946

II

BEGINNING with the year 1902, a number of young doctors gathered
around me with the expressed intention of learning, practising, and
spreading psychoanalysis. The impetus for this came from a colleague
who had himself experienced the beneficial effects of the analytic therapy.
We met on regular evenings at my home and discussed subjects accord-
ing to certain rules. The guests endeavored to orient themselves in this
strange and new realm of investigation and to interest others in it. One
day a young graduate of the technical school was admitted to our circle
through a manuscript which showed very unusual understanding. We
induced him to go through college and the university, and then devote
himself to the non-medical application of psychoanalysis. Thus, the little
society acquired in him a zealous and reliable secretary, and I gained in
Otto Rank a most faithful helper and collaborator.

The little circle soon expanded, and in the course of the next few years
changed its composition often. On the whole, I could say to myself that in
the wealth and variety of talent our circle was hardly inferior to the staff
of any clinical teacher. From the very beginning, it included those men
who later were to play a considerable, if not always an agreeable, part in
the history of the psychoanalytic movement. But these developments
could not be imagined at that time. I was satisfied and I believe I did all
I could to convey to the others what I knew and had experienced. There
were only two inauspicious circumstances which at last estranged me in-
wardly from this circle. I could not succeed in establishing among the
members that friendly relation which should obtain among men doing
the same difficult work, nor could I crush out the quarrels about the
priority of discoveries, for which there were ample opportunities under
these conditions of working in common. The difficulties of teaching the
practice of psychoanalysis, which are particularly great, and are often to
blame for the present dissension among psychoanalysts, already made
themselves felt in this Viennese private psychoanalytic society. I, myself,
did not venture to present an as yet incomplete technique, or a theory
which was still in the making, with that authority which might have spared
the others many a pitfall and ultimate derailment. The self-reliance of

947

mental workers, their early independence of the teacher, is always gratify-
ing psychologically, but a scientific gain only results when certain, not
too frequently occurring, personal conditions are also fulfilled in the
workers. For psychoanalysis in particular a long and severe discipline
and training in self-control is really necessary. In view of the courage dis-
played by devotion to a subject so ridiculed and poor in prospects, I was
disposed to tolerate among the members much to which I would otherwise
have objected. Besides, the circle included not only physicians, but other
cultured men, such as authors and artists, who had recognized something
significant in psychoanalysis. The Interpretation of Dreams, the book
on Wit, and other writings had already shown that the principles of
psychoanalysis cannot be restricted to the medical field, but are capable
of application to various other mental sciences.

In 1907 the situation suddenly changed at one stroke, contrary to all
expectations. It appeared that psychoanalysis had unobtrusively awak-
ened interest and had gained some friends, and that there were even some
scientific workers who were ready to admit their allegiance to it. A com-
munication from Bleuler had already acquainted me with the fact that
my works were studied and applied in Burghölzli.¹ In January 1907, the
first man connected with the Zürich Clinic, Dr. Eitingon, visited me in
Vienna. Other visitors soon followed, thus leading to a lively exchange of
ideas. Finally, on the invitation of Dr. C. G. Jung, at that time still an
assistant physician at Burghölzli, the first meeting took place at Salzburg
in the spring of 1908, where the friends of psychoanalysis from Vienna,
Zürich, and other places met together. The result of this first psycho-
analytic congress was the founding of a periodical, which began to appear
in 1909, under the name of “Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psycho-
patholgische Forschungen,” published by Bleuler and Freud, and edited
by Jung. A close comradeship in the work of Vienna and Zürich found
expression in this publication.

