1

If in what follows I bring any contribution to the history of
the psychoanalytic movement nobody must be surprised at the sub-
jective nature of this paper, nor at the rôle which falls to me
therein. For psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years I was
the only one occupied with it, and all the annoyance which this new
subject caused among my contemporaries has been hurled upon my
head in the form of criticism. Even today, when I am no longer
the only psychoanalyst, I feel myself justified in assuming that none
can know better than myself what psychoanalysis is, wherein it
differs from other methods of investigating the psychic life, what
its name should cover, or what might better be designated as some-
thing else.

In the year 1909, when I was first privileged to speak publicly
on psychoanalysis in an American University, fired by this mo-
mentous occasion for my endeavors, I declared that it was not
myself who brought psychoanalysis into existence. I said that it
was Josef Breuer, who had merited this honor at a time when I
was a student and busy working for my examinations (1880–1882).¹
Since then, well-intentioned friends have frequently repeated that
I then expressed my gratitude out of all due proportion. They
considered that, as on previous occasions, I should have dignified
Breuer’s “cathartic procedure” as merely preliminary to psycho-
analysis, and should have claimed that psychoanalysis itself only
began with my rejection of the hypnotic technique and my intro-
duction of free association. Now it is really a matter of indiffer-
ence whether the history of psychoanalysis be considered to have
started with the cathartic method or only with my modification of

¹ “On Psychoanalysis.” Five lectures given on the occasion of the
twentieth anniversary of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., dedicated to
Stanley Hall. Second edition, 1912. Published simultaneously in English in
the American Journal of Psychology, March, 1910; translated into Dutch,
Hungarian, Polish and Russian.

2

the same. I only enter into this uninteresting question because
some opponents of psychoanalysis are wont to recall, now and then,
that the art of psychoanalysis did not originate with me at all, but
with Breuer. Naturally, this only happens to be the case when
their attitude permits them to find in psychoanalysis something that
is noteworthy; on the other hand when their repudiation of psycho-
analysis is unlimited, then psychoanalysis is always indisputably
my creation. I have never yet heard that Breuer’s great part in
psychoanalysis has brought him an equal measure of insult and re-
proach. As I have recognized long since that it is the inevitable
fate of psychoanalysis to arouse opposition and to embitter people,
I have come to the conclusion that I must surely be the originator
of all that characterizes psychoanalysis. I add, with satisfaction,
that none of the attempts to belittle my share in this much dis-
dained psychoanalysis has ever come from Breuer himself, or could
boast of his support.

The content of Breuer’s discovery has been so often presented
that a detailed discussion of it here may be omitted. Its funda-
mental fact is that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend upon
impressive but forgotten scenes in their lives (traumata). The
therapy founded thereon was to cause the patients to recall and
reproduce these experiences under hypnosis (catharsis), and the
fragmentary theory, deduced from it was that these symptoms cor-
responded to an abnormal use of undischarged sums of excitement
(conversion). In his theoretical contribution to the “Studies of
Hysteria” Breuer, wherever obliged to mention conversion, has
always added my name in parenthesis, as though this first attempt
at a theoretical formulation was my mental property. I think this
allotment refers only to the nomenclature, whilst the conception
itself occurred to us both at the same time.

It is also well known that Breuer, after his first experience with
it, allowed the cathartic treatment to rest for a number of years
and only resumed it after I caused him to do so, on my return from
Charcot. He was then an internist and taken up with a rather
busy medical practice. I had become a physician quite reluctantly

3

but had, at that time, received a strong motive for desiring to help
nervous patients or, at least, to learn to understand something of
their conditions. I had placed reliance on physical therapy and
found myself helpless in the face of disappointments that came to
me with W. Erb’s “Electrotherapy,” so rich in advice and indica-
tions. If I did not, at that time, pilot myself independently to the
opinion later announced by Moebius, that the successes of electro-
therapy in nervous disorders are the results of suggestion, it was
surely only the absence of these successes that was to blame. The
treatment by suggestion in deep hypnosis seemed to offer me at that
time sufficient compensation for the lost electrical therapy. I
learned this treatment through the extremely impressive demon-
strations of Liébault and Bernheim. But the investigation under
hypnosis with which I became acquainted through Breuer, I found,
owing to its automatic manner of working and the simultaneous
gratification of one’s eagerness for knowledge, much more attractive
than the monotonous and violent suggestive command which was
devoid of every possibility of inquiry.

