a person can be associated in our 
minds with two different feelings. The soul of Brutus 
is simultaneously filled with love and with hatred 
towards Caesar. Adler terms this “ the alternation 
of impulses ” (Triebverschrankung). But the word 
ambivalency fails to connote that the twofold feelings 
with which our ideas are linked, are polar opposites : 
love and hate; pleasure and pain ; attraction and 
repulsion. A much better image can be drawn from 
the electromagnet, whose soft iron core is neutral 
in the quiescent state ; but when the current passes, 
the polar elements undergo separation, so that a BIPOLARITY 
251 
magnet comes into being. Mental phenomena are 
bipolar, like those of magnetism. Freud’s latest 
speculations imply that by a bipolarity of similar 
kind, life must first have originated out of the neutral 
grey of the non-living. 
In 1920, Freud astonished the world by the 
announcement that in all living creatures there is 
active, in addition to the pleasure principle (which, 
since the days of Hellenic culture, has been known 
as Eros), another principle : “ What lives, wishes for 
a return to death.” Dust unto dust. In living 
matter there is the death instinct as well as the life 
instinct. When Freud made this communication 
to a listening world, he was suffering from the shock 
of the death of one of his daughters. For years, 
too, he had been full of anxiety concerning the 
fate of one of his nearest and dearest, who was 
with the fighting forces. Here is Freud’s lament 
over his daughter’s grave: “ One who is under 
the universal doom of death, but has first of all to 
lose his dearest, would rather be subject to the 
working of an inexorable natural law, to the august 
’AvayKi7, than to the working of a chance which 
might have been avoided. Maybe, however, this 
belief in the inner necessity of death, this belief that 
death is due to the working of a natural law, is merely 
one of the illusions which we have created 4 to help us 
in bearing the burden of existence.’ ” 
Freud, in a personal letter, makes the following 
remarkable comment on the foregoing passage. “ That 
seems to me most interesting, and I regard it as a 
warning. Beyond question, if I had myself been 
analysing another person in such circumstances, 
I should have presumed the existence of a connexion 252 
SIGMUND FREUD 
between my daughter’s death and the train of thought 
presented in my book Jenseits des Lustprinzips. 
But the inference that such a sequence exists would 
have been false. Jenseits was written in 1919, when 
my daughter was still in excellent health. She died 
in 1920. In September 1919, I had sent the manu- 
script of this little book to be read by various friends 
in Berlin. It was finished, except for the discussion 
concerning the mortality or immortality of the proto- 
zoa. ‘ What seems true is not always the truth.’ ” 
Stekel, who was accustomed to work with the 
concept of bipolarity, had discovered death instincts 
decades before in dreams, and had recognised them 
to be the bipolar counterpart to the ferment of life. 
Again and again have the great poets told us how 
death keeps vigil just behind life, and that death is 
closely akin to love. Every one of us who has ever 
lived through a severe illness must have known 
the longing to pass into that sleep which knows no 
waking. The yearning for death is no more than the 
alternative form in which the yearning for life makes 
itself known to consciousness. That is why Indian 
philosophy, and Schopenhauer its greatest occidental 
representative, disavow suicide. Life is not overcome 
by self-slaughter. The death instinct is an affirmation 
of life, being life’s bipolar complement. The death 
instinct has nothing to do with death. 
It lies beyond my competence to say what death 
really is, for I am not a nirvanist like Schopenhauer 
and the Indians. That vision can only be seen with 
the eyes of the mystic. I incline to the view of the 
Greeks, who regarded death as a pure negative, as 
nothing, as non-existent in the world. But there is 
a real entity, which is closely bound to that nonentity. BIPOLARITY 
253 
It is anxiety, dread. Dread of death and longing 
for death form a bipolar couple; and they also com- 
bine to form a single pole, whose opposite pole consists 
of longing for life and dread of life. Obviously, the 
relationships are somewhat involved. Life, with its 
infinitely dichotomised bipolarity, arises through a 
continuous bipartition of simplicity. How far we 
are able to follow such ramifications into the thicket 
of mental happenings, will depend upon our individual 
talent for mathematics. 
Those who take exception to the idea that death 
and dread of death are two utterly distinct things, 
or, rather, to the notion that death forms no part, 
whereas the dread of death forms the totality, of 
what we subsume under the idea of death, may be 
invited to consider the way in which melancholiacs 
ring the changes upon death and the dread of death. 
Sufferers from this form of mental disorder live in a 
perpetual dread of death. They cannot endure 
the persistent dread, and to escape it they rush into 
death. Thus, it is wrong to say that they have a 
dread of death ; they have dread, and dread engenders 
death. But when dread engenders death, what greater 
contrast to love can we conceive, seeing that love 
engenders life ? 
Thus we come back to an outlook which Freud 
had as early as 1895, when he described the condition 
which he termed “ anxiety neurosis.” Anxiety and 
love are opposites belonging to the same stock; they 
are bipolar manifestations of the same primal entity. 
The best way of grasping their mutual relationships 
is through Plato’s figure of the two-in-hand. 1 
Although, since Plato’s day, so many other thinkers 
1 Supra, pp. 127-128. 254 
SIGMUND FREUD 
have given their thoughts to the world, the world 
comes back ever and again to the marvellous parable 
of the great poet-philosopher who was Christ’s fore- 
runner. We are sitting in a cave with our backs 
towards the outlet. Behind us realities move to and 
fro. Still farther away behind us, perhaps outside 
the cave, is a source of light, and all that we know 
of the moving realities consists of the shadows cast on 
the walls of the cave. The gods alone can see the 
realities as they are in themselves. 
Nowr that we have become accustomed to regard 
consciousness as merely a part of the mind, to look 
upon it, in a sense, as a screen upon which the un- 
conscious casts shadows, we are coming very close 
once more to the parable of the men in the cave. 
None but the gods can see all that goes on in the 
depths of the unconscious. It suffices for us if we 
can unriddle a few of the laws of the unconscious. 
One such law is that of bipolarity. We love ourselves, 
and dread ourselves ; we die, because we live. We 
love a tu, and hate it; we hate, because we love. 
We seek pleasure, and none the less make pain for 
ourselves, that we may win more pleasure by the road 
of pain. These opposites are inseparable. One who 
would avoid the pain of life, must likewise renounce 
its pleasure. So runs the rede, bipolar into infinity. 
When we say that death is a negative, 1 we are 
very far from that which lives in the folk-mind and 
in the images of the dream. In the dream, as in 
folk-tales, death always appears as an active person- 
ality.2 The symbolism of death is also at work in 
1 Freud writes : “ Death is an abstract idea of negative contents 
one for which an unconscious expression is not to be found.” 
2 Cf. the dream recorded on p. 82. BIPOLARITY 
255 
dreams of a return to the mother’s womb, the dreams 
that exclaim : “ Back to the mother from whom thou 
earnest.” Once more there are signified here both 
He and She—the father and the mother. Those who 
have given us life are, in bipolar fashion, the daimons 
of death. We shall be gathered to our fathers, says 
Holv Writ. 
%/ 
Freud’s metaphysic thus undergoes modifications 
which bring it wholly into the paths of Plato. The 
law of the eternal recurrence of the similar (Plato and 
Nietzsche) makes its demands upon us, asking our 
life of us. Aforetime we were not, and in a future 
time we shall not be; even as we were not throughout 
the ages before we were born. In the end, Freud 
comes to the thought that all life has arisen out of the 
tearing apart (polarisation) of a non-living substance. 
In this connexion he recalls a parable which Plato 
puts into the mouth of the satirist Aristophanes. 
Plato’s intention was to make fun of the sophists, 
whose theories were brilliant but lacked solid founda- 
tion. This raillery at the sophists was to provide 
a background against which the glorious teachings of 
Socrates could stand out in finer relief. But lovers 
take the parable seriously, and it is all that many 
of the readers of Plato’s Symposium retain in their 
memory. Aristophanes tells us that originally every 
human being had four arms and four legs. They 
were double creatures throughout, as if two of the 
human beings known to us were fused. Zeus cut 
these double creatures asunder, as we slice a pear 
into two halves, and, ever since, the severed portions 
have been roaming about, devoured with longing 
for reunion. When they have the good luck to find 
one another, these parts are filled with love for one 256 
SIGMUND FREUD 
another; they intertwine their limbs. Thus, in their 
affectionate embrace they temporarily re-establish the 
condition which used to be an enduring one. 
The cleavage into masculine and feminine un- 
ceasingly complies with the great law of bipolarity. 
Neither a man alone nor a woman alone is a complete 
human being. Only in association are they members 
of the human species. That they may exist at all 
as individuals, each one of them is bipolar, i.e. 
bisexual. Many plants and many of the lower animals 
are bisexual, both male and female organs being 
possessed by the same individual. In the higher 
types of organic life, the sexes become distinct. 
However, just as a radical in organic chemistry cannot 
exist in isolation, but necessarily enters into combina- 
tion, so neither sex can exist alone, for each contains 
elements of the other. This bisexuality, this com- 
pulsory hermaphroditism, is the negative opposed 
by the non-sexual earlier age to the present which 
has undergone sexual differentiation. That is why 
I wrote : “ The libido frees itself from sexuality by 
way of bisexuality.” And also : “ Eros has no sex.” 
Much might be written about this matter, but 
we are hard upon the boundary, and perhaps beyond 
the boundary, where science merges into mysticism, 
and where the investigator grows ill at ease. Is it 
possible for us to decide whether the law of bisexuality 
is subordinate to that of bipolarity ? The relation- 
ship may be the converse of this. Perhaps, as Freud 
declares : “ Sexual behaviour has a prototypical 
power, a power which transfigures all the other 
reactions of the human being.” 1 If this be so,' 
1 Sammlung, vol. iii, p. 190. BIPOLARITY 
257 
everything that is bipolar is formed after the model of 
man and woman, He and She. In this sense, at any 
rate, we may interpret Freud’s declaration that the 
libido is masculine whereas anxiety is feminine. 
Life is masculine and death is feminine. On the 
plane of the intelligence, this means only that the 
former is positive and the latter negative; but 
the mystic will see more in the formulation. 
As regards anxiety, I pointed out a good many 
years ago that, just as in the case of pleasure (supra 
p. 113), there are two contrasted types of anxiety 
manifestation. One form of anxiety is equable, 
so that, in view of its unarticulated persistence, 
anxiety of this type may be termed feminine. On the 
other hand, there is an anxiety paroxysm which rises 
to a climax of horror and ends in death. The curve 
representing its course is comparable with the curve 
of the crescent type of pleasure, masculine pleasure. 
“ I believe,” says Freud, “ that it is time to break 
off.” He adds : “ The reader may ask to what extent 
I am myself convinced of the soundness of the fore- 
going hypotheses.1 My answer will run, that I am 
neither convinced myself, nor invite others to believe 
them. Perhaps it would be better to say that I do 
not know how far I believe them . . . But an 
investigator can give himself up to a train of thought, 
can follow such a train as far as it will lead him, solely 
out of scientific curiosity ; or, if you like, as devil’s 
advocate—which does not mean that he has sold 
himself to the devil.” 