I have repeatedly acknowledged with gratitude the great efforts of the
Zürich School of Psychiatry in the spreading of psychoanalysis, espe-
cially those of Bleuler and Jung, and I do not hesitate to do the same
today, even under such changed circumstances. It was certainly not the
partisanship of the Zürich School, which at that time first directed the
attention of the scientific world to the subject of psychoanalysis. The
latency period had just come to an end and everywhere psychoanalysis
was becoming the object of constantly increasing interest. But whilst in
all the other places this manifestation of interest resulted first in nothing
but a violent and emphatic repudiation of the subject, in Zürich, on the
contrary, the dominant feeling was that of agreement. In no other place
could such a compact little gathering of adherents be found, nor a public

¹The Clinic of Psychiatry, Zürich.

948

clinic placed at the service of psychoanalytic investigation, or a clinical
teacher who considered the principles of psychoanalysis as an integral
part of the teaching of psychiatry. The Zürich group became, as it were,
the nucleus of the little band who were fighting for the recognition of
psychoanalysis. Only in Zürich was there a possible opportunity to learn
the new art and to apply it in practice. Most of my present day followers
and co-workers came to me by way of Zürich, even those who might have
found, geographically speaking, a shorter road to Vienna than to Switzer-
land. Vienna lies in an eccentric position from western Europe, which
houses the great centers of our culture. For many years Vienna has been
much affected by strong prejudices. The representatives of all the most
prominent nations gather in Switzerland, which is very active mentally,
and an infective lesion there was sure to be of great importance for the
dissemination of the “psychic epidemic,” as Hoch of Freiburg has called
psychoanalysis.

According to the testimony of a colleague who was a witness of the
developments at Burghölzli, it may be asserted that psychoanalysis awak-
ened interest there very early. In Jung’s work on occult phenomena, pub-
lished in 1902, there was already an allusion to dream-interpretation.
Ever since 1903 or 1904, according to my informant, psychoanalysis has
stood in the foreground. After the establishment of personal relations
between Vienna and Zürich, a society was also founded in Burghölzli in
1907, which discussed the problems of psychoanalysis at regular meet-
ings. In the bond that united the Vienna and Zürich schools, the Swiss
were by no means mere recipients. They had already produced important
scientific work, the results of which were of much use to psychoanalysis.
The association experiment, started by the Wundt School, had been in-
terpreted by them in the psychoanalytic sense and had proved itself use-
ful in unexpected ways. Thus, it had become possible to get rapid ex-
perimental confirmation of psychoanalytic facts and to demonstrate ex-
perimentally to beginners certain relationships which the analyst would
only have been able to talk about. The first bridge leading from experi-
mental psychology to psychoanalysis had thus been constructed.

In psychoanalytic treatment, however, the association experiment en-
ables one to make only a preliminary, qualitative analysis of the case; it
offers no essential contribution to the technique, and is really not in-
dispensable in the work of analysis. Of more importance, however, was
another discovery of the Zürich School, or rather, of its two leaders,
Bleuler and Jung. The former pointed out that a great many purely psy-
chiatric cases can be explained by the same psychoanalytic processes as
those used in dreams and in the neuroses (Bleuler’s “Freudsche Mechan-
ismen”) and Jung successfully applied the analytic method of interpre-
tation in the strangest and most obscure phenomena of dementia praecox.

949

the origin of which then appeared quite clear when correlated with the
life and interests of the patient. From that time on, it became impossible
for the psychiatrists to ignore psychoanalysis. Bleuler’s great work on
Schizophrenie (1911) in which the psychoanalytic points of view are
placed on an equal footing with the systematic clinical one, completed
this success.

I will not omit pointing out a divergence which was already at that
time noticeable in the direction of the two schools. As early as 1897, I had
published the analysis of a case of schizophrenia which showed, however,
paranoid trends, so that its solution could not have anticipated the results
of Jung’s analyses. But to me the important element had not been the
interpretation of the symptoms, but rather the psychic mechanisms of the
disease, and above all, the similarity of this mechanism with the one
already known in hysteria. No light had been thrown at that time on the
difference between these two maladies. I was then already working toward
a theory of the libido in the neuroses, which was to explain all neurotic as
well as psychotic appearances on the basis of abnormal drifts of the libido.
The Swiss investigators lacked this point of view. So far as I know, Bleu-
ler, even today, adheres to an organic causation for the forms of dementia
praecox, and Jung, whose book on this malady appeared in 1907;¹⁾ upheld
the toxic theory of the same at the Congress at Salzburg in 1908, which
though not excluding it, goes far beyond the libido theory. On this same
point, he came to grief later (1912), in that he then used too much of the
material which he refused altogether previously.