As one of the latest achievements of psychoanalysis, we have
lately been admonished to put the actual conflict and the cause of
the illness into the foreground of analysis. This is exactly what
Breuer and I did in the beginning of our work with the cathartic
method. We guided the patient’s attention directly to the traumatic
scene during which the symptom had arisen, tried to find therein
the psychic conflict and to free the repressed affect. We thus dis-
covered the procedure characteristic of the psychic processes of the
neuroses which I later named regression. The associations of the
patients went back from the scene to be explained, to earlier experi-
ences, and this forced the analysis which was to correct the present
to occupy itself with the past. This regression led even further
backwards. At first it went quite regularly to the time of puberty.
Later, however, such failures as gaps in the understanding tempted
the analytic work further back into the years of childhood which
had, hitherto, been inaccessible to every sort of investigation. This
regressive direction became an important characteristic of the

4

analysis. It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up
anything actual, except by going back to something in the past. It
even proved that every pathological experience presupposes an
earlier one which, though not in itself pathological, lent a patho-
logical quality to the later occurrence. But the temptation to stop
short at the known actual cause was so great that even in later
analyses I yielded to it. In the case of the patient called “Dora,”
carried out in 1899, the scene which caused the outbreak of the
actual illness was known to me. I tried uncounted times to analyse
this experience, but all that I could receive to my direct demands
was the same scanty and broken description. Only after a long
detour, which led through the earliest childhood of the patient, a
dream appeared in the analysis of which the hitherto forgotten
details of the scene were remembered, and this made possible the
understanding and solution of the actual conflict.

From this one example it may be seen how misleading is the
above mentioned admonition and how much of a scientific regression
it is to follow the advice of neglecting the regression in the analytic
technique.

The first difference of opinion between Breuer and myself came
to light on a question of the more intimate psychic mechanism of
hysteria. He still favored a physiological theory, so to speak, and
wished to explain the psychic splitting of consciousness of hysterical
subjects by means of the non-communication of various psychic
states (or states of consciousness, as we then called them). He
thus created the theory of the “hypnoid states,” the results of which
were supposed to bring the unassimilated foreign body into the
“waking consciousness.” I had formulated this to myself less
scientifically. I suspected everywhere tendencies and strivings
analogous to those of everyday life and conceived the psychic split-
ting itself as a result of a repelling process, which I then called
“defense” and later “regression.” I made a short-lived attempt
to reconcile both mechanisms, but as experience showed me always
the same and only one thing, my defense theory, I soon became
opposed to Breuer’s theory of hypnoid states.

5

I am, however, quite certain that this difference of opinion had
nothing to do with the parting of the ways which occurred soon
afterward between us. The latter had a deeper reason, but it
happened in such a manner that at first I did not understand it, and
only later did I learn to interpret it, following many good indexes.
It will be recalled that Breuer had stated, concerning his first
famous patient, that the sexual element had been astonishingly
undeveloped in her and had never contributed anything to her very
marked morbid picture.² I have always wondered why the critics
of my theory of the sexual etiology of the neuroses have not often
opposed it with this assertion of Breuer, and up to this day I do not
know whether in this reticence I am to see a proof of their discre-
tion, or of their lack of observation. Whoever will reread the his-
tory of Breuer’s patient in the light of the experience gained in the
last twenty years, will have no difficulty in understanding the sym-
bolism of the snakes and of the arm. By taking into account also
the situation at the sick-
bed of the father, he will easily guess the
actual meaning of that symptom-
formation. His opinion as to the
part sexuality played in the psychic life of that girl will then differ
greatly from that of her physician. To cure the patient Breuer
utilized the most intensive suggestive rapport which may serve us
as prototype of that which we call “transference.” Now I have
strong grounds to suppose that Breuer, after the disposal of the
symptoms, must have discovered the sexual motility of this trans-
ference by new signs, but that the general nature of this unexpected
phenomenon escaped him, so that here, as though hit by “an
untoward event,” he broke off the investigation. I did not obtain
from him any direct information of this, but at different times he
has given me sufficient connecting links to justify me in making this
combination. And then, as I stood more and more decidedly for
the significance of sexuality in the causation of the neuroses, Breuer
was the first to show me those reactions of unwilling rejection, with
which it was my lot to become so familiar later on, but which I had
then not yet recognized as my unavoidable destiny.

