Book Description

An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter: THE SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS Psycho-Analysis a Science-Its Subject-Matter- Its Nature and Method-Its ultimate Goal. "IT is the fate of all useful discoveries and improvements to meet with bigoted or interested opposition from those who would willingly remain in the beaten path of habit, rather than acknowledge any change to be profitable." It is fortunate indeed that the above words cannot be applied in completeness to the new knowledge brought before the world of to-day by Professor Freud, but there is enough appropriateness in them to remind us that Psycho-Analysis has been, and probably for a long period still may be, face to face with a bitter struggle before men's minds are sufficiently understanding to render them willing to investigate it without prejudice. The reason for this is not far to seek. Freud himself has told us that his researches led him to one overwhelming certainty, namely, that the last thing man desires to know and understand is himself, and the words of Samuel Butler [God the Known and God the Unknown, p. 9] serve to show us a part of the secret. "Mankind has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is felt to touch the heart of all of us, the more incumbent it is considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist, to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that it has long been finally settled so that there is now no question concerning it." But this impulse to turn away from self-knowledge can, and in the interests of the individual's and society's happiness must, be overcome; for the help he has given towards such overcoming, a great debt of gratitude is owed to Freud. His work may be roughly described as the provision of new keys by which we can now unlock doors in the human personality hitherto impassable, through which doors we may pass into areas unguessed at formerly. By the use of the instruments he has forged, we shall in the future be able not only to prevent, to a very large extent, the creation of the neurotic and mentally diseased, but also to set the feet of the new generations on a more desirable path, leading to a destiny more splendid and satisfying than we yet dream of.The task of Freud has been a hard and laborious one, fraught with difficulty and faced with every variety of opposition. There is neither space nor opportunity here to speak of the history of the Psycho-Analytic movement, a history of twenty years' work and struggle. Those interested can read for themselves Freud's own detailed account given in an English translation in TThe Psychoanalytic Review.