A third contribution from the Swiss School, which is probably to be
ascribed entirely to Jung, I do not value as highly as do others who are
not in as close contact with it. I speak of the theory of the complexes,
which grew out of the “Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien” (1906–1910).
It has neither produced a psychological theory in itself, nor has it been
easy to insert it into the context of the psychoanalytic principles. On the
other hand, the word, “complex,” has gained for itself the right of citizen-
ship in psychoanalysis, as a convenient and often an indispensable term
for descriptive summaries of psychologic facts. None other among the
names and designations, newly coined as a result of psychoanalytic needs,
has attained such widespread popularity; but no other term has been so
misapplied to the detriment of clear thinking. In psychoanalytic diction,
one often spoke of the “return of the complex,” when “the return of the
repression” was intended to be conveyed, or one became accustomed to
saying “I have a complex against him,” when more correctly he should
have said “a resistance.”

In the years following 1907 when the schools of Vienna and Zürich

¹⁾Jung: The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, translated by A. A. Brill, Monograph
Series.

950

were united, psychoanalysis received that extraordinary impetus, the
signs of which are still discernible today. This is shown by the spread of
psychoanalytic literature and by the increase in the number of doctors
who desire to practise or learn it, as well as by the mass of attacks upon
it at congresses and learned societies. It has wandered into the most dis-
tant countries; it shocked psychiatrists everywhere, and has gained the
attention of the cultured laity and workers in other scientific fields.
Havelock Ellis, who has followed its development with sympathy without
ever calling himself its adherent, wrote, in 1911, in a paper for the Aus-
tralasian Medical Congress: “Freud’s psychoanalysis is now championed
and carried out not only in Austria and in Switzerland, but in the United
States, in England, India, Canada, and, I doubt not, in Australasia.”¹

A doctor from Chile (probably a German) appeared at the International
Congress in Buenos Ayres in 1910, and spoke on behalf of the existence
of infantile sexuality and praised the results of psychoanalytic therapy
in obsessions.² An English neurologist in Central India informed me
through a distinguished colleague who came to Europe, that the cases of
Mohammedan Indians, on whom he had practised analysis, showed no
other etiology of their neuroses than our European patients.

The introduction of psychoanalysis into North America took place
under particularly glorious auspices. In the autumn of 1909, Jung and
myself were invited by President Stanley Hall, of Clark University, to
take part in the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the opening
of Clark University, by giving some lectures in German. We found, to
our great astonishment, that the unprejudiced men of that small but
respected pedagogic-philosophical university knew all the psychoanalytic
writings and had honored them in their lectures to their students. Thus,
even in prudish America one could, at least in academic circles, discuss
freely and treat scientifically all those things that are regarded as of-
fensive in life. The five lectures that I improvised at Worcester then ap-
peared in English in the American Journal of Psychology; later on, they
were printed in German under the title, “Über Psychoanalyse.” Jung
lectured on diagnostic association studies and on “conflicts in the psychic
life of the child.”³ We were rewarded for it with the honorary degree of
LL.D. During this week of celebration at Worcester, psychoanalysis was
represented by five persons. Besides Jung and myself, there were Ferenczi,
who had joined me as travelling-
companion, Ernest Jones, then of Toronto
University (Canada), now in London, and A. A. Brill, who was already
practising psychoanalysis in New York.

¹Havelock Ellis, “The Doctrines of the Freudian School.”

²G. Greve, “Sobre Psicologia y Psicoterapia de ciertos Estados angustiosos.” See
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Vol. I, p. 594.