1 Jenseits des Lustprinzips, p. 55.—The phrase has been interpreted 
as implying that Freud is extremely sceptical concerning the stability 
of the edifice of his own doctrines. This is a malicious misunderstanding. 
Freud is merely referring to some of the more fanciful thoughts in the 
book just named.  SIGMUND FREUD 
258 
These sentences embody the real Freud. All great 
spirits are animated by the longing to look, once at 
least, into the eyes of reality, instead of for ever 
being content with the study of appearance; with 
the longing to see Plato’s ovma, the inner being, the 
intimate essence of things. In Freud’s mentality, 
the mystical gift of the seer is continually at war 
with the need for mechanical description. “ Freudian 
mechanisms ” would be a barren term for a barren 
thing unless behind them there was something other 
than mechanism, something alive; something which 
Freud has again and again suppressed, until, as if 
in spite of himself, and amid reiterated excuses, it 
forces itself into his latest utterances. No one need 
believe these latest utterances (such is Freud’s impli- 
cation) ; he does not know how far he believes in 
them himself ! Herein lies the explanation of Freud’s 
acerbity, which has grown with the passing of the 
years. He is afraid of his own supreme talents, 
and throughout all his life as an investigator he has 
been imposing a curb upon himself. One who, by 
temperament, is a seer, has been ardently devoting 
himself to the study of exact science, by the ordinary 
methods of scientific investigation. That was why 
Freud was so greatly disturbed about the little matter 
of the cocaine. That was why, at any earlier date, 
he heroically determined to study medicine, though 
his natural bent was towards the abstract sciences. 
This accounts, too, for his flight to Paris. It accounts 
for his remarkable feeling of happiness in the physio- 
logical laboratory, though the work there was not 
really congenial. He tells us that Briicke used often 
to be annoyed with him for coming late. How would 
Freud interpret such remissness ? He would tell BIPOLARITY 
259 
us that it was due to resistance. We are not late 
for an appointment that we really wish to keep. 
But the dissection of Ammocoetes1 was not the 
sort of work to arouse the interest of a seer. 
Great men often suppress their natural inclinations, 
and devote themselves with ardour to some alien 
occupation. Perhaps the mystery of genius is, in 
part, to be explained in terms of bipolar tension, the 
persistent struggle between the two poles, which 
are ever trying to break away from one another, 
and yet are eternally bound together, neither being 
thinkable without the other. Beyond question, herein 
lies the secret of success. Nietzsche, the revaluer of 
all values, Nietzsche, the antichrist, was, in the 
inner man, a conservatively-minded cleric. Karl 
Marx, the dialectician, the expounder of the circula- 
tion of commodities and of the materialist conception 
of history, was an ardent idealist, ethically inspired, 
filled with emotional longings. Schopenhauer denied 
the value of all earthly things because, for internal 
reasons, he could not win the supreme good the world 
offers—woman. Here are three instances among 
many. All the splendour and all the activity of 
such great ones are dependent upon this fascinating 
cleavage of the individuality, which every one feels, 
to which every one of us is subject. 
Thus has it come to pass that Freud has enkindled 
the world. Many believe that psychoanalysis is 
destined to change the whole aspect of the universe. 
But the day for a final judgment on Freud has not 
yet come. He still lives among us, still works, and 
1 Die Traumdeutung, p. 252.—Ammoccetes is a rare fish. Freud 
had to dissect it in Briicke’s laboratory. He wrote a monograph on 
this fish. (See Bibliography.) 260 
SIGMUND FREUD 
no one can foresee the potentialities of a man of 
genius. Some praise him to the skies, and some 
revile him. I am not so arrogant as to believe that 
I have found the golden mean. Full well do I know 
that this essay upon Freud and his teachings is 
subjective through and through. I myself am bipolar 
in my attitude towards Freud. I, like others, have 
had personal differences with Freud, and have suffered 
therefor. Once, for me, as for all his pupils, he was 
a father-imago. He tells us that the death of the 
father is the most important event in a man’s life. 
But perhaps there is another event no less important 
than the loss of the father. A son has been born to 
me ! I no longer need a father, now that I am myself 
a father ! Thanks to this gift, I have won sufficient 
strength to enter the field of psychoanalysis again, 
after many years of partial exile. As the first fruits 
of my renewed analytical activities, I present this 
book : 
SIGMUND FREUD 
1923 
Seen through a Temperament. GLOSSARY 
The glossary contains all the psychoanalytical terms 
used in this volume, and also a few of the psychiatric and 
ordinary psychological terms likely to be unfamiliar to the 
general reader. Many of the psychoanalytical definitions 
are borrowed, or slightly modified, from Ernest Jones’ 
Papers on Psychoanalysis. The translators are also indebted 
to the Glossary for the TJse of Translators of Psychoanalytical 
Works recently published by the International Psycho- 
analytical Press, giving approved English equivalents of 
German psychoanalytical terms. The German term is, in 
many cases, given in brackets immediately after the English 
term in the glossary that follows. 
abreaction. “ The process of working off a pent-up emotion 
by living through it again in feeling or action.” (Jones.) 
Verbal form, to abreact. 
actual neuroses. “ The symptoms of an actual neurosis 
—headache, sensation of pain, an irritable condition 
of some organ, the weakening or inhibition of some 
function—have no ‘ meaning,’ no signification in the 
mind. Not merely are they manifested principally 
in the body, as also happens, for instance, with hysterical 
symptoms, but they are in themselves purely and 
simply physical processes ; they arise without any of 
the complicated mental mechanisms we have been learn- 
ing about.” (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 323.) 
—Sometimes spoken of (in contradistinction to psycho- 
genic neuroses) as somatic neuroses. 
affect. “ Feeling. The essential constituent of emotion.” 
(Jones.) 
alternation of impulses [Triebverschrankung]. See am- 
bivalency. See also text, p. 250.  SIGMUND FREUD 
262 
ambivalency. “ The existence of opposed feelings—e.g. 
love and hate.” (Jones.) Stekel conveys this idea by 
the use of the term bipolarity. Adler speaks of the 
alternation of impulses [Triebverschrankung]. See 
also text, p. 250. 
amnesia. Forgetfulness, loss of memory. Infantile 
amnesia is loss of memory of the experiences of infancy 
and early childhood. See also cryptomnesia. 
anagogic. This term (whose derivative meaning is “ leading 
upwards ”), ordinarily used to denote “ spiritual or 
allegorical interpretation,” was applied by Silberer to 
the moral or “ uplifting ” trends of the unconscious. 
analysand. A person who is being psychoanalysed. 
annulling mechanism [annullierende Mechanismus(Stekel)]. 
A mechanism in virtue of which ideas known to the 
conscious remain inoperative because the unconscious 
disowns and annuls them. 
anxiety hysteria [Angsthysterie]. Term coined by Freud 
in 1908 to denote phobias (morbid dreads) engendered 
by the same kind of psychological determinants as 
ordinary hysteria. 
anxiety neurosis [Angstneurose]. Functional nervous 
disorder in which anxiety, i.e. intense morbid dread, 
is the most conspicuous and persistent symptom. 
autoerotism [Autoerotismus]. Sexual excitement and/or 
sexual gratification occurring independently of actual 
relations with another individual, and self-induced, 
either physically or mentally. (Adjective, autoerotic.) 
autosuggestion. The process in the unconscious in virtue 
of which the thought of an action arouses an impulse 
to perform the action ; or in virtue of which the expecta- 
tion of a result leads an individual to contribute towards 
bringing about the result. The original thought and 
expectation and the impulse or action are above the 
threshold of consciousness ; the autosuggestive link is 
below the threshold. See heterosuggestion, suggesti- 
bility, and suggestion. GLOSSARY 
263 
bipolarity. See ambivalency. See also text, p. 250. 
Candaules motif. Candaules, king of Lydia, exhibited 
his wife in a state of nudity to Gyges. The psycho- 
analytical explanation is that such actions are deter- 
mined by unconscious homosexuality. See text, pp. 213 
and 240. 
castration complex [Kastrationskomplex]. “ The idea of 
injury to the penis, testicles, or clitoris.” (Jones.) 
See also Chapter Eleven, for a detailed discussion of 
this matter. 
cathartic method. The purging of the effects of a 
pent-up emotion by bringing it to the surface of con- 
sciousness. This term was applied by Breuer to the 
technique which was subsequently perfected as psycho- 
analysis. 
cathexis [Besetzung]. “ Charge of energy. Investment 
(of an idea) with feeling and significance.” (Jones.)— 
In the text, “ Besetzung ” has usually been rendered 
by “ investment ” or “ charge.” 
censor and censorship. Figurative names given to the 
forces at work in the mind whereby a memory or an 
impulse is repressed into the unconscious, and whereby 
its reappearance in consciousness is prevented. Also 
called the “ endopsychic censor.” See repression. 
claustrophobia. See phobia. 
coitus interruptus. Sexual intercourse in which the male 
organ is withdrawn before the ejaculation of semen 
(as a method of birth control). 
complex. “A group of emotionally invested ideas partially 
or entirely repressed.” (Jones.) In current parlance, 
the notion of repression into the unconscious is not a 
necessary part of the concept “ complex.” Thus, in 
this sense, a “ hobby ” is based upon a complex, although 
there may be no repression whatever. But Freud 
defines complexes (Introductory Lectures, p. 90) as 
“ circles of thoughts and interests of strong affective 264 
SIGMUND FREUD 
value ... of whose influence at the time nothing is 
known . . . unconscious.” 
conation. The striving of the individual towards self- 
realisation and self-expansion; a fundamental charac- 
teristic of life. 
cryptomnesia. Literally, “ hidden memory,” i.e. “ forget- 
fulness.” But it connotes the idea that the act of 
forgetfulness has an unconscious motive. See amnesia. 
delusion of reference [Beziehungswahn]. The delusion 
that every objective happening has a personal bearing. 
