lows that analysis was then more or less closely concerned with the symptoms, that is to say, the symptoms were analyzed—the work of analysis began with the symptoms, a method abandoned to-day. The cathartic method, and the theory on which it is based, are, as you know, accepted by other colleagues, so far as they are interested at all in psychoanalysis, and you will find some appreciation and quotation of the theory, as well as of the method, in several text-books.
The Traumatic Theory Criticized
Although, as a matter of fact, the discovery of Breuer and Freud is certainly true, as can easily be proved by every case of hysteria, several objections can be raised to the theory. It must be acknowledged that their method shows with wonderful clearness the connection between the actual symptoms and the shock, as well as the psychological consequences which necessarily follow from the traumatic event, but nevertheless, a doubt arises as to the etiological significance of the so-called trauma or shock.
It is extremely difficult for any critical observer of hysteria to admit that a neurosis, with all its complications, can be based on events in the past, as it were on one emotional experience long past. It is more or less fashionable at present to consider all abnormal psychic conditions, in so far as they are of exogenic growth, as the consequences of hereditary degeneration, and not as essentially influenced by the psychology of the patient and the environment. This conception is too narrow, and not justified by the facts. To use an analogy, we know perfectly well how to find the right middle course in dealing with the etiology of tuberculosis. There are, of course, cases of tuberculosis where in earliest childhood the germ of the disease falls upon a soil predisposed by heredity, so that even in the most favorable conditions the patient cannot escape his fate. None the less, there are also cases where, under favorable conditions, illness can be prevented, despite a predisposition to the disease. Nor must we forget that there are still other cases without hereditary disposition or individual inclination, and, in spite of this, fatal infection occurs. All this holds equally true of the neuroses, where matters are not essentially different in their method of procedure than they are in general pathology. Neither a theory in which