³Translated by A. A. Brill, American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XX.

951

The most noteworthy personal relationship which resulted at Worcester
was that established with James J. Putnam, teacher of neuropathology at
Harvard University. For years he had expressed a disparaging opinion of
psychoanalysis, but now he befriended it and recommended it to his
countrymen and his colleagues in numerous lectures, rich in content and
fine of form. The respect which he enjoyed in America, owing to his char-
acter, his high moral standard and his keen love for truth, was very help-
ful to the cause of psychoanalysis and protected it against the denuncia-
tions to which it might otherwise have early succumbed. Yielding too
much to the great ethical and philosophic bent of his nature, Putnam later
required of psychoanalysis what, to me, seems an impossible demand. He
wished that it should be pressed into the service of a certain moral philo-
sophical conception of the universe; but Putnam has remained the chief
prop of the psychoanalytic movement in his native land.

For the diffusion of this movement, Brill and Jones deserve the greatest
credit. With a self-denying industry, they constantly brought under the
notice of their countrymen, through their works, the easily observable
fundamental principles of psychoanalysis of everyday life, of the dream
and of the neuroses. Brill has strengthened these influences by his med-
ical activities and his translations of my writings: Jones, by illuminating
lectures and clever discussions at the American Congresses.¹ The lack of
a rooted scientific tradition and the lesser rigidity of official authority
have been of decided advantage to the impetus given to psychoanalysis in
America by Stanley Hall. It was characteristic there from the beginning
that professors, heads of insane asylums, as well as independent practi-
tioners, all showed themselves equally interested in psychoanalysis. But
just for this very reason it is clear that the fight for psychoanalysis must
be fought to a decisive end, where the greater resistance has been met with,
namely, in the countries of the old cultural centers.

Of the European countries, France has so far shown herself the least
receptive towards psychoanalysis, although creditable writings by the
Zürich physician, A. Maeder, have opened up for the French reader an
easy path to its principles. The first indications of interest came from
provincial France. Moricheau-Beauchant (Poitiers) was the first French
man who openly accepted psychoanalysis. Régis and Hesnard (Bordeaux)
have lately tried (1913) to overcome the prejudices of their countrymen
by an exhaustive and senseful presentation of the subject, which takes
exception only to symbolicism. In Paris itself, there still appears to reign
the conviction (given such oratorical expression at the London Congress in

¹ The collected publications of these two authors have appeared in book form:
Brill, “Psychoanalysis, Its Theories and Practical Applications,” 1912, 2nd edition,
1914, 3rd edition, 1922, Saunders, Philadelphia, and E. Jones’s “Papers on Psycho-
analysis,” 1913, Wood and Company, New York.

952

1913 by Janet) that everything good in psychoanalysis only repeats, with
slight modifications, the views of Janet–everything else in psychoanalysis
being bad. Janet himself had to stand at this Congress a number of correc-
tions from Ernest Jones, who was able to reproach him for his lack of
knowledge of the subject. We cannot, however, forget the credit due Janet
for his works on the psychology of the neuroses, although we must re-
pudiate his claims.

Italy, after many promising starts, ceased to take further interest.
Owing to personal connections, psychoanalysis gained an early hearing
in Holland: Van Emden, Van Ophuijsen, Van Renterghem (“Freud en
zijn school”) and the two doctors Stärke are busy in Holland, particularly
on the theoretical side.¹⁾ The interest in psychoanalysis in scientific circles
in England developed very slowly, but the indications are that just here,
favored by the English liking for the practical and their passionate cham-
pionship of justice, a flourishing future awaits psychoanalysis.