²Breuer and Freud, “Studien über Hysterie,” p. 15, Deuticke, 1895.

6

The fact that a grossly sexual, tender or inimical, transference
occurs in every treatment of a neurosis, although this was neither
desired nor induced by either party, has, for me, always seemed
to be the most unshakable proof that the forces of the neuroses
originate in the sexual life. This argument has surely not been
seriously enough considered, for if it were, there would be no ques-
tion as to where the investigation would tend. For my own con-
viction, it has remained decisive over and above the special results
of the work of the analysis.

Some comfort for the bad reception which my theory of the
sexual etiology of the neuroses met with, even in the closer circle of
my friends—a negative space was soon formed about my person—
I found in the thought that I had taken up the fight for a new and
original idea. One day, however, my memories grouped them-
selves in such a way that this satisfaction was disturbed, but in
return I obtained an excellent insight into the origin of our activi-
ties and into the nature of our knowledge. The idea for which I
was held responsible had not at all originated with me. It had come
to me from three persons, whose opinions could count upon my
deepest respect; from Breuer himself, from Charcot, and from
Chrobak, the gynecologist of our university, probably the most
prominent of our Vienna physicians. All three men had imparted
to me an insight which, strictly speaking, they had not themselves
possessed. Two of them denied their communication to me when
later I reminded them of this; the third (Master Charcot) might
also have done so, had it been granted me to see him again. But
these identical communications, received without my grasping them,
had lain dormant within me, until one day they awoke as an ap-
parently original discovery.

One day, while I was a young hospital doctor, I was accompany-
ing Breuer on a walk through the town when a man came up to him
urgently desiring to speak with him. I fell back and, when Breuer
was free again, he told me, in his kindly, teacher-like manner, that
this was the husband of a patient, who had brought him some news
about her. The wife, he added, behaved in so conspicuous a manner

7

when in company, that she had been turned over to him for treat-
ment as a nervous case. He ended with the remark–“those are
always secrets of the alcove.” Astonished, I asked his meaning
and he explained the expression to me (“secrets of the conjugal
bed”), without realizing how preposterous the matter appeared to
me.

A few years later, at one of Charcot’s evening receptions, I found
myself near the venerated teacher who was just relating to Brouardel
a very interesting history from the day’s practice. I did not hear
the beginning clearly but gradually the story obtained my attention.
It was the case of a young married couple from the far East. The
wife was a great sufferer and the husband was impotent, or exceed-
ingly awkward. I heard Charcot repeat: “Tâchez donc, je vous
assure vous y arriverez.” Brouardel, who spoke less distinctly,
must have expressed his astonishment that symptoms as those of
the young wife should have appeared as a result of such circum-
stances, for Charcot said suddenly and with great vivacity: “Mais,
dans des cas pareils c’est toujours la chose génital, toujours–tou-
jours–toujours.” And while saying that he crossed his hands in
his lap and jumped up and down several times, with the vivacity pe-
culiar to him. I know that for a moment I was almost paralyzed
with astonishment, and I said to myself: “Yes, but if he knows
this why does he never say so?” But the impression was soon for-
gotten; brain-anatomy and the experimental production of hysterical
paralysis absorbed all my interests.