A symptom of paranoia. Delusion of persecution and 
delusion of grandeur are sub-varieties. Minor degrees 
of delusion of reference constitute a quasi-universal 
human characteristic. 
dementia paranoides. A form of dementia praecox 
resembling paranoia, but differing in that the delusions 
are less completely systematised. 
dementia praecox. Many of the commoner types of 
insanity at puberty and during adolescence are classed 
under this head. See schizophrenia. 
dream distortion. The modifications effected in the dream 
(“ manifest content ”) in order to conceal from the 
conscious the underlying thoughts and wishes of the 
unconscious (“ latent content ”). 
ego-ideal. “A critical faculty [Instanz] within the ego, 
which even in normal times takes up a critical attitude 
towards the ego, . . . may cut itself off from the rest 
of the ego and come in conflict with it.” This super-ego 
is the source of the moral conscience, the censorship of 
dreams, self-observation ; and it is the chief influence 
in repression. See Freud, Group Psychology and the 
Analysis of the Ego, p. 69. 
ego impulse. In Freud’s earlier theory of sex, “auto- 
erotism and object love were contrasted with the non- 
sexual impulses of the personality, grouped together 
under the name of ‘ ego impulses.’ ” (Jones, Papers on 
Psychoanalysis, 3rd ed., p. 47.) GLOSSARY 
265 
Electra complex. Excessive attachment, sexually tinged, 
of the daughter to the father. The feminine counter- 
part of the Oedipus complex (which see). See also 
fixation. 
erogenic zone. “An area of the body stimulation of which 
gives rise to erotic sensations.” (Jones—who uses the 
form “ erotogenic.”) 
exhibitionism [Zeigelust]. The exposure of some part of 
the body usually concealed, in most cases the genital 
organs, with accompanying sexual excitement. The 
person performing such an act is an exhibitionist. 
extrovert. One whose libido (which see) or vital impetus 
or psychic energy tends mainly outwards. Thus the 
extrovert is predominantly a man or woman of feeling 
or action. The state of being an extrovert is called 
extroversion. See introvert. 
fetichism. A fixation and limitation of affect, in virtue 
of which, by a perversion, an individual’s sexual 
libido undergoes concentration upon a “ fetich ” (hair, 
underclothing, etc.) instead of being directed towards 
the whole personality of the beloved. 
fixation [Fixierung]. Short for “ fixation of affect.” The 
arrest of an affect at a more primitive stage than that 
normally corresponding to the individual’s age and 
development. Especially used of the fixation of a 
daughter’s sexual affection upon the father (“ father- 
fixation,” see Electra complex); and of the fixation 
of a son’s sexual affection upon the mother (“ mother- 
fixation,” see Oedipus complex). 
heterosuggestion. The unconscious realisation of an idea 
suggested by another. Also the act of suggesting an 
idea to another. See autosuggestion and suggestion. 
homosexuality. Love for a member of the same sex. See 
inversion. 
hypochondria. A form of melancholia (which see) in 
which fixed ideas (partly or wholly unfounded) as to the 
existence of bodily disorder predominate. 266 
SIGMUND FREUD 
imago. “ This word is taken from the title of a novel 
by Carl Spitteler. ... It denotes an interior type, 
a type moulded upon real persons (in especial 
upon the father or the mother), which, from the 
depths of the subconscious continues to guide our 
actions and to stimulate our sympathies and our 
antipathies.” (Baudouin, Psychoanalysis and , 
p. 220.) 
individual psychology. Adler teaches that those who 
have to deal with difficult children must try to discover 
the nature of the inferiority complex (which see) by 
which these children are affected. The sufferers must 
be guided in directions where they will be able to 
substitute a feeling of superiority for the feeling of 
inferiority. Adler speaks of his method as “individual 
psychology.” It should be noted, however, that 
in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse Freud uses the 
term individual psychology in a sense of his own, 
quite different from Adler’s, as contrasted, to a 
certain extent, with “ mass psychology ” (translated 
by James Strachey as “ social psychology ” or “ group 
psychology ”). 
infantilism. Arrest of development at an infantile stage ; 
and, especially, fixation at an infantile stage of feeling. 
See fixation. 
inferiority complex. The complex which results from the 
thwarting of man’s natural urge to self-expansion, and 
which (when repressed into the unconscious) impels 
him to try to achieve power along some other line than 
that in which his conation is blocked. (Adler’s termin- 
ology.) See also masculine protest.—Adler regards 
a sense of organ inferiority (physical inferiority in one 
respect or another) as a leading cause of the “ inferiority 
complex.” 
inferiority of the organs (Adler) [Minderwertigkeit der 
Organe]. See inferiority complex. 
initial pleasure [Vorlust]. The pleasure attending all the 
stages of the sexual act that precede its climax. GLOSSARY 
267 
inspectionism [Schaulust]. The craving to inspect, and the 
pleasure induced by inspecting, some part of the body 
usually concealed, in most cases the genital organs, 
belonging to another person than the inspectionist. 
The inspectionist act is attended by sexual excitement. 
In some instances the inspectionist craving takes the 
form of a longing to witness another engaged in some 
intimate bodily function (such as urination or defeca- 
tion) usually performed in private. Synonymous terms 
are voyeurism and scoptophilia or scoptolagnia. 
The counterpart of exhibitionism, which see. 
introvert. One whose libido (which see) or vital impetus 
or psychic energy tends mainly inward. Thus the intro- 
vert is predominantly a thinker. The state of being 
an introvert is called introversion. See extrovert. 
inversion, sexual. A synonym for homosexuality, but 
Freud prefers the term “ inversion.” It “ may be either 
objective, only the sex of the love-object being changed, 
or subjective, where the the attitude (masculine or 
feminine) is inverted as well.” (Jones.) 
libido. Sexual hunger ; the mental aspect of the sexual 
instinct. But by psychoanalysts the term “ sexual ” 
is used with wide connotations, so that “ libido ” becomes 
almost synonymous with “psychic energy,” with cona- 
tion, and also with what Bergson terms the “ vital 
impetus.” Thus Jung unifies all instinctive energy 
under the term “ libido.” 
masculine protest [der mannlicher Protest]. The inferiority 
complex (which see) leads to a desire for superiority 
—a “ wish to be a complete man,” the “ masculine 
protest.” Adler regards the idea of inferiority as asso- 
ciated with femininity. 
masochism. Voluptuous (sexual) enjoyment experienced 
when suffering mental or bodily pain, usually inflicted 
from without; the counterpart of sadism (which 
see). 
melancholia. Mental disorder in which emotional depression 
predominates. 268 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Messianic neurosis [Christusneurose]. The neurosis of 
those who believe they have a mission to save the world. ' 
narcissism [Narzissmus]. The concentration of interest I 
(and especially sexual interest) upon one’s own body 
and one’s own personality in general. (From the myth j 
of Narcissus.) Some Freudian writers shorten the term I 
to “ narcism.” Adjective narcissistic [narzisstisch]. 
nuclear complex. The Oedipus complex (which see) 
is sometimes spoken of as the “ nuclear complex.” In 
women, of course, the Electra complex (which see) 
will then be considered the “ nuclear complex.” 
Oedipus complex. Defined by Ernest Jones as “ the * 
(usually unconscious) desire of a son to kill his father 
and possess his mother.” Many would prefer to define 
it, less uncompromisingly, as excessive attachment, 
sexually tinged, of the son to the mother. The counter- 
part in women is the Electra complex (which see). * 
See also fixation. - 
organ inferiority (Adler) [Minderwertigkeit der Organe]. 
See inferiority complex. 
palpationism [Betastungslust]. The desire to handle, and 
the pleasure induced by handling, the genital organs, 
or the accessory sexual zones (erogenic zones) of 
another person than the palpationist. The palpationist 
act is attended by sexual excitement. 
pansexualism. The investment (cathexis) of the whole 
body—skin, mucous membranes, muscles, intestines, 
sense organs—with sexual desire and gratification. 
This is regarded as characteristic of sexuality in very 
young children. 
paranoia. A form of insanity characterised by systematic 
delusions. 
paranoid dementia. See dementia paranoides. 
parapraxis [Fehlleistung]. A generic term for slips of tongue 
and pen, blunders, forgettings, errors, and faulty acts, 
due to unconscious urges that counteract the desire in 
the conscious. GLOSSARY 
pedication. Immissio membri in anum. Often misspelled 
“ paedication ” from a partial confusion with “ paeder- 
asty.” The root of the latter word is the Greek term for 
“ boy.” The root of pedication is the Latin “ pedex ” or 
“ podex,” the fundament. 
penis anxiety. A form of the castration complex (which 
see). A dread that the penis will be cut off. See text, 
p. 161. 
penis envy. The form the castration complex (which see) 
takes in girls. See text, p. 161. 
phobia. A morbid dread. An intensification of “ anxiety,” 
and relating to a particular object or situation or group 
of objects or situations, as, e.g., to being “ shut in ” 
(claustrophobia). 
phylogenesis. The development of the race or species. 
Adjective phylogenetic, pertaining to the development 
of the race. 
pleasure principle [Lustprinzip]. The tendency to seek 
immediate pleasure (and shun immediate pain) regardless 
of the future cost. It conflicts with the reality principle, 
which see. 
projection. When an individual, failing to recognise certain 
processes as mental, as subjective, ascribes them to the 
outer world, he is said to project these mental processes, 
and the act of doing so is termed “ projection.” 
psychoanalysis. A study and analysis of man’s unconscious 
motives and desires as shown in various nervous disturb- 
ances and in certain manifestations of everyday life 
in normal individuals. Ernest Jones defines it briefly 
as “ the study of unconscious mentation.” 
psychogenic. Psychically engendered, i.e. due to psycho- 
logical, not material, determinants. Psychogenic neu- 
roses are thus contrasted with actual neuroses or 
somatic neuroses. 
psychoneuroses. These are contrasted with actual neu- 
roses (which see). 
269 270 
SIGMUND FREUD 
rationalisation. “ The invention of a reason for an attitude, 
or an action, the motive of which is not recognised.” * 
(Jones.) 
reality principle [Realitatsprinzip]. The principle whose i 
function it is to adapt the organism to the exigencies of . 
reality, to subordinate the imperious demand for imme- 1 
diate gratification, and to replace this by a more distant 
but more permanently satisfactory one. It is thus 
influenced by social, ethical, and other external con- 
siderations that are ignored by the pleasure principle 
(which see). J 
regression. Two meanings in Freudian terminology: , 
“ (1) Resolution of an idea into its sensorial components 
instead of the usual passage onwards in the direction of 
action. (2) Reversion of mental fife, in some respects, 
to that characteristic of an earlier stage of development, 
often an infantile one.” (Jones.) 
relative impotence. The sexual impotence of a man who 
is impotent in relation to a particular woman while 
potent in relation to others. 
repetition compulsion [Wiederholungszwang]. The urge 
to repeat an experience of any kind. See text, 
p. 95. 
repression [Verdrangung]. “ The keeping from conscious- 
ness of mental processes that would be painful to it.” 
(Jones.) See also censor. 
resistance [Widerstand]. “ The instinctive opposition dis- 
played towards any attempt to lay bare the unconscious; 
a manifestation of the repressing forces.” (Jones.) 
sadism. Voluptuous (sexual) enjoyment on inflicting, 
or witnessing the infliction of, bodily or mental pain ; 
the counterpart of masochism (which see). 
schizophrenia. A more modern name for dementia praecox 
(which see). 
scoptolagnia and scoptophilia [Schaulust], See inspec- 
tionism. GLOSSARY 
271 
jscreen-memory [Deckerinnerung], A memory which crops 
up as a cover, a screen, to conceal another (associated) 
memory, which the repressive forces are able in this 
way to keep concealed. 
somatic neuroses. Neuroses that are not psychogenic, 
but are due simply to bodily processes. See actual 
neuroses. 
sublimation. The employment of energy belonging to a 
primitive instinct in a new and derived, i.e. non-primitive, 
channel. E.g. the use of sexual energy (“ libido,” 
which see) in “ intellectual ” love or creative work. 
suggestibility. The liability to be influenced by suggestion 
(which see). 
suggestion. A general name for autosuggestion and 
heterosuggestion, which see. 
super-ego. The same as ego-ideal, which see. 
superiority complex. The individual’s emotionally tinged 
conviction that he excels others in one or many respects. 
