and the same must be said of the sexualism of neurotic phantasy in general. It is not a primary phenomenon, based upon a perverted sexual disposition, but merely secondary, and a consequence of a failure to apply the stored-up libido in a suitable way. I realize that this is a very old view, but this does not prevent its being true. The fact that the patient himself very often believes that this infantile phantasy is the real cause of the neurosis, does not prove that he is right in his belief, or that a theory following the same belief is right either. It may look as if it were so, and I must confess that indeed very many cases do have that appearance. At all events, it is perfectly easy to understand how Freud came to this view. Every one having any psychoanalytic experience will agree with me here.
To sum up: I cannot see the real ætiology of a neurosis in the various manifestations of infantile sexual development and their corresponding phantasies. The fact that they are exaggerated and put into the foreground in neurosis is a consequence of the stored-up energy or libido. The psychological trouble in neurosis, and neurosis itself, can be considered as an act of adaptation that has failed. This formulation might reconcile certain views of Janet’s with Freud’s view, that a neurosis is—under a certain aspect—an attempt at self-cure; a view which can be and has been applied to many diseases.
Here the question arises whether it is still advisable to bring to light all the patient’s phantasies by analysis, if we now consider them as of no ætiological significance. Psychoanalysis hitherto has proceeded to the unravelling of these phantasies because they were considered to be ætiologically significant. My altered view concerning the theory of neurosis does not change the procedure of psychoanalysis. The technique remains the same. We no longer imagine we are unearthing the end-root of the disease, but we have to pull up the sexual phantasies because the energy which the patient needs for his health, that is, for his adaptation, is attached to them. By means of psychoanalysis the connexion between the conscious and the libido in the
