represent it as flat. Freud’s next publications[1] were practically unnoticed, although they contributed findings of immeasurable importance to the domain of psychiatry. When in 1900 he produced the first real psychological elucidation of the dream,[2] (previously there had reigned over this territory a suitable nocturnal darkness), he was ridiculed; and when in the middle of the last decade he began to illumine the psychology of sexuality itself,[3] and at the same time the “Zürich school” decided to range itself on his side, a storm of abuse, sometimes of the coarsest kind, burst upon him, nor has it yet ceased to rage. At the last South-west German Congress of alienists in Baden-Baden, the adherents of the new psychology had the pleasure of hearing Hoche, University Professor of Psychiatry at Freiburg in Breisgau, describe the movement in a long and much-applauded address, as an outbreak of mental aberration among doctors. The old proverb: “Medicus medicum non decimat” was here quite put to shame. How carefully the question had been studied was shewn by the naive remark of one of the most distinguished neurologists of Paris, which I myself heard at the International Congress in 1907: “It is true I have not read Freud’s works (he did not happen to know any German!), but as for his theories, they are nothing but a “mauvaise plaisanterie.” Freud, dignified, masterly, once said to me, “I first became clearly conscious of the value of my discoveries when they were met everywhere with resistance and anger; since that time I have judged the value of my work according to the degree of opposition provoked. It is against my sexual theory that the greatest indignation is felt, so it would seem therein lies my best work. Perhaps after all the real benefactors of mankind are its false teachers, for opposition to the false doctrine pushes men willy nilly into truth. Your truth-teller is a pernicious fellow, he drives men into error.”
The reader must now calmly accept the idea that in this
- ↑ Freud, “Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre.” Deuticke: Wien.
- ↑ Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams.” George Allen.
- ↑ Freud, “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.” Monograph Series.