Often an unconscious reaction against the inferiority 
complex, which see. 
terminal pleasure [Endlust]. The pleasure attending the 
climax of the sexual act. 
transference [Uebertragung]. “Two meanings: (1) dis- 
placement of affect from one idea to another; 
(2) specifically, displacement of an effect, either 
positive or negative, from one person on to the psycho- 
analyst.” (Jones.) 
unconscious. “Two meanings: (1) all mental processes 
not in consciousness at a given moment; (2) specifically, 
those that cannot be brought into consciousness by any 
effort of the will or act of memory. The former includes 
the latter, which is the typical psychoanalytical sense.” 
(Jones.) 
voyeurism. See inspectionism. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Adler, Alfred, Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, 
Bergmann, Munich, 1920.—English translation by Paul 
Radin, Individual Psychology, Kegan Paul, London, 
1924. 
Adler, Alfred, Ueber den nervosen Charakter, Bergmann, 
Wiesbaden, 1912, third edition, 1922.—English trans- 
lation by Bernard Gluck and JohnE. Lind, The Neurotic 
Constitution, Kegan Paul, London, 1921. 
Adler, Alfred, Das Problem der Homosexualitat, Munich, 
1917. 
Adler, Alfred, Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Com- 
pensation, Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 
New York and Washington. 
Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso. 
Baudouin, Charles, Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics, Allen 
and Unwin, London, 1924. 
Borne, Ludwig, Die Kunst, in drei Tagen ein original 
Schriftsteller zu werden. 
Breuer, Josef, and Freud, Sigmund, Studien iiber Hysterie, 
Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1895 ; third edition, 1921. 
Breuer, Josef, and Freud, Sigmund, Ueber den psychischen 
Mechanismus hysterischer Phanomene, “ Neurologisches 
Zentralblatt,” Nos. 1 and 2, 1893. 
Diskussionen der Wiener psychoanalytischen Vereinigung : 
Ueber den Selbstmord, Wiesbaden, 1911. 
Exner, Sigmund, Entwurf zu einer physiologischen Erk- 
larung der psychischen Erscheinungen, Leipzig and 
Vienna, 1894. 
Ferenczi, S. Entwicklungsstufen des Wirklichkeitssinnes, 
an article in the “ Internationale Zeitschrift fiir aerzt- 
liche Psychoanalyse,” 1912. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Fliess, Wilhelm, Der Ablauf des Lebens, Grundlegung zur 
exakten Biologie, Leipzig and Vienna, 1906. 
Frazer, James George, Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vols., 
Macmillan, London, 1910. 
Freud, Sigmund. See also Breuer. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber den Ursprung der hinteren Nerven- 
wurzeln im Ruckenmark von Ammocoetes, Vienna, 
1877. 
Freud, Sigmund, Beobachtungen ueber Gestaltung und 
feineren Bau der als Hoden beschriebenen Lappen- 
organen des Aals, Vienna, 1877. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber Spinalganglien und Ruckenmark 
des Petromyzon, Vienna, 1878. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber den Bau der Nervenfasern und 
Nervenzellen beim Flusskrebs, Gerold, Vienna, 1882. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber Coca, Vienna, 1885. 
Freud, Sigmund, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, Deuticke, 
Vienna, 1891. 
Freud, Sigmund [with Oscar Rie], Klinische Studien ueber 
die halbseitige Cerebrallahmung der Kinder, Perles, 
Vienna, 1891. 
Freud, Sigmund, Zur Kenntniss der cerebralen Diplegien 
des Kindesalters (im Anschluss an die Little’sche 
Krankheit), Deuticke, Vienna, 1893. 
Freud, Sigmund (with Josef Breuer), Ueber den psychischen 
Mechanismus hysterischer Phanomene, “ Neurologisches 
Zentralblatt,” Nos. 1 and 2, 1893. 
Freud, Sigmund (with Josef Breuer), Studien ueber Hys- 
terie, Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1895 ; third edition, 
1922. 
Freud, Sigmund, Die infantile Cerebrallahmung, Holder, 
Vienna, 1897. 
Freud, Sigmund, Die Traumdeutung, Deuticke, Leipzig 
and Vienna, 1900 ; second edition, 1909 ; third edition, 
1911 ; fourth edition, 1914 ; fifth edition, 1919 ; seventh 
edition, 1922. There are numerous translations.— 
English translation by A. A. Brill from third German 
edition, The Interpretation of Dreams, Allen and Unwin, 
London, 1913. 
273 274 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber den Traum (in Grenzfragen des 
Nerven- und Seelenlebens, a series by various authors), 
Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1906 ; third edition, 1921.— 
English translation by M. D. Eder, On Dreams, Heine- 
mann, London, 1914. 
Freud, Sigmund, Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens 
(Vergessen, Versprechen, Vergreifen), Karger, Berlin, 
1901 ; ninth edition, 1923.—English translation by 
A. A. Brill, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Fisher 
Unwin, London, 1914. 
Freud, Sigmund, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum 
Unbewussten, Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1905 ; 
third edition, 1921.—English translation by A. A. Brill, 
Wit and its relation to the Unconscious, Fisher Unwin, 
London, 1916, and Kegan Paul, London, 1922. 
Freud, Sigmund, Bruchstiick einer Hysterieanalyse, Karger, 
Berlin, 1905. 
Freud, Sigmund, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 
Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1905; second edition, 
1910; fifth edition, 1922.—English translation by 
A. A. Brill, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 
third revised edition, Nervous and Mental Disease 
Publishing Co., New York and Washington, 1918. 
Freud, Sigmund, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosen- 
lehre, five vols., Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1906, 
etc. 
Freud, Sigmund, Der Wahn und die Traume in W. Jensen’s 
“Gradiva,” Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1907 ; second 
edition, 1912.—English translation by Helen M. Downey, 
Delusion and Dream, etc., Moffat, Yard and Co., New 
York, 1917, Allen and Unwin, London, 1921. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber Psychoanalyse (Lectures delivered 
at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., U.S.A., in Sep- 
tember, 1909), Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1910, 
sixth edition, 1922. 
Freud, Sigmund, Ueber den Selbstmord, insbesondere der 
Schiiler-Selbstmord (A Discussion at the Viennese 
Psychoanalytical Society, in which Freud participated), 
Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1910. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
275 
Freud, Sigmund, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Licnardo 
da Vinci, Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1910 ; third 
edition, 1923.—English translation by A. A. Brill, 
Leonardo da Vinci, a psychosexual Study of an infantile 
Reminiscence, Moffat, Yard and Co., New York, 1916, 
Kegan Paul, London, 1922. 
Freud, Sigmund, Die Onanie (A Discussion at the Viennese 
Psychoanalytical Society, in which Freud participated), 
Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1912. 
Freud, Sigmund, Totem und Tabu, einige Uebereinstim- 
mungen in Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker, 
Heller, Vienna, 1913; second edition, 1920; third 
edition, 1922, Internationaler Psychoanalytische Verlag. 
—English translation by A. A. Brill, Totem and Taboo, 
Routledge, 1919, Moffat, Yard and Co., New York, 
1918. 
Freud, Sigmund, Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die Psycho- 
analyse, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 
Vienna, 1918.—English translation by Joan Riviere, 
with a Preface by Ernest Jones, Introductory Lectures 
on Psychoanalysis, Allen and Unwin, London, 1922. 
Freud, Sigmund [another edition of the Vorlesungen], 
Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die Psychoanalyse, Die 
Fehlleistungen, Der Traum, Allgemeine Neurosenlehre, 
Taschenausgabe, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Ver- 
lag, Vienna, 1922. (For English translation see above.) 
Freud, Sigmund, Preface to Theodor Reik’s Probleme der 
Religionspsychologie, Leipzig and Vienna, 1919. 
Freud, Sigmund, Introduction to S. Ferenzci’s Zur Psycho- 
analyse der Kriegsneurosen, 1919.—English translation, 
Psychoanalysis and the War Neuroses, by S. Ferenczi 
and Ernest Jones, with an introduction by Sigmund 
Freud, International Psychoanalytical Library, London 
and Vienna, 1921. 
Freud, Sigmund, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, Internationaler 
Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna, 1920.—English trans- 
lation by C. J. M. Hubback, Beyond the Pleasure Prin- 
ciple, International Psychoanalytical Library, London 
and Vienna, 1922. 276 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Freud, Sigmund, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Inter- 
nationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna, 1921 ; 
third edition, 1923.—English translation by James 
Strachey, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the 
Ego, London and Vienna, 1922. 
Freud, Sigmund, Das Ich und das Es, Leipzig, 1923. 
Translations not precisely corresponding in respect 
of contents to the German originals mentioned 
in the bibliography of Freud’s works are : 
Freud, Sigmund, Selected Papers on Hysteria and other 
Psychoneuroses, translated by A. A. Brill, third, enlarged, 
edition, New York, 1920. 
Freud, Sigmund, Reflections [on War and Death], translated 
by A. A. Brill and Alfred B. Kuttner, Moffat, Yard and 
Co., New York, 1922.—The German original, Zeitge- 
masses uber Krieg und Tod, appears in the fourth volume 
of Sammlung, etc. (see above). 
Freud, Sigmund, The Llistory of the Psychoanalytic Move- 
ment, Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 
New York, 1916.—The German original, Zur Geschichte 
der psychoanalytischen Bewegung, appears in the fourth 
volume of Sammlung, etc. (see above). 
Furstner, C., Article in vol. vii of Die deutsche Klinik, 
edited by Ernst von Leyden and Felix Klemperer, 
Urban and Schwarzenberg, Vienna, 1906. 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust. 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Fragment uber die Natur, 1781- 
1782, Colto’s edition, vol. xxxix, p. 3. 
Groddeck, Georg, Das Buch vom Es, Psychoanalytische 
Briefe au eine Freundin, Internationale Psycho- 
analytische Verlag, Leipzig, 1923. 
Jones, Ernest, Das Problem des Hamlet und der Oedipus- 
komplex, 1911, being No. 10 of Schriften zur angewand- 
ten Seelenkunde (translated into German by Paul 
Tausig), edited by Sigmund Freud, Deuticke, Leipzig 
and Vienna.—The English original, A psychoanalytic 
Study of Hamlet, forms Chap. I in Essays in Applied 
Psychoanalysis, The International Psychoanalytical Press 
and Allen and Unwin, Vienna and London, 1923. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
277 
Jones, Ernest, Papers on Psychoanalysis, third edition, 
Balliere, London, 1923. 