In Sweden, P. Bjerre, successor to Wetterstrand, has, at least tempo-
rarily, given up hypnotic suggestion in favor of analytic treatment. A.
Vogt (Christiania) honored psychoanalysis already in 1907 in his “Psy-
kiatriens gruntraek,” so that the first text-book on psychiatry that took
any notice of psychoanalysis was written in Norwegian. In Russia, psy-
choanalysis is very generally known and widespread; almost all my writ-
ings, as well as those of other advocates of analysis, are translated into
Russian. But a deeper grasp of the analytic teaching has not yet shown
itself in Russia. The contributions written by Russian physicians and
psychiatrists are not at present noteworthy. Only Odessa possesses a
trained psychoanalyst in the person of M. Wulff. The introduction of psy-
choanalysis into the science and literature of Poland is due chiefly to the
endeavors of L. Jekels. Hungary, geographically so near to Austria,
scientifically so foreign to it, has given to psychoanalysis only one co-
worker, S. Ferenczi, but such an one as is worth a whole society.

The standing of psychoanalysis in Germany can be described in no
other way than to state that it is the cynosure of all scientific discussion,
and evokes from physicians as well as from the laity, opinions of decided
rejection, which, so far, have not come to an end, but which, on the con-
trary, are constantly renewed and strengthened. No official seat of learn-
ing has, so far, admitted psychoanalysis. Successful practitioners who
apply it are few. Only a few institutions, such as that of Binswanger in
Kreuzlingen (on Swiss soil) and Marcinowski’s in Holstein, have opened
their doors to psychoanalysis. In the critical city of Berlin, we have K.
Abraham, one of the most prominent representatives of psychoanalysis.

¹The first official recognition that psychoanalysis and dream interpretation received
was extended to them by the psychiatrist, Jelgersma, rector of the University of
Leyden, in his rectorship address February 1, 1914.

953

He was formerly an assistant of Bleuler. One might wonder that this state
of things has thus continued for a number of years without any change, if
it was not known that the above account merely describes the superficial
appearances. One must not overestimate the significance of the rejection
of psychoanalysis by the official representatives of science, the heads of
institutions, as well as their young following. It is easy to understand why
the opponents loudly raise their voices whilst the followers, being intimi-
dated, keep silent. Many of the latter, whose first contributions to analysis
raised high expectations, later withdrew from the movement under the
pressure of circumstances. But the movement itself strides ahead quietly.
It is always gaining new supporters among psychiatrists and the laity. It
constantly increases the number of readers of psychoanalytic literature
and thus forces the opponents to a more violent attempt at defense. In
the course of these years, I have read, perhaps a dozen times, in the re-
ports of the transactions of certain congresses and of meetings of scientific
societies, or in reviews of certain publications, that psychoanalysis was
now dead, that it was finally overcome and settled. The answer to all this
would have to read like the telegram from Mark Twain to the newspaper
that falsely announced his death: “The report of my death is grossly
exaggerated.” After each of these death-notices, psychoanalysis has
gained new followers and co-workers and has created for itself new or-
gans. Surely to be reported dead is an advance over being treated with
dead silence!

Hand in hand with its territorial expansion just described, psycho-
analysis became enlarged with regard to its contents through its en-
croaching upon fields of knowledge outside of the study of the neuroses
and psychiatry. I will not treat in detail the development of this part of
our branch of science since this was excellently done by Rank and Sachs
(in Löwenfeld’s “Grenzfragen”) ¹⁾ which presents exhaustively just these
achievements in the work of analysis. Besides, here everything is in in-
choate form, hardly worked out, mostly only preliminary and sometimes
only in the stage of an intention. Every honest thinker will find herein no
grounds for reproach. There is a tremendous amount of problems for a
small number of workers, whose chief activity lies elsewhere, who are
obliged to attack the special problems of the new science with only ama-
teurish preparation. These workers, hailing from the psychoanalytic
field, make no secret of their dilettantism; they only desire to be guides
and temporary occupants of the places of those specialists to whom they
recommend the analytic technique and principles until the latter are
ready to take up this work themselves. That the results aimed at are, even
now, not at all insignificant, is due partly to the fruitfulness of the psy-
 

¹An English translation has now appeared in the Nervous and Mental Disease
Monograph Series, No. 23.