A year later when I had begun my medical activities in Vienna
as a private dozent in nervous diseases I was as innocent and ig-
norant in all that concerned the etiology of the neuroses as any
promising academician could be expected to be. One day I re-
ceived a friendly call from Chrobak, who asked me to take a patient
to whom he could not give sufficient time in his new capacity as lec-
turer at the university. I reached the patient before he did and
learned that she suffered from senseless attacks of anxiety, which
could only be alleviated by the most exact information as to the
whereabouts of her physician at any time in the day. When Chrobak
 

8

appeared, he took me aside and disclosed to me that the patient’s
anxiety was due to the fact that though she had been married
eighteen years, she was still a virgo intacta, that her husband was
utterly impotent. In such cases the physician can only cover the
domestic mishap with his reputation and must bear it if people
shrug their shoulders and say of him: “He is not a good doctor if
in all these years, he has not been able to cure her.” He added:
“The only prescription for such troubles is the one well-
known to us, but which we cannot prescribe. It is:

Penis normalis
dosim
Repetatur!

I had never heard of such a prescription and would like to have
shaken my head at my informant’s cynicism.

I certainly have not uncovered the illustrious origins of this
vicious idea because I would like to shove the responsibility for it
on others. I know well that it is one thing to express an idea once
or several times in the form of a rapid aperçu, and quite another to
take it seriously and literally to lead it through all opposing details
and conquer for it a place among accepted truths. It is the differ-
ence between a light flirtation and a righteous marriage with all its
duties and difficulties. Epouser les idées de– (to marry so and so’s
ideas,) is, at least in French, a quite usual form of speech.

Other doctrines which were contributed to the cathartic method
through my efforts thus transforming it into psychoanalysis, are
the following: The theories of repression and resistance, the addi-
tion of the infantile sexuality, and the usage and interpretation of
dreams for the understanding of the unconscious.

Concerning the theory of repression, I was certain that I worked
independently. I knew of no influence that directed me in any way
to it, and I long considered this idea to be original, till O. Rank
showed us the place in Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and
Idea,” where the philosopher is struggling for an explanation for in-

9

sanity.³ What is there said concerning the striving against the ac-
ceptance of a painful piece of reality agrees so completely with the
content of my theory of repression that, once again, I must be in-
debted to my not being well-read for the possibility of making a dis-
covery. To be sure, others have read this passage and overlooked
it, without making this discovery and perhaps the same would have
happened to me, if, in former years, I had taken more pleasure in
reading philosophical authors. In later years I denied myself the
great pleasure of Nietzsche’s works, with the conscious motive of
not wishing to be hindered in the working out of my psychoanalytic
impressions by any preconceived ideas. Therefore, I had to be pre-
pared—and am so gladly—to renounce all claim to priority in those
many cases in which the laborious psychoanalytic investigation can
only confirm the insights intuitively won by the philosophers.

The theory of repression is the main pillar upon which rests
the edifice of psychoanalysis. It is really the most essential part of
it, and is itself nothing other than the theoretical expression of an
experience which can be repeated at pleasure whenever one analyzes
a neurotic patient without the aid of hypnosis. One is then con-
fronted with a resistance which opposes the analytic work by caus-
ing a failure of memory in order to block it. This resistance had
to be covered by the use of hypnosis; hence the history of psycho-
analysis proper only starts technically with the rejection of hypnosis.
The theoretical value of the fact that this resistance is connected
with an amnesia leads unavoidably to that conception of the un-
conscious psychic activities which is peculiar to psychoanalysis, and
distinguishes it markedly from the philosophical speculations about
the unconscious. It may, therefore, be said that the psychoanalytic
theory endeavors to explain two experiences, which result in a strik-
ing and unexpected manner during the attempt to trace back the
morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source in his life-history;
viz., the facts of transference and of resistance. Every investiga-
tion which recognizes these two facts and makes them the starting
points of its work may call itself psychoanalysis, even if it lead to

³ Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1911, Vol. I, p. 69.