Jung, Carl Gustav, Die Bedeutung des VatersfurdasSchicksal 
des Einzelnen, Deutieke, Vienna, 1909. 
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychologische Typen, Rascher, Zurich, 
1921.—English translation by H. Godwin Baynes, 
Psychological Types, or the psychology of individuation, 
Int. Libr. of Psych., Phil., and Sci. Method, London, 
1923. 
Jung, Carl Gustav, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 
Deutieke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1912 ; English translation 
by Beatrice M. Hinkle, The Psychology of the Un- 
conscious, Moffat, Yard and Co., New York, 1916, Kegan 
Paul, London, 1921. 
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Nathan der Weise. 
Lynkeus, see Popper. 
Maeder, A. Ueber das Traumproblem, Vienna, 1910. 
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Menschliches, Allzumensch- 
liches, Schmeitzner, Chemnitz, 1878.—English transla- 
tion, Human, All-Too-Human, being vols. vi and vii 
of Oscar Levy’s edition of the complete works, Foulis, 
Edinburgh and London, 1909-13. 
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 
eine Streitschrift, Leipzig, 1887.—English translation 
by Horace B. Samuel, The Genealogy of Morals, a 
Polemic, being vol. xiii of Oscar Levy’s edition of 
the complete works, Foulis, Edinburgh and London, 
1910. 
Plato : Phaedrus, The Republic, Symposium. 
Popper, Josef (wrote under the pseudonym of “ Lynkeus,” 
and usually now spoken of as “ Popper-Lynkeus ”), 
Phantasien eines Realisten, Reissner, Dresden and Leipzig, 
1918. 
Rank, Otto, Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage, Grund- 
ziige einer Psychologie des dichterischen Schaffens, 
Deutieke, Vienna, 1912. 
Rank, Otto, Der Kiinstler, Ansatze zu einer Sexual-Psy- 
chologie, Heller, Vienna, 1907. 
Rostand, Edmond, Cyrano de Bergerac. 278 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Sadger, Isidor, Die Lehre von den Geschlechtsverirrungen 
(Psychopathia Sexualis), auf psychoanalytischer Grund- 
lage, Deuticke, Vienna, 1921. 
Sadger, Isidor, Friedrich Hebbel, ein psychoanalytischer 
Versuch, Deuticke, Vienna. 
Scherner, Carl Albert, Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der 
Seele, vol. i, Das Leben des Traumes, Schindler, Berlin, 
1861. 
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, Die Kiinstler, Die 
Gotter Griechenlands. 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, Ueber den Tod und die Unzer- 
storbarkeit unseres Wesens an sich. 
Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Julius 
Caesar. 
Stekel, Wilhelm, Die Sprache des Traumes, Bergmann, 
Wiesbaden, 1911 ; second edition, 1921. 
Stekel, Wilhelm, Fortschritte der Traumdeutung, “ Zentral- 
blatt fur Psychoanalyse,” iv, 1914. 
Stekel, Wilhelm, Koitus im Kindesalter, “ Wiener medizin- 
ische Blatter,” April 18, 1896. 
Stekel, Wilhelm, Nervose Angstzustande und ihre Behand- 
lung, third edition, Berlin and Vienna, 1921.—English 
translation by Rosalie Gabler, Conditions of Nervous 
Anxiety and their Treatment, Kegan Paul, London, 
Dodd, Mead, and Co., New York, 1923. 
Stekel, Wilhelm, Storungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens, 
Urban and Schwarzenberg, Vienna, 1912 et seq.; 
Vol. II, Onanie und Homosexualitat; Vol. V Psycho- 
sexueller Infantilismus ; Vol. VI, Impulshandlungen; 
Vol. VII, Fetischismus. 
Weininger, Otto, Geschlecht und Charakter, Vienna and 
Leipzig, 1903.—English translation, Sex and Character, 
Heinemann, London, 1906. 
Wittels, Fritz, Alles um Liebe, Berlin, 1912. 
Wittels, Fritz, Der Juwelier von Bagdad, Berlin, 1914. 
Wittels, Fritz, Die sexuelle Not, 1910. 
Wittels, Fritz, Tragische Motive, Berlin, 1911. INDEX 
Abel, 249, 250 
Ablauf des Lebens, Grundlegung zur 
exakten Biologic, 273 
Abraham (patriarch), 126 
Abraham (psychoanalyst), 135, 201 
Abreaction, 38, 261 
Acheron, 16 
Active Method, 222-3 
Actual Neurosis, 47, 50, 51, 227, 228, 
261, 269, 270 
Adequaoy of Sexual Gratification, 231 
Adler, 114, 124, 132, 138, 139, 140, 
145-59, 161, 165, 166, 176, 177, 
178, 181, 193, 203, 206, 216, 225, 
226, 230, 250, 266,267,268,272 
Adlerei, 225 
Affect (defined), 261 
Affect, Fixation of, 
See 
Fixation 
Aggressive Impulse, 148, 167 
Agoraphobia, 95 
Ahnfrau, 90 
Aida, 90, 92 
Alexander the Great, 89, 239 
“ Alienist and Neurologist,” 200 
Alles urn Liebe, 113, 171, 193, 197, 278 
Allgemeine Neurosenlehre, 275 
Alternation of Impulses, 250, 261, 262 
Alti Castrati, 163 
Ambition, 199 
Ambivalency, 44, 45, 250, 261,262, 263 
See also 
Bipolarity 
Ammoccetes, 259 
Amnesia (defined), 262 
Amnesia, Infantile, 111, 262 
Anaesthesia, Hysterical, 29 
Anagogic Trend, 193, 262 
Anal Phase of Sexuality, 108 
Anal Zone, 199 
Analysand (defined), 262 
Analyse der Phobie eines fiinfjahrigen 
Knaben, 111 
Analyst-Fixation, 223, 229 
Angsthysterie, 262 
Angstneurose, 262 
Animism, 236, 237 
Annulling Mechanism, 230, 262 
Antinarcissism, 207 
Antisemitism, 163, 164, 247 
Anxiety, 46—58, 253, 257 
See also 
Dread 
Anxiety Hysteria, 262 
Anxiety Neurosis, 46—58, 253, 262 
Anxiety, Objective, 52 
Anxiety Paroxysm, 257 
Aphasia, 35 
Appearance and Reality, 258 
Apulia, 76 
Arcady, 174 
Ariosto, 130, 272 
Aristophanes, 255 
Aristotle, 131 
Armada, 28 
Art, Genesis of, 170-2 
Art of becoming an original Writer in 
three Days, 87 
Artemidorus, 88, 89 
Autoerotism, 112, 125, 200, 207, 208, 
210, 262, 264 
See also 
Narcissism 
Autosuggestion (defined), 262 
Bach, 133 
Balzac, 225 
Batastungslust (defined), 268 
Baudouin, 266, 272 
Baynes, 277 
Bedeutung des Voters fur das Schicksal 
des Einzelnen, 131, 277 
Behring, 26 
Bella von M., 208-9, 212 
Bene Brith, 248 
Beobachtungen iiber Gestaltung undfeine- 
ren Bau der als Hoden beschriebenen 
Lappenorganen des Aals, 273 
Bergson, 267 
Berlin, 201 
Bernheim, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49 
Bernheim’s Experiment A, 39, 85 
Bernheim’s Experiment B, 41, 49, 85, 
86, 90 
Besetzung (defined), 263 
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 275 
Beziehungswahn (defined), 264 
Bible, 88, 143, 255 
Binet, 34 
Bipolarity, 79, 94, 120, 126, 195, 203, 
241, 249-60, 262, 263 
Birth, Memories of, 51, 52 
Bisexuality, 101—4, 114, 124—8, 256 
Bleuler, 135, 144, 250 
Blond Beast, 245 
Blunders, 
See 
Slips 
Borne, 19, 87, 88, 272 
Boswell, 133 
Breiter, 30, 35, 36-45, 46, 60, 75, 85, 
100, 114, 122, 216, 263, 272 
Bretjer and Freud, 36-45 
Bridges, Fear of, 90, 95 
Brill, 47, 179, 273, 274, 275, 276 
Bruchstiick einer Hysterieanalyse, 94, 
130,274 
BrBcke, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 41, 42, 46, 
50, 233, 258, 259 
Briickenangst, 90, 95 
Briinn, 75 
Brutus, 250 
Buch vom Es, 194, 276 
Buchner, 30 
Budapesth, 87, 135, 189 
Buddhism, 184 
“ Bund,” 106 
Burgholzli, 136, 187 280 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Caesab, 250 
Calvin, 187 
Candaules Motif, 213, 240, 263 
Capitol, 151 
Carlsbad, 225 
Casanova,231 
Castrates, Choir of, 163 
Castration, 160 
Castration Anxiety, 160, 161, 167 
Castration Complex, 121, 150, 154, 156, 
157, 160-75, 228, 263, 269 
Castration, Discovery of, 167, 168 
Castration Fantasies, 162-3 
Castration Substitutes, 162 
Catalepsy, 92 
Cathartic Method, 38, 46, 263 
Cathexis, 112, 155, 207, 208, 263, 268 
Cave, Plato’s Parable of, 254 
Censor (defined), 263 
Censorship (defined), 263 
Champollion, 73 
Character formed in early Childhood, 228 
Chabcot, 27-35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 50, 51, 
60, 86, 132 
Charge, 155, 263 
Child-Woman, 209-11, 212 
Christ 254 
Christianity, 184—5, 189, 232 
Christusneurose (defined), 267 
Circumcision, 163 
Civilisation, 148, 149, 197,198, 202, 211 
Civilisation, Origin of, 171—2 
Claustrophobia (defined), 269 
Cleanliness, 199 
Clitus, 239 
Cocaine, 23—5, 258 
Coitus interruptus, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 
58, 263 
Columbus, 184 
Common Sense, 153 
Complex (defined), 263 
See also particular complexes, as 
Castration Complex, etc. 
