The Historical Pattern of Psycho-Analysis

Abstract

r NHE NEWCOMER to Western Europe can 11ardly fail to be struck by the interest accorded to psycho-analysis in this part of the svorld. f . In big centres such as London or Paris this interest far exceeds any scientific curiosity; psycho-analysis has become not only a fashionable topic of conversation, but an atmosphere. It is only fair to state that this atmosphere prevails in a particular social stratum that could appropnately be described as the middle classes of Western culture. To these classes belong people for whom intellectual preoccupations or any dealings with ideas are a spare-time activity. The cultural importance of these people, much more numerous in the West than anywhere else, is not yet fully assessed. At the moment they show a growing interest in cultural productions, and a weakening of the critical sense at the same time. W. H. Auden had perhaps these people in mind when trying to sketch the popular conception of Freudianism as following: (I) Sex pleasure is the only real pleasure; (2) All reasoning is false and consists merely of rationalization; (3) It is my parent's fault that I am not Shakespeare or Napoleon, and (4) Virtue means do as you like. And yet the present popularity of psycho-analysis does not result primarily from its attitude towards sexual life. The widespread belief that psycho analysis is the right cure for all sorts of individual and even collective troubles confers upon it a prestige seldom found in the evolution of any other psych logical doctrine. Not less important is the conviction that psycho-analysis has opened new vistas for research not only in psychology but in all the social sciences, ethics, sociology, economics, politics, art criticism, anthropology, etc. If psycho-analysis is not an epoch-making discovery, a new srision of life, a Copernican idea, then it is nothing. This kind of praise is accorded even by people who are professionals in the field of culture. Copernicus destroyed the belief in the central position of the earth, Darwin destroyed the pride in human uniqueness, and Freud revealed the extent to which consciousness is the plaything of the Unconscious, says one of them.l The concept of the strusfgre of mind was an inevitable consequence of Freud's discovery of un-