I had already made attempts at earlier stages of my work to arrive at some more general points of view, starting from the observations of psychoanalysis. In a short essay, “Formulations regarding the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,”[19] published in 1911, I drew attention (and there was, of course, nothing original in this), to the domination of the “pleasure-pain principle” in mental life and to its displacement by the so-called “reality principle.” Later on (1915–17), I made an attempt to produce a “Metapsychology.” By this I meant a method of approach according to which every mental process is considered in relation to three coördinates, which I described as _dynamic_, _topographical_, and _economic_ respectively; and this seemed to me to represent the farthest goal that psychology could attain. The attempt remained no more than a torso; after writing two or three papers—“Instincts and their Vicissitudes,” “Repression,” “The Unconscious,” “Mourning and Melancholia,” etc[20]—I broke off, wisely perhaps, since the time for theoretical predictions of this kind had not yet come. In my latest speculative works I have set about the task of dissecting our mental apparatus on the basis of the analytic view of pathological facts and have divided it into an _ego_, and _id_, and a _super-ego_.[21] The super-ego is the heir of the Œdipus complex and represents the ethical standards of mankind. I should not like to create an impression that during this last period of my work I have turned my back upon patient observation and have abandoned myself entirely to speculation. I have, on the contrary, always remained in the closest touch with the analytic material and have never ceased working at detailed points of clinical or technical importance. Even when I have moved away from observation, I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper. This avoidance has been greatly facilitated by constitutional incapacity. I was always open to the ideas of G. T. Fechner and have followed that thinker upon many important points. The large extent to which psychoanalysis coincides with the philosophy of Schopenhauer—not only did he assert the dominance of the emotions and the supreme importance of sexuality, but he was even aware of the mechanism of repression—is not to be traced to my acquaintance with his teaching. I read Schopenhauer very late in my life. Nietzsche, another philosopher whose guesses and intuitions often agree in the most astonishing way with the laborious findings of psychoanalysis, was, for a long time, avoided by me on that very account; I was less concerned with the question of priority than with keeping my mind unembarrassed.