Comstock,173 
Conation, 264, 267 
Conditions of Nervous Anxiety and their 
Treatment, 278 
Conflicts, 21, 42, 46, 47, 48, 55, 107,122, 
174, 222, 228, 229 
Confucius, 247 
Conquest of the Mate, 56 
Conscience, 194 
Consciousness, Double, 85, 86, 91 
See also 
Multiple Personality 
Constitution, Neurotic, 
See 
Neurotic Constitution 
Content of Dream, 
See 
Latent Content 
Manifest Content 
Criminal Trends, 194-6 
Cbcesus, 211, 212 
Cbomwell, 248 
Cbonus, 245 
Crvptomnesia, 87, 88, 102, 103, 104, 
134, 154, 195, 201, 225, 262, 264 
Cultural Overtones, 194 
Cyclothymia, 206 
Cyrano de Bergerac, 69, 277 
Daimon, 33, 103, 180, 218, 255 
Dante, 244 
Danube, 243 
Darmstadt, 23 
Dab win, 25 
David, 239 
Death akin to Love, 252 
Death and Castration, 166, 167 
Death Instinct, 251, 252, 253 
Death, Negativity of, 254 
Death, Symbolism of, 82, 83, 103, 219, 
254 
Death Wish, 241, 242 
Deckerinnerung (defined), 270 
Degeneration, 122 
Delboeuf, 34 
Delusion and Dream, 274 
Delusion of Persecution, 238 
Delusion of Reference, 206, 264 
Dementia paranoides, 162, 264 
Dementia praecox, 138, 264 
Demosthenes, 145 
Desexualisation of Eros, 203 
Destruction of the World, 206 
Determinism, 40, 98, 251 
Deutsche Klinik, 30, 276 
Dialogues of Plato, 128 
Dichtung und Wahrheit, 16 
Differentiation, 234 
Diplegia, 35, 107 
Diskussionen der Wiener psychoanaly- 
tischen Vereinigung, 241, 272 
Dissociation, 34 
Distortion, 
See 
Dream Distortion 
Doctor-Fixation, 223, 229 
Don Juan, 231 
Double Consciousness, 
See 
Consciousness 
Downey, 274 
Dread, 253 
See also 
Anxiety 
Dream Distortion, 61, 62, 76, 264 
Dream Interpretation, 59-84, 88, 89, 
152, 218-22, 226 
Dreamer, The, 201 
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 
60, 110, 112, 114, 116, 125, 130, 
142, 197, 200, 274 
Eckebmann, 133 
Edeb, 274 
Educational Science, 
See 
Pedagogy 
Eger, 76 
Ego, 34, 159, 167, 234, 236, 237, 246 
See also 
Ego-Impulse 
Narcissism 
Ego-Fiction, 235 
Ego-Ideal, 60, 128, 194, 233, 234, 248, 
264 
Ego Impulse, 148, 157-9, 183, 264 
See also 
Narcissism 
Eitington,135 
Elective Affinities, 57 INDEX 
281 
Elkctra, 115 
Electra Complex, 115, 265, 268 
See also 
Mother Complex 
Electrotherapeutics, 36 
Ellis, 200 
Emasculation, 
See 
Castration 
End of the World, 206-7 
Endlust (defined), 271 
Endopsychic Censor, 
See 
Censor 
Entdeckungen auf dem Oebiete der Seele, 
278 
Entwicklungsstufen des Wirklichkeits - 
sinnes, 171, 272 
Entwurf zu einer physiologischen Erkld- 
rung der psychischen Erscheinung- 
en, 30, 272 
Equivalents of Anxiety, 47 
Erb, 36 
Erogenic Zone, 155, 199, 203, 265, 268 
Eros,105-28, 151,169, 200, 203, 251, 256 
See also 
Sexual Theory 
Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis, 276 
Everyman, Parable of, 68-70 
Exhibitionism, 113, 265, 267 
Exner, 30, 31, 272 
Extroversion (defined), 265 
Family as Forcing-House of Neurosis, 117 
Father Complex, 60, 118, 122 
See also 
Oedipus Complex 
Father Ideal 
Father, Death of, 59, 60 
Father-Fixation, 42, 54, 265 
Father Ideal, 119 
See also 
Father Complex 
Father-Imago 
Oedipus Complex 
Father-Imago, 234, 246, 247, 248, 255, 
260 
Faust, 16, 33, 66, 67, 71, 98, 100, 118, 
276 
Faust, 35, 71 
Federn,132 
Fehlleistung, 99, 268 
Fehlleistungen, 275 
Feminism, 147, 231 
See also 
Woman’s Question 
Ferenczi, 51, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 
171, 182, 183, 197, 198, 272, 275 
Ferment of Life, 252 
Fetichism, 113, 195, 265 
Fetischismus, 114, 195, 278 
Fixation (photographic sense), 235 
Fixation (psychoanalytical sense), 42, 
212, 266, 266, 268 
See also 
Analyst-Fixation 
Doctor-Fixation 
Father-Fixation 
Mother-Fixation 
Flechsig, 76 
Fliess, 101, 102, 103, 104, 216, 273 
Formulierungen tiber die zwei Prinzipien 
des psychischen Oeschehens, 109 
Fortschritte der Traumdeutung, 191, 278 
Fragment tiber die Natur, 19, 276 
Frazer, 191, 273 
Frederick the Great, 80, 81 
Free Will, 40, 98. 191 
Freiberg, 247 
Freud Craze, 137 
Freud, John, 16, 19, 45, 226 
Freud (senior), 15, 21, 59, 60 
Freud, Sigmund— 
early Years, 15-26 
Birth, 15 
Relationships with John, 15, 19, 45, 
226 
Ambition, 19 
Combativeness, 19 
Choice of Career, 19 et seq. 
visits half-brother in England, 21 
becomes Demonstrator of Physiology 
under Briicke, 22 
discovery of Cocaine, 23-5, 258 
influenced by Meynert and by Kasso- 
witz, 25—6 
studies in Paris under Charcot, 27-35 
as Seer, 33, 51, 258, 259 
is unmusical, 33 
as Cerebral Anatomist, 34, 35 
a born Revolutionist, 35, 43 
as Devil’s Advocate, 35, 257 
his Collaboration with Breuer, 36-42 
Marriage, 42, 43 
personal Characteristics, 43-5, 129- 
44, 150 
visits Naney, 38-41 
and the Anxiety Neuroses, 46-58 
and Dream Interpretation, 59-84 
Death of Freud senior, 59, 60 
discovers Repression and Transfer- 
ence, 85-7 
abandons Use of Hypnotism, 85, 86 
and the Sexual Theory of the 
Neuroses, 105-28 
visits United States, 136-7 
Relationships with Adler, 145-59 
and the Castration Complex, 160-75 
Relationships with Jung, 176—96 
and the Theory of Narcissism, 197—215 
Relationships with Stekel, 216-33 
cannot wholly break away from 
Organic Explanations of Disease, 
227, 228 
and the Freudian Mechanisms, 234-48 
Enthusiasm for Hannibal, 247, 248 
Enthusiasm for Cromwell, 248 
a Freemason, 249 
and the Doctrine of Ambivalency, 
249-60 
Death of Daughter, 251, 252 
complete Bibliography of Works, 
273-276 
Freud’s half-brother, 17, 21 
Freudian Mechanisms, 124, 146, 148, 
234-48, 258 
See also 
Annulling Mechanism 
Fried jung, 133 
Friedrich Hebbel, ein psychoanalytisch e 
Versuch, 213, 278 
Furstner, 30, 276 282 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Gabler, 278 
Gaia, 113 
Galvani, 24 
Gartner, 24 
Genealogy of Morals, 244, 246, 247 
Genealogy of Morals, 277 
Genetic Theory of the Libido, 180, 199 
See also 
Libido 
Geneva, 135 
Genohis Khan, 184 
Gephuraphobia, 90, 95 
Germ-plasm, 59, 167 
Geschlecht und Charakler, 103, 278 
Glacial Epoch, 170, 171 
Glossary for the Use of Translators of 
Psychoanalytical Works, 261 
GlUck, 272 
Goethe, 15, 16, 19, 27, 33, 57, 88, 133, 
235, 276 
Gotter Griechenlands, 236, 278 
Grab, 133 
Graphology, 77 
Qrenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelen- 
lebens, 274 
Grief, 204, 205 
Grillparzer, 90, 92 
Groddeck, 194, 228, 276 
Group Psychology and the Analysis of 
the Ego, 264, 276 
Group Psychology, 266 
Habsburgs, 17 
Haeckel, 30 
Hagen, 177 
Hamburg, 42 
Hamlet, 58, 237 
Hamlet, 278 
Hannibal, 248 
Hasentreffer, 130 
Hauff, 130, 211 
He (Father-Imago), 235, 238, 265, 257 
Heffel, 177, 213, 240 
Heidelberg, 23, 24 
Heine Strasse, 17 
Heitler, 23 
Helena, 71 
Helmholtz, 23 
Hercules, 131 
Heredity, 122 
Herodotus, 160 
Hetaira, 211 
Hetaira-Cult, 212-13 
Heterosuggestion (defined), 265 
Hieroglyph, 73, 249 
Hinkle, 277 
His Majesty the Baby, 215 
History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, 
149, 155, 179, 276 
Hitschmann, 132 
Homer, 131 
Homosexuality, 114, 136, 212-14, 227, 
238, 240, 265, 267 
Homosexuality, Larval or Unconscious, 
231 
Horde, Primitive, 
See 
Primitive Horde 
Hubbaok, 275 
Human, All-Too-Human, 277 
Hydra, 178 
Hypnosis, 31, 36,37,38, 39,41,42,86,88 
Hypnosis, Stages of, 34 
Hypnotism, 
See 
Hypnosis 
Hypochondria, 202, 203, 204, 206, 240, 
241, 266 
TT vptt 99 
Hysteria, 28-30, 35, 48 
See also 
Anxiety Hysteria 
Hysteria, Breuer’s Classical Case, 37-8 
Hysteria in the Male, 32 
Hysteria, Mobius’ Definition of, 37 
Hysteria, Phases of, 33 
Hysteron, 32 
T-n a u-xr 7 fi 
Ice Age, 170, 171, 174, 186, 232 
Ich und das Es, 60,83,102,191,243,276 
Identification, 109, 119-20, 207, 208, 
214, 234 
Imago (defined), 266 
See also 
Father-Imago 
Mother-Imago 
“ Imago,” 219 
Imitation, 234, 235 
Impotence Complex, 80, 81, 122 
Impulse, 
See 
Aggressive Impulse 
Alternation of Impulses 
Ego Impulse 
Moral Impulse 
Sexual Impulse 
Impulshandlungen, 196, 278 
Incest, 115-16 
See also 
Electra Complex 
Oedipus Complex 
Incest Barrier, 192 
Incretions, 29 
Individual Psychology, 155, 156, 266 
Individual Psychology, 272 
Infantile Amnesia, 
See 
Amnesia 
Infantile Autoerotism, 210 
Infantile Cerebralldhmung, 273 
Infantile Sexuality, 
See 
Sexuality of Early Childhood 
Infantilism, 114, 164, 226, 266 
Inferiority Complex, 124, 145-59, 161, 
203,212,248,266,267,268 
Inferiority of the Organs, 146, 155, 266 
Inferno, 244 
Infra-Ego, 83 
T VflT} V C 114. 