10

other results than my own. But whoever takes up other sides of the
problem and deviates from these two assumptions will hardly escape
the charge of interfering with the rights of ownership through at-
tempted imitation, if he insist upon calling himself a psychoanalyst.
I would very energetically oppose any attempt to count the
principles of repression and resistance as mere assumptions instead
of results of psychoanalysis. Such assumptions of a general psycho-
logical and biological nature exist, and it would be quite to the
point to deal with them in another place. The principle of repres-
sion, however, is an acquisition of the psychoanalytic work, won by
legitimate means, as a theoretical extract from very numerous ex-
periences. Just such an acquisition, but of much later days, is the
theory of the infantile sexuality, of which no count was taken dur-
ing the first years of tentative analytic investigation. At first it was
only noticed that the effect of actual impressions had to be traced
back to the past. However, “the seeker often found more than he
bargained for.” He was tempted always further back into this past
and finally hoped to be permitted to tarry in the period of puberty,
the epoch of the traditional awakening of the sexual impulses. His
hopes were in vain. The tracks led still further back into childhood
and into its earliest years. In the process of this work it became
almost fatal for this young science. Under the influence of the
traumatic theory of hysteria, following Charcot, one was easily in-
clined to regard as real and as of etiological importance the accounts
of patients who traced back their symptoms to passive sexual occur-
rences in the first years of childhood, that is to say, speaking plainly,
to seductions. When this etiology broke down through its own un-
likelihood, and through the contradiction of well-established circum-
stances, there followed a period of absolute helplessness. The anal-
ysis had led by the correct path to such infantile sexual traumas,
and yet these were not true. Thus the basis of reality had been lost.
At that time I would gladly have let the whole thing slide, as did my
respected forerunner Breuer, when he made his unwished-for dis-
covery. Perhaps I persevered only because I had no longer any
choice of beginning something else. Finally I reflected that, after

II

all, no one has a right to despair if he has been disappointed only in
his expectations. He merely needs to review them. If hysterics
refer their symptoms to imaginary traumas, then this new fact sig-
nifies that they create such scenes in their phantasies, and hence
psychic reality deserves to be given a place next to actual reality.
This was soon followed by the conviction that these phantasies
serve to hide the autoerotic activities of the early years of child-
hood, to idealize them and place them on a higher level, and now the
whole sexual life of the child made its appearance behind these phan-
tasies.

In this sexual activity of the first years of childhood, the con-
comitant constitution could finally attain its rights. Disposition and
experience here became associated into an inseparable etiological
unity, in that the disposition raised certain impressions to inciting
and fixed traumas, which otherwise would have remained altogether
banal and ineffectual, whilst the experiences evoked factors from
the disposition which, without them, would have continued to re-
main dormant, and, perhaps, undeveloped. The last word in the
question of traumatic etiology was later on said by Abraham, when
he drew attention to the fact that just the peculiar nature of the
child’s sexual constitution enables it to provoke sexual experiences
of a peculiar kind, that is to say, traumas.

My formulations concerning the sexuality of the child were
founded at first almost exclusively on the results of the analyses of
adults, which led back into the past. I was lacking in opportunity
for direct observation of the child. It was, therefore, an extraordi-
nary triumph when, years later, my discoveries were successfully
confirmed for the greater part by direct observation and analyses of
children of very early years, a triumph that appeared less and less
on reflecting that the discovery was of such a nature that one really
ought to be ashamed of having made it. The deeper one penetrated
into the observation of the child, the more self-evident this fact
seemed, and the more strange, too, became the circumstances that
such pains had been taken to overlook it.

To be sure, so certain a conviction of the existence and sig-

12

nificance of the infantile sexuality can be obtained only, if one fol-
lows the path of analysis, if one goes back from the symptoms and
peculiarities of neurotics to their uttermost sources, the discovery
of which explains what is explainable in them, and permits of modi-
fying what can be changed. I understand that one can arrive at dif-
ferent conclusions if, as was recently done by C. G. Jung, one first
forms for one’s self a theoretical conception of the nature of the
sexual impulse and thereby tries to understand the life of the child.
Such a conception can only be chosen arbitrarily or with regard to
secondary considerations, and is in danger of becoming inadequate
to the sphere in which it was to be utilized. Doubtless, the analytic
way also leads to certain final difficulties and obscurities in regard
to sexuality and its relation to the whole life of the individual; but
these cannot be set aside by speculations, and must wait till solutions
will be found by means of other observations or of observations in
other spheres.