954

choanalytic method, and partly to the circumstance that already, there
are a few investigators who, without being physicians, have made the
application of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences their lifework.

Most of these psychoanalytic applications can be traced, as is easily
understood, to the impetus given by my early analytic works. The an-
alytic examinations of nervous patients and neurotic manifestations of
normal persons drove me to the assumption of psychological relationships
which, most certainly, could not be limited only to that field. Thus, anal-
ysis presented us not only with the explanation of pathological occur-
rences, but also showed us their connection with normal psychic life, and
uncovered undreamed-of relations between psychiatry and a variety of
other sciences dealing with activities of mind. Thus, certain typical
dreams furnished the understanding of many myths and fairy tales. Rik
lin and Abraham followed this hint and began those investigations about
myths which have found their completion in the works of Rank on Mythol-
ogy, works which do full justice to all the requirements of the specialist.
The prosecution of dream-symbolology led to the very heart of the prob-
lem of mythology, folk-lore (Jones, Storfer) and of religious abstraction.
At one of the psychoanalytic congresses, the audience was deeply im-
pressed when a student of Jung pointed out the similarity of the phantasy-
formation of schizophrenics with the cosmogonies of primitive times and
peoples. In a later elaboration, no longer free from objection, yet very
interesting, Jung made use of mythological material in an attempt to
harmonize the neurotic with religious and mythological phantasies.

Another path led from the investigation of dreams to the analysis of
poetic creations and finally, to the analysis of authors and artists them-
selves. Very soon, it was discovered that the dreams invented by writers
stand in the same relation to analysis as do genuine dreams.¹ The con-
ception of the unconscious psychic activity enabled us to get the first
glimpse into the nature of the poetic creativeness. The valuation of the
emotional feelings, which we were forced to recognize while studying the
neuroses, enabled us to recognize the sources of artistic productions and
brought up the problem as to how the artist reacts to those stimuli and
with what means he disguises his reactions.² Most psychoanalysts with
wide interests have furnished contributions from their works for the
treatment of these problems, which are among the most attractive in the
application of psychoanalysis. Naturally, here also, opposition was not
lacking from those who are not acquainted with analysis, and expressed
itself with the same lack of understanding and passionate rejection as on

¹Cf. Freud: “Der Wahn und die Träume” in W. Jensen’s “Gradiva.”

²Rank, “Der Künstler,” analyses of poets by Sadger, Reik and others, my little
monograph on “Leonardo da Vinci,” translated by Brill, Dodd Mead and Co., New
York; also Abraham’s “Analysis of Segantini”

955

HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT

the native soil of psychoanalysis. For it was to be expected as a matter of
course, that everywhere psychoanalysis penetrates, it would have to go
through the same struggle with the natives. However, these attempted
invasions have not yet stirred up interest in all fields which will, in the
future, be open to them. Among the strictly scientific applications of anal-
ysis to literature, the deep work of Rank on the theme of incest easily
ranks first. Its content is certain to evoke the greatest unpopularity.
Philological and historical works on the basis of psychoanalysis are few, at
present. I myself dared to venture to make the first attempt into the prob-
lems of the psychology of religion in 1910, when I compared religious
ceremonials with neurotic ceremonials. In his work on the “piety of the
Count of Zinsendorf,” as well as in other contributions, the Rev. Dr.
Pfister, of Zürich, has succeeded in tracing back religious zealotism to
perverse eroticism. In the recent works of the Zürich School, one is more
likely to find that religion becomes injected into the analysis rather than
rationally explained by it.

In my four essays on “Totem and Taboo” I made the attempt to dis-
cuss the problems of race psychology by means of analysis. This should
lead us directly to the origins of the most important institutions of our
civilization, such as state regulations, morality, religion, as well as to the
origins of the interdiction of incest and of conscience. To what extent the
relations thus obtained will be proof to criticism cannot be determined
today.

