Fairness to Freud does not signify, as many fear, a conditionless submission to a dogma; indeed independent judgment can very well be retained beside it. If I, for instance, recognize the complex mechanisms of dreams and hysteria, it does not at all mean that I ascribe to sexual trauma in youth an exclusive significance, as Freud apparently does; still less does it mean that I place sexuality so preponderantly in the foreground, or that I even ascribe to it the psychological universality which Freud postulates under the impression of the very powerful rôle which sexuality plays in the psyche. As for Freud's therapy, it is at best a possible one, and perhaps does not always come up to expectations. Nevertheless, all these are only side issues which completely disappear beside the psychological principles, the discovery of which is Freud's greatest reward, and to which the critic does not pay enough attention. He who wishes to be fair to Freud should act in accordance with the words of Erasmus: Unumquemque move lapidem, omnia experire nihil intentatum relinque.
As my work is often based on experimental examinations, I hope that the reader will pardon me if he finds many references to the "Diagnostischen Associations-Studien."[1]
Zurich, July, 1906.
- ↑ J. A. Barth, Leipzig, 1906.