I shall briefly discuss the history of dream-interpretation. This
came to me as the first-fruits of the technical innovation, after, fol-
lowing a dim presentiment, I had decided to replace hypnosis with
free associations. It was not the understanding of dreams towards
which my curiosity was originally directed. I do not know of any
influences which had guided my interest to this or inspired me with
any helpful expectations. Before the cessation of my intercourse
with Breuer I hardly had time to tell him, in so many words, that I
now knew how to translate dreams. During the development of
these discoveries the symbolism of the language of dreams was
about the last thing which became known to me, since, for the under-
standing of symbols, the associations of the dreamer offer but little
help. As I have held fast to the habit of first studying things them-
selves, before looking them up in books, I was able to ascertain for
myself the symbolism of dreams before I was directed to it by the
work of Sherner. Only later I came to value fully this means of
expression of dreams. This was partly due to the influence of the
works of Steckel, who was at first very meritorious but who later
became most perfunctory. The close connection between the psycho-
 

13

analytic interpretation of dreams and the once so highly esteemed
art of dream interpretation of the ancients only became clear to me
many years afterwards. The most characteristic and significant
portion of my dream theory, namely, the reduction of the dream dis-
tortion to an inner conflict, to a sort of inner dishonesty, I found
later in an author to whom medicine but not philosophy is unknown.
I refer to the engineer J. Popper, who had published “Phantasies
of a Realist” under the name of Lynkeus.

The interpretation of dreams became for me a solace and sup-
port in those difficult first years of analysis, when I had to master
at the same time the technique, the clinic and the therapy of the
neuroses, when I stood entirely alone, and in the confusion of prob-
lems and the accumulation of difficulties I often feared to lose my
orientation and my confidence. It often took a long time before
the proof of my assumption, that a neurosis must become compre-
hensible through analysis, was seen by the perplexed patient, but
the dreams, which might be regarded as analogous to the symptoms,
almost regularly confirmed this assumption.

Only because of these successes was I in condition to persevere.
I have, therefore, acquired the habit of measuring the grasp of a
psychological worker by his attitude to the problem of dream inter-
pretation, and I have noticed, with satisfaction, that most of the op-
ponents of psychoanalysis avoided this field altogether, or if they
ventured into it, they behaved most awkwardly. The analysis of
myself, the need of which soon became apparent to me, I carried out
by the aid of a series of my own dreams which led me through all
the happenings of my childhood years. Even today I am of the
opinion that in the case of a prolific dreamer and a person not too
abnormal, this sort of analysis may be sufficient.

By unfurling this developmental history, I believe I have shown
what psychoanalysis is, better than I could have done by a systematic
presentation of the subject. The special nature of my findings I
did not then recognize. I sacrificed, unhesitatingly, my budding
popularity as a physician and an extensive practice among nervous
patients, because I searched directly for the sexual origin of their

14

neuroses. In this way I gained a number of experiences which
definitely confirmed my conviction of the practical significance of
the sexual factor. Without any apprehension, I appeared as
speaker at the Vienna Neurological Society, then under the presi-
dency of Krafft-Ebing, expecting to be compensated, by the interest
and recognition of my colleagues, for my own voluntary sacrifices.
I treated my discoveries as indifferent contributions to science and
hoped that others would treat them in the same way. Only the
silence that followed my lectures, the space that formed about my
person, and the insinuations directed towards me caused me to
realize, gradually, that statements about the part played by sexuality
in the etiology of the neuroses cannot hope to be treated like other
communications. I realized that from then on I would belong to
those who, according to Hebbel’s expression, “have disturbed the
world’s sleep,” and that I could not count upon being treated ob-
jectively and with toleration. But as my conviction of the average
correctness of my observations and the conclusions grew greater
and greater, and as my faith in my own judgment was not small,
any more than was my moral courage, there could be no doubt as to
the issue of this situation. I decided to believe that it fell to my
lot to discover particularly significant associations, and felt pre-
pared to bear the fate which sometimes accompanies such discoveries.

