Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of ViennaFreud, Sigmund
Science
Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
By thus emphasizing the unconscious in mental life we have called forth
all the malevolence in humanity in opposition to psycho-analysis. Do not
be astonished at this and do not suppose that this opposition relates to
the obvious difficulty of conceiving the Unconscious or to the relative
inaccessibility of the evidence which supports its existence. I believe
it has a deeper source. Humanity has in the course of time had to endure
from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naïve self-love.
The first was when it realized that our earth was not the centre of the
universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly
conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of
Copernicus, although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very
similar. The second was when biological research robbed man of his
peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him
to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal
nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time
upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors,
and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries.
But man’s craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most
bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is
endeavouring to prove to the “ego” of each one of us that he is not even
master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the
veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in
his own mind. We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only
ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it appears
to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by
empirical evidence which touches every man closely. This is the kernel
of the universal revolt against our science, of the total disregard of
academic courtesy in dispute, and the liberation of opposition from all
the constraints of impartial logic. And besides this, we have been
compelled to disturb the peace of the world in yet another way, as you
will soon hear.
NINETEENTH LECTURE
RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION
We now need more data before we can advance further in our understanding
of the neuroses; two observations lie to hand for us. Both are very
remarkable and at first were very surprising. You are of course prepared
for both of them by the work we did last year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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