Initial Pleasure, 112, 113, 266 
Inquisition, 172 
Inspectionism, 113, 185, 186, 267 
Instanz, 264 
Instinctive Energy, 267 
Institutional Disease, 117 
International Psychoanalytical Asso- 
ciation, 138, 140, 178 
“ Internationale Zeitschrift fur aerzt- 
liche Psychoanalyse,” 164,171, 272 
Interpretation of Dreams, 28, 61, 273 INDEX 
Interpretation of Dreams, 
See 
Dream Interpretation 
Interpretations, far-fetched, 219 
Intimidation, Sexual, 
See 
Sexual Intimidation 
Castration Complex 
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 
201, 261, 263,275 
Introversion, 201, 267 
Intuition, 33 
Inversion, 114, 265, 267 
Investment, 112, 155, 201, 207, 263, 268 
Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage, 118, 
277 
It, the, 194 
See also 
Ich un das Es 
“Jahrbiich fur Psychoanalyse,” 178, 
197 
Janet, Paul, 28 
Janet, Pierre, 28, 34, 85, 132, 153, 
166, 217 
Jehovah,28 
Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 35, 96, 243, 
252, 257, 275 
Jensen,274 
Jerusalem, 172 
Jocasta, 115 
Jones, 131, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 
268, 270, 271, 275, 270, 277 
Joseph (Pharaoh’s Factor), 74, 75 
Joseph II, 17, 100 
Jowett, 128 
Juan, Don, 231 
Judas, 180, 239 
Julius Ccesar, 278 
Jung, 83, 114, 115, 131, 135, 136, 137, 
138, 140, 158, 164, 176-196, 197, 
198, 199, 216, 267, 277 
Jungle Book, 76 
Juwelier von Bagdad, 213, 278 
Kaa, 76 
Kahane, 132, 216 
Kaiser Josef Strasse, 17 
Kant, 194 
Kassowitz, 25 
Kastrationskomplex (defined), 263 
Kinderheimkrankheit, 117 
Kindheitserinnerung des Lionardo da 
Vinci, 275 
Kipling, 76 
Klemperer, 30, 276 
Klinische Studien iiber die halbseitige 
Cerebrallahmung der Kinder, 273 
Know thyself, 62 
Koch, 24 
Koitus im Kindesalter, 107, 278 
Koller, 24, 25 
Kunst in drei Tagen ein Originalschrift- 
steller zu werden, 87, 272 
Kiinstler, Der, 133, 171, 277 
Kiinstler, Die, 71, 278 
Kuttner, 276 
Laiub, 115 
Latent Content, 61, 77, 264 
Lebsn des Traumes, 88, 278 
Lehre von den Gesohiechtsverirrungtm, 
1G4, 278 
Leipzig, 17, 30 
Length of Analysis, 223-4 
Leonardo da Vinci, a psychosexual Study 
of an infantile Reminiscence, 275 
Lessing, 18, 72, 277 
Levy,277 
Leyden, 30, 276 
Libido, 54, 55, 158, 169-72, 176, 181, 
182, 183, 199, 226, 234, 256, 257, 
265, 267, 271 
See also 
Narcissism 
Libido, Genetic Conception of, 180-1 
Libido Theory, 114 
See also 
Sexual Theory 
38 
Life Instinct, 251, 252, 253 
Lind,272 
Living Corpse, 90 
Lobositz, 80 
London, 135 
Love of Own Children as Narcissism, 
214, 215 
Love Passion, 201, 202, 204 
Lunacy, 136, 201, 202, 203 
See also 
Specific Psychoses, as Melan- 
cholia, Paranoia, etc. 
Lustprinzip (defined), 209 
Luther, 101 
Lynkeus, 
See 
Popper-Lynkeus 
M. R., 60 
Macduff, 52 
Mach, 53, 157 
Maeder, 83, 135, 178, 277 
Manifest Content, 61, 204 
Maria Theresa, 17 
Marx, 259 
Masculine Protest, 147, 157, 161, 105, 
180, 266, 267 
Masculinisation of Woman, 232 
Masochism, 172, 267, 270 
Mass Psychology, 260 
Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, 
141, 214, 266, 276 
Masturbation, 48, 51, 55, 56-8, 111, 
156, 186, 227 
Mate, 
See 
Conquest of the Mate 
Mechanism, annulling, 
See 
Annulling 
Mechanism, Freudian, 
See 
Freudian 
“ Medizinische Klinik,” 144 
Megalomania, 203, 215 
Melancholia, 136, 204, 206, 229, 240, 
253, 265, 267 
Memories of Early Childhood, 107—8 
See also 
Amnesia, Infantile 
Memory, submerged, 154 
See also 
Cryptomnetia 284 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Menschliches, Alzumenschliches, 62, 277 
Mental Disorder, 
See 
Lunacy 
Mephistopheles, 35, 100 
Merck, 23 
Messalina, 231 
Messianic Neurosis, 230, 268 
Metaphysics and Science, 53, 54, 169, 
199, 224, 233, 255 
Metapsychology, 54, 142, 233 
Meyer, 143, 220 
Meynert, 25, 27, 31, 32, 46, 50, 233 
Michelangelo, 218 
Minderwertigkeit der Organe (defined), 
266 
Miserliness, 199 
Mission, Great Historic, 230 
Mistakes and Blunders, 
See 
Slips 
Mobius, 30, 37, 50 
Molesohott, 30 
Moloch, 184 
Moral Impulse, 157, 194-6 
Mother Complex, 118 
See also 
Electra Complex 
Mother-Fixation, 185—7, 214, 265 
Mother-Imago,235,238,246,247,248,255 
Multiple Personality, 209 
See also 
Consciousness, Double 
Munich, 191, 216 
Mysticism, 256, 257, 258 
Naecke, 200 
Nancy, 38, 39, 40, 41, 85 
Napoleon,69 
Narcissiom, 121,149, 154, 158,197-215, 
228, 234, 235, 268 
Narcissism, Secondary, 208 
Narcissus, 200, 268 
Nathan der Weise, 72, 277 
Nationalism, 248 
Nebuchadnezzar, 88 
Necessity, 251 
Nervose Angstzustdnde und ihre Behand- 
lung, 49, 278 
Neurasthenia, 50 
“Neurologisches Zentralblatt,” 272, 273 
Neurosis, 
See 
Actual Neurosis 
Anxiety Neurosis 
Messianic Neurosis 
Psychogenic Neurosis 
Psychoneurosis 
Somatic Neurosis 
Neurotic Constitution, 148, 156, 176 
See also 
Adler 
Inferiority Complex 
Neurotic Constitution, 153, 272 
Nietzsche, 43, 62, 63, 88,125,145, 232, 
237, 244, 245, 246, 255, 259, 277 
Ninth Symphony, 198 
Nirvana, 252 
No Man’s Land, 232 
Normal Sexual Intercourse, Concept of, 
57, 231 
Notre-Dame, 27 
Nuclear Complex, 116, 208 
Nuremberg, 138, 140, 141, 148, 177 
Obsessional Neurosis, 237 
Oediptjs, 115, 162 
Oedipus Complex, 45, 57, 114—21, 152, 
161, 162, 164, 165, 178, 185-7, 
191, 192, 228, 246, 265, 268 
See also 
Father Complex 
Father Ideal 
Old Maid, 106 
Old Man, 139, 192, 245 
Old Man of the Sea, 226 
Omnipotence of Thought, 236, 237 
On Dreams, 274 
On the Right to separate from Neuras- 
thenia a definite Symptom-Complex 
as Anxiety Neurosis, 47 
Onanie, 275 
Onanieund Homosexualitdt, 56, 114,278 
Onesidedness of Freud’s Theories, 
alleged, 50, 233 
Ophelia, 237 
Ophthalmological Congress in Heidel- 
berg, 24 
Ophthalmoscope, 23, 41, 42 
Opposites, Unification of, 249, 250 
See also 
Bipolarity 
Oral Phase of Sexuality, 108 
Organ Inferiority, 146, 155, 266, 268 
Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Com- 
pensation, 272 
Orlando Furioso, 130, 272 
Orphans especially prone to Neurosis, 
117 
Ostwald, 53, 60 
Over-Determination, 77 
Paederasty, 176 
Palpationism, 113, 268 
Pansexualism, 112, 125, 141, 268 
Papers on Psychoanalysis, 261, 264, 277 
Paralysis, Hysterical, 29 
Paranoia, 136, 238, 239, 264, 268 
Paranoid Dementia, 
See 
Dementia Paranoides 
Parapraxia, 98, 104, 268 
See also 
Slips, Mistakes, and Blunders 
Paris, 27, 36, 40, 42, 258 
Pasteur,239 
Peasant, The, 188 
Pedagogy, 164, 155, 189 
Pedantry, 199 
Pedication, 160, 269 
Penis Anxiety, 161, 269 
See also 
Castration Complex 
Peni3 Envy, 161, 269 
See also 
Castration Complex 
Persuasion, 41, 86 
Perversion,112,113,114,116,161,172,200 
Perversion, Polymorphic, 112 
Pfister, 135, 144, 187 
Phcedrus, 127, 128, 277 
Phantasien eines Realisten, 277 INDEX 
285 
Phabaoh, 74, 88 » 
Philosophy, 
See 
Metaphysics 
Phobia, 48, 95, 262, 269 
See also 
Agoraphobia 
Claustrophobia 
Gephuraphobia 
Phthisicus semper salax, 210 
Phylogenesis, 168, 269 
Plait-Cutters, 162 
Plato, 110, 113, 126, 127, 128, 253, 255, 
277 
Pleasure, Initial, 
See 
Initial Pleasure 
Pleasure Principle, 109, 174, 251, 269, 
270 
Pleasure, Terminal, 
See 
Terminal Pleasure 
Pleasure, two Forms of, 113 
Polarisation, 255 
See also 
Bipolarity 
Polymorphic Perversion, 
See 
Perversion 
Pope, 227 
Popfeb-Lynketjs, 62, 66, 77, 88, 245, 
246, 277 
Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsy- 
chologie, 145, 272 
Precocity, 123 
Primitive Horde, 45, 139, 165, 192, 193, 
245 
Primitive-horde Complex, 192 
Primitive Man, 220, 221 
Principle, Pleasure, 
See 
Pleasure Principle 
Principle, Reality, 
See 
Reality Principle 
Problem der Homosexuality, 145, 272 
Problem des Hamlet und der Oedipus- 
komplex, 131, 276 
Probleme der Religionspsychologie, 275 
Projection, 233, 269 
Pbomethetjs, 61 
Protozoa, Immortality of, 252 
Psychic Energy, 267 
Psychoanalysis, 20, 21, et passim. 