This fate I pictured to myself in the following manner. I would
probably succeed in sustaining myself through the therapeutic suc-
cesses of the new treatment, but science would take no notice of
me in my lifetime. Some decades later, another would surely
stumble upon the same, now untimely things, compel their recognition
and thus bring me to honor as a necessarily unfortunate forerunner.
Meantime I arrayed myself as comfortably as possible à la Robin-
son Crusoe upon my lonely island. When I look back to those lonely
years, from the perplexities and vexatiousness of the present, it
seems to me it was a beautiful and heroic time. The “splendid iso-
lation” did not lack its privileges and charms. I did not need to
read any literature nor to listen to badly informed opponents. I
was subject to no influences, and no pressure was brought to bear

15

on me. I learned to restrain speculative tendencies and, following
the unforgotten advice of my master, Charcot, I looked at the same
things again and often until they began of themselves to tell me
something. My publications, for which I found shelter despite
some difficulty, could safely remain far behind my state of knowl-
edge. They could be delayed as long as I pleased, as there was no
doubtful “priority” to be defended. “The Interpretation of
Dreams,” for example, was completed in all essentials in the begin-
ning of 1896, but was written down only in 1899. The treatment
of “Dora” was finished at the end of 1899. The history of her
illness was completed in the next two weeks, but was only published
in 1905. Meantime my writings were not in the reviewed profes-
sional literature of the day. If an exception was made they were
always treated with scornful or pitying condescension. Sometimes
a colleague would refer to me in one of his publications in very
short and unflattering terms, such as “unbalanced,” “extreme,” or
“very odd.” It happened once that an assistant at the clinic in
Vienna asked me for permission to attend one of my lecture courses.
He listened devoutly and said nothing, but after the last lecture he
offered to accompany me. During this walk he disclosed to me
that, with the knowledge of his chief, he had written a book against
my teachings, but he expressed much regret that he had only come
to know these teachings better through my lectures. Had he known
these before, he would have written very differently. Indeed, he
had inquired at the clinic if he had not better first read “The In-
terpretation of Dreams,” but had been advised against doing so, as
it was not worth the trouble. As he now understood it, he compared
my system of instruction with the Catholic Church. In the interests
of his soul’s salvation I will assume that this remark contained a bit
of sincere recognition. But he ended by saying that it was too late
to alter anything in his book as it was already printed. This particu-
lar colleague did not consider it necessary later on to tell the world
something of the change in his opinions concerning my psychoanal-
ysis. On the contrary, as permanent reviewer of a medical journal,
he showed a preference to follow its development with his hardly
serious comments.

16

Whatever I possessed of personal sensitiveness was blunted in
those years, to my advantage. But I was saved from becoming em-
bittered by a circumstance that does not come to the assistance of
all lonely discoverers. Such a one usually frets himself to find out
the cause of the lack of sympathy or of the rejection he receives from
his contemporaries, and perceives them as a painful contradiction
against the certainty of his own conviction. That did not trouble
me, for the psychoanalytic-
fundamental principles enabled me to
understand this attitude of my environment as a necessary sequence.
If it was true that the associations discovered by me were kept from
the knowledge of the patient by inner affective-
resistances, then this
resistance must manifest itself also in normal persons as soon as the
repressed material is conveyed to them from the outside. It was not
strange that these latter knew how to give intellectual reasons for
their affective rejections of my ideas. This happened just as often
with the patients, and the arguments advanced–arguments are as
common as blackberries, to borrow from Falstaff’s-
speech–were
the same and not exactly brilliant. The only difference was that in
the case of patients one had the means of bringing pressure to bear,
in order to help them recognize and overcome their resistances, but
in the case of those seemingly normal, such help had to be omitted.
To force these normal people to a cool and scientifically-
objective
examination of the subject was an unsolved problem, the solution of
which was best left to time. In the history of science it has often
been possible to verify that the very assertion which, at first, called
forth only opposition, received recognition a little later without the
necessity of bringing forward any new proofs.

That I have not developed any particular respect for the opinion
of the world or any desire for intellectual deference during those
years, when I alone represented psychoanalysis,-
will surprise no one.