My book on Wit furnished the first examples of the application of
analytic thinking to esthetic themes. Everything else is still waiting for
workers who can expect a rich harvest in this very field. We are lacking
here in workers from these respective specialties, and in order to attract
such, Hans Sachs founded in 1912 the journal Imago, edited by himself
and Rank. Hitschmann and v. Winterstein made a beginning with the
psychoanalytic elucidation of philosophical systems and personalities.
The continuation and deeper treatment of the same is much to be desired.

The revolutionary findings of psychoanalysis concerning the psychic
life of the child, the part played therein by the sexual instinct (v. Hug-
Helmuth) and the fate of such participation of sexuality which becomes
useless for the purpose of propagation, naturally drew attention to peda-
gogics and instigated the effort to push the analytical viewpoint into the
foreground of this sphere. Recognition is due to the Rev. Pfister for hav-
ing begun this application of analysis with honest enthusiasm and for hav-
ing brought it to the notice of ministers and educators.¹ He succeeded in
winning over a number of Swiss pedagogues as sympathizers in this work.
It is said that some preferred to remain circumspectly in the background.

¹“Die Psychoanalytische Methode,” 1913, Vol. 1 of the Pedagogium, Meumann and
Messner. English translation by Dr. C. R. Payne. Moffat Yard & Co., New York.

956

A portion of the Vienna analysts seem to have landed in their retreat from
psychoanalysis on a sort of medical pedagogy. (Adler and Furtmüller,
“Heilen und Bilden,” 1913.)

I have attempted in these incomplete suggestions to indicate the, as yet,
hardly visible wealth of associations which have sprung up between med-
ical psychoanalysis and other fields of science. There is material for the
work of a whole generation of investigators, and I doubt not that this
work will be done when once the resistance to psychoanalysis as such has
been overcome.¹⁾

To write the history of the resistances, I consider, at present, both fruit-
less and inopportune. It would not be very glorious for the scientific men
of our day. But I will add at once that it has never occurred to me to rail
against the opponents of psychoanalysis merely because they were op-
ponents, not counting a few unworthy individuals, fortune hunters and
plunderers, such as in time of war are always found on both sides. For I
knew how to account for the behavior of these opponents and had besides
discovered that psychoanalysis brings to light the worst in every man.
But I decided not to answer my opponents and, so far as I had influence,
to keep others from polemics. The value of public or literary discussions
seemed to me very doubtful under the particular conditions in which the
fight over psychoanalysis took place. The value of majorities at congresses
or society meetings was certainly doubtful, and my confidence in the
honesty and distinction of my opponents was always slight. Observation
shows that only very few persons are capable of remaining polite, not to
speak of objective, in any scientific dispute, and the impression gained
from a scientific quarrel was always a horror to me. Perhaps this attitude
of mine has been misunderstood, perhaps I have been considered as good-
natured or so intimidated that it was supposed no further consideration
need be shown me.

This is a mistake. I can revile and rave as well as any other, but I am
not able to render into literary form the expressions of the underlying
affects, and therefore I prefer to abstain entirely.

Perhaps in many respects it might have been better had I permitted
free vent to my own passions and to those about me. We have all heard
the interesting attempt at an explanation of the origin of psychoanalysis
from its Viennese milieu. Janet did not scorn to make use of it as late as
1913, although, no doubt, he is proud of being a Parisian. This aperçu
says that psychoanalysis, especially the assertion that the neuroses can
be traced back to disturbances in the sexual life, could only have orig-
inated in a city like Vienna, in an atmosphere of sensuality and immorality
not to be found in other cities, and that it thus represents only a reflection,

¹⁾Cf. my two essays in Scientia, Vol. XIV, 1913, “Das Interesse an der Psycho-
analyse.” Gesammelte Schriften.