Psychoanalysis and /.Esthetics, 266, 272 
Psychoanalysis (defined), 269 
Psychoanalysis, Discovery of, 36—42 
Psychoanalysis, its fundamental Task, 
49 
Psychoanalysis, “ Politics ” of, 137, 
176 
Psychoanalysis, revolutionary Poten- 
tialities of, 259 
Psychoanalysis, Technique of, 87 
Psychoanalytic Study of Hamlet, 276 
Psychoanalytical Congress— 
first, 135-6, 177 
second,il38-41, 177 
third,* 177 
fourth, 178 
fifth, 189 
Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen iiber 
einen autobiographisch beschrie- 
benen Fall von Paranoia, 197 
Psychogenic (defined), 269 
Psychogenic Neuroses, 28-30, 31, 37, 
227, 261, 269 
Psychology of the Unconscious, 178, 182, 
183, 197, 277 
Psychology, Traditional or Old, 130 
Psychologische Typen, 188, 277 
Psychoneurosis, 269 
Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 274 
Psychosexueller Infantilismus, 114, 278 
Psychosis, 
See 
Lunacy 
Psychosynthesis, 188-90, 222 
See also 
Active Method 
Puns, 76, 221 
Pythagobas, 24 
Rad in, 272 
Rank, 118, 133, 171, 277 
Raphael, 20 
Rationalisation, 39-40, 186, 205, 270 
Realangst, 62 
Realitatsprinzip (defined), 270 
Reality and Appearance, 258 
Reality Principle, 109, 174, 269, 270 
Recurrence of the Similar, 95, 96, 104, 
255 
Reference, Delusion of, 
See 
Delusion 
Reflections (on War and Death), 276 
Regression, 116, 168, 174, 270 
Reik, 275 
Reiteeb, 132 
Relative Impotence, 186, 240, 270 
Religion, 182-3, 236, 246 
Religion and Sexuality, 172 
Renaissance, 184 
Repetition Compulsion, 95, 270 
Repression, 42, 49, 90 et seq., 148, 149, 
173, 226, 232, 263, 264, 270 
Repression and Transference, 85-97 
Republic, 277 
Resexualisation of Eros, 203 
Resistance, 90etseq., 148, 173, 222, 
226, 259, 270 
Retaliation, Law of, 165, 242, 243 
Return to the Mother’s Womb, 80, 120, 
255 
Revaluation of Values, 232, 259 
Revolutionary Sentiments of Jews, 247 
Rie, 273 
Riklin, 135 
Ritual Circumcision, 
See 
Circumcision 
Ritual Murder, 163 
Riviebe, 275 
Rocket, 94 
Rokitansky, 22 
Rome, 163, 191, 248 
Romeo, 174 
Romeo and Juliet, 78, 278 
Rontgen, 24 
Rosetta, 73 
Rostand, 277 286 
SIGMUND FREUD 
Rousseau, 187 
Rubens, 218 
Sadger, 76, 124, 132, 136, 138, 142, 
164, 166, 167, 213, 278 
Sadism, 113, 172, 267, 270 
St. Helena, 69 
St. Peter’s, 163 
28, 31, 34 
Salzburg, 135, 138, 141, 177 
Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neuro- 
senlehre, 19, 33, 38, 42, 46, 63, 97, 
107, 109, 111, 122, 124, 136, 139, 
157, 159, 165, 197, 199, 211, 213, 
215, 222, 227, 237, 238, 256, 274 
Samuel, 277 
Satan, 130, 173 
Satanists, 194, 232 
Saul,239 
Schaulust (defined), 266, 267 
Scherner, 88, 89, 278 
Schiller, 71, 179, 236, 278 
Schizophrenia, 136, 264, 270 
Schopenhauer, 31, 53, 63, 70, 167, 181, 
237, 252, 259, 278 
Schreber, 136, 177, 206 
Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 
276 
SCHROTTER, 68 
Science and Metaphysics, 53, 54 
See also 
Metaphysics 
Science and Mysticism, 256 
Scoptolagnia (defined), 266, 267 
Scoptophilia (defined), 266, 267 
Screen-Memory, 19, 271 
Seer, Charcot as, 32, 51 
Seer, Freud as, 33, 51, 258, 259 
Selected Papers on Hysteria and other 
Psychoneuroses, 47, 276 
Self-determination, 191 
Sentiment d’incompl6tude, 153, 166 
Sex and Character, 278 
Sexual (psychoanalytical use of derm), 
267 
Sexual Impulse, 148, 157, 199 
Sexual Intimidation, 156 
See also 
Castration Complex 
Sexual Need, 106 
Sexual Theory, 50, 51, 63, 78, 101—4, 
105-28, 140, 141, 155, 156, 169-75, 
183-8, 231 
See also 
Libido 
arcissism 
Sexuality of Early Childhood, 105—12, 
226 
Sexuelle Not, 106, 158, 209, 278 
Shakespeare,78,278 
Shame, 231 
She (Mother-Imago), 235, 238, 255, 257 
Siegfried, 177, 187, 245 
Siegmund, 134, 135 
Silberer, 68, 83, 193, 262 
Slips, Mistakes, and Blunders, 98-104, 
268 
Social Instinct, 194-6 
Social Psychology, 266 
Socrates, 33, 255 
Socratic Method, 130 
Somatic Neurosis, 50, 51, 261, 269, 271 
Somatic Response, 241 
Song of Solomon, 172 
Songes-mensonges, 61 
Sophists, 255 
Sorbonne, 28 
South Sea Islanders, 192 
Sperl Gymnasium, 18 
Spermatozoa Dreams, 120 
Sphinx, 114 
Spitteler, 266 
Sprache des Traumes, 73, 83, 89, 278 
Starke,164 
Steinach, 213 
Steiner, 132 
Stekel, 17, 19, 48, 49, 66, 57, 72, 73, 75, 
76, 82, 83, 89, 107, 112, 114, 120, 
132, 138, 139, 140, 144, 151, 164, 
165, 176, 177, 179, 187, 191, 195, 
196, 212, 216-33,250, 252, 262,278 
Stephenson,94 
Stilicho, 146 
Storungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens, 
114, 158, 278 
Strachey, 266, 276 
Stricter, 24 
Studien iiber Hysterie, 30, 38, 272, 273 
Studies concerning Hysteria, 42, 46, 47, 
75 
Sublimation, 125,126, 127,184,198, 271 
Submerged Memory, 154 
See also 
Cryptomnesia 
Substitution, 243 
Suggestibility (defined), 271 
Suggestion, 38, 39, 190, 262, 271 
Suicide, Significance of, 241, 252 
Super-Ego, 60, 83, 128, 193-5, 234, 246, 
264, 271 
See also 
Ego-Ideal 
Superiority Complex (defined), 271 
Suttee, 241 
Symbolism, 42, 74, 75, 88, 151, 166, 168, 
219, 222, 249 
Symposium, 110, 127, 255, 277 
Symptomatic Act, 239 
Syphilis, 184 
Tarpeian Rock, 161 
Tausig, 276 
Tausk, 68, 142 
Taylor, 100 
Terminal Pleasure, 112, 113, 271 
Terre, La, 188 
Thebes, 115 
Thirty Years’ War, 101 
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 
274 
Tolstoy, 90 
Torstensson, 146 
Totem und Tabu, 191, 192, 237, 275 
Totemism and Exogamy, 191, 273 
Tragische Motive, 171, 213, 278 
Transferability of the Libido, 234 
Transference, 42, 93etseq., 148, 190, 
206, 207, 222, 223, 224, 226, 271 
Transference Neuroses, 206 
Transmutation of Affect, 198, 202 
See also 
Sublimation INDEX 
287 
Trauer und Melancholia, 136 
Traum, 276 
Traumdeutung, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 27, 
28, 32, 33, 43, 45, 59, 60, 67, 71, 73, 
89, 98, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108, 
115, 181, 215, 248, 269, 273 
Triebverschrankung, 250, 261, 262 
Tu, 235, 236, 254 
Two-in-Hand, 127, 128, 253 
Tyre, 89 
Ueber Coca, 273 
Ueber das Traumproblem, 178, 277 
Ueber den Bau der Nervenfasern und 
Nervenzellen beim Flusskrebs, 273 
Ueber den nervosen Charakter, 145, 272 
Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus 
hysterischer Phdnomene, 38,272,273 
Ueber den Selbstmord, 241, 272, 274 
Ueber den Tod und die Unzerstorbarkeit 
unseres Wesens an sich, 237, 278 
Ueber den Traum, 274 
Ueber den Ursprung der hinteren Nerven- 
wurzeln im Riickenmark von Am- 
mocoetes, 273 
Ueber die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des 
Liebeslebens, 213 
Ueber die Berechtigung von der Neuras- 
thenic einen bestimmten Sympto- 
menkomplex als Angstneurose abzu- 
trennen, 46 
Ueber Psychoanalyse, 274 
Ueber Spinalganglien und Riickenmark 
des Petromyzon, 273 
Uebertragung (defined), 271 
Uhrmensch, 221 
Unconscious, 40, 85, 90, 271 
Unconscious as Source of Artistic In- 
spiration, 117-18 
Unconscious Ideas, 30 
Unconscious, Reflex from, 42 
Unification of Opposites, 249, 250 
See also 
Bipolarity 
Uplift, 190, 262 
Urethral Erotism, 199 
Urmensch, 220, 221 
Values, Revaluation of, 232, 259 
Verdrangung (defined), 270 
Vienna, 17, 18, 23, 27, 68, 157, 178 
Vienna General Hospital, 23, 31, 130 
Vienna University, 22 
Viennese Medical Society, 32, 142 
Viennese Psychoanalytical Society, 97, 
132, 142, 148, 161, 155, 211, 219, 
221, 274, 275 
Viennese School of Medicine, 31, 34-5, 
36 
Viennese School of Psychoanalysis, 178, 
219 
Virgil, 244 
Vital Impetus, 267 
Vitzliputzli, 182 
Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die 
Psychoanalyse, 56, 73, 129, 157, 
201 275 
Vorlust (defined), 266 
Voyeurism (defined), 266, 267 
Wagner-Jaeregg, 31 
Wahn und die Trdume in W. Jensen’s 
“ Gradiva,” 274 
Wallenstein, 179 
Wandlungen und Symbol e der Libido, 
178, 181, 277 
Weimar, 27, 177, 216 
Weininger, 67, 103, 278 
Widerstand (defined), 270 
Widmann, 106 
Wiederholungszwang (defined), 270 
“ Wiener medizinische Blatter,” 107,278 
Will, 181 
Will, Free, 
See 
Free Will 
Will-to-Power, 145, 147, 149, 151, 166, 
181 
See also 
Inferiority Complex 
Wish-Fulfilment, 221 
Wit, 32 
Wit and its relation to the Unconscious, 
274 
Wittels, 135, 213, 278 
Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbe- 
wussten, 32, 274 
Woman’s Question, 147, 209-11, 231-2 
Womb, Return to, 
See 
Return 
Worcester University, 136 
Wendt, 130 
Zarathtjstra, 63 
Zeigelust (defined), 265 
Zeitgemdsses iiber Krieg und Tod, 276 
“ Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse,” 140, 
191, 278 
“ Zentralblatt fur Therapie,” 23 
Zees, 255 
Zola, 188, 225 
Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, 273 
Zur Einfiihrung des Narzissmus, 199 
Zur Qenealogie der Moral, 245, 277 
Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytische 
Bewegung, 276 
Zur Kenntniss der cerebralen Diplegien 
des Kindesalters (im Anschluss an 
die Little'sche Krankheit, 273 
Zur Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen, 
275 
Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, 
21, 43, 60, 98, 100, 101, 107, 192, 
274 
Zurich, 135, 136, 201 
Zurich School, 128, 135, 136, 176-96, 
203, 219, 232, 233 
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