mental processes in the child is so meagre that we are after all not in any position to say where the greater trouble lies, whether in the parents, in the child, or in the conception of the milieu. Only psychanalyses of the kind that Professor Freud has published in our Jahrbuch, 1909, will help us out of this difficulty. Such comprehensive and profound observations should act as a strong inducement to all teachers to occupy themselves with Freud’s psychology. This psychology offers more for practical pedagogy than the physiological psychology of the present.
Lecture III
experiences concerning the psychic life of the child
Ladies and Gentlemen: In the last lecture we have seen how important for later life are the emotional processes of childhood. In to-day’s lecture I should like to give you some insight into the psychic life of the child through the analysis of a 4-year-old girl. It is much to be regretted that there are doubtless few among you who have had opportunity to read the analysis of “Little John” (Kleiner Hans), which has been published by Freud during the current year.[1] I should properly begin by giving you the content of that analysis, so that you might be in a position to compare for yourselves the results of Freud with those obtained by me, and to observe the marked, even astonishing, similarity between the unconscious creations of the two children. Without a knowledge of the fundamental analysis of Freud, much in the report of the following case will appear to you strange, incomprehensible, and perhaps unacceptable. I beg you, however, to defer final judgment and to enter upon the consideration of these new subjects with a kindly disposition, for such pioneer work in virgin soil requires not only the greatest patience on the part of the investigator, but also the unprejudiced attention of his audience. Because the Freudian investigations apparently involve an indelicate discussion of the most intimate secrets of sexuality many people have had a feeling of repulsion and have therefore rejected everything as a matter of course without any real proof. This, unfortunately, has almost always been the fate of Freud’s doctrines until now. One must not come to the consideration of these matters with the firm conviction that they do not exist, else it may easily come to pass that for the prejudiced they really do not exist. One should perhaps for the moment assume the author’s point of view and investigate these phenomena under his guidance. In this way only can
- ↑ Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Band I, Deuticke, Wien.