957

HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT

the theoretical projection, as it were, of these particular Viennese condi-
tions. Well, I certainly am no local patriot, but this theory has always
seemed to be especially nonsensical, so nonsensical that sometimes I was
inclined to assume that the reproaching of the Vienna spirit was only a
euphemistic substitution for another one which one did not care to bring
up publicly. If the assumptions had been of the opposite kind, we might
be inclined to listen. But even if we assume that there might be a city
whose inhabitants have imposed upon themselves special sexual restric-
tions and at the same time, show a peculiar tendency to severe neurotic
maladies, then such a town might well furnish the soil on which some ob-
server might get the idea of connecting these two facts and of deducting
the one from the other. But neither assumption fits Vienna. The Viennese
are neither more abstemious nor yet more nervous than dwellers in any
other metropolis. Sex matters are a little freer; prudishness is less than in
the cities of western and northern Europe that are so proud of their
chastity. Our supposed observer would, more likely, be led astray by the
particular conditions prevailing in Vienna than be enlightened as to the
cause of the neuroses.

But Vienna has done everything possible to deny her share in the origin
of psychoanalysis. Nowhere else is the inimical indifference of the learned
and cultured circles so clearly evident to the psychoanalyst.

Perhaps I am somewhat to blame for this by my policy of avoiding wide-
spread publicity. If I had caused psychoanalysis to occupy the medical
societies of Vienna with noisy sessions, with an unloading of all passions,
wherein all reproaches and invectives carried on the tongue or in the mind
would have been expressed, then perhaps the ban against psychoanalysis
might, by now, have been removed and its standing no longer might have
been that of a stranger in its native city. As it is, the poet may be right
when he makes Wallenstein say:

“Yet this the Viennese will not forgive me,
That I did them out of a spectacle.”

The task to which I am unequal, namely, that of reproaching the op-
ponents “suaviter in modo” for their injustice and arbitrariness, was
taken up by Bleuler in 1911 and carried out in most honorable fashion in
his work, Freud’s Psychoanalysis: a Defense and a Criticism. It would
be so entirely natural for me to praise this work, critical in two directions,
that I hasten to tell what there is in it I object to. This work appears to me
to be still very partisan, too lenient to the mistakes of our opponents, and
altogether too severe to the shortcomings of our followers. This character-
ization of it may explain why the opinion of a psychiatrist of such high
standing, of such indubitable ability and independence, has not had
greater influence on his colleagues. The author of Affectivity (1906)

958

must not be surprised if the influence of a work is not determined by the
value of its argument but by the tone of its affect. Another part of this
influence—the one on the followers of psychoanalysis—Bleuler himself
destroyed later on by bringing into prominence in 1913, in his Criticism
of the Freudian School, the obverse side of his attitude to psychoanalysis.
Therein, he takes away so much from the structure of the psychoanalytic
principles that our opponents may well be satisfied with the assistance of
this defender. It was not new arguments or better observations that served
Bleuler as a guidance for these verdicts, but only the reference to his own
knowledge, the inadequacy of which the author no longer admits as in his
earlier writings. Here, an almost irreparable loss seemed to threaten psy-
choanalysis. However, in his last utterance (Die Kritiken der Schizoph-
renie, 1914) on the occasion of the attacks made upon him owing to his
introduction of psychoanalysis into his book on “Schizophrenie,” Bleuler
rises to what he himself terms a “haughty presumption”. “But now I
will assume a haughty presumption; I consider that the many psychol-
ogies to date have contributed mighty little to the explanation of the
connection between psychogenetic symptoms and diseases, but that the
depth psychology (‘tiefen Psychologie’) furnishes us a part of the psychol-
ogy still to be created, which the physician needs in order to understand
his patients and to heal them rationally; and I even believe that in my
‘Schizophrenie’ I have taken a very small step towards this.” The first
two assertions are surely correct, the latter may be an error.

Since by the “depth psychology” psychoanalysis alone is to be under-
stood, we may, for the present, remain satisfied with this admission.