I think that only a man who regards world-happenings as a chain of more or less fortuitous contingencies, and therefore believes that the guiding hand of the reason-endowed pedagogue is permanently wanted, can ever imagine that this path, upon which the patient leads the physician, has been a wrong one, from which one ought to have warned men off with a sign-board. Besides the deeper insight into psychological determination, we owe to the so-called error the discovery of questions of immeasurable importance regarding the basis of psychic processes. It is for us to rejoice and be thankful that Freud had the courage to let himself be guided along this path. Not thus is the progress of science hindered, but rather through blind adherence to a provisional formulation, through the typical conservatism of authority, the vanity of learned men, their fear of making mistakes. This lack of the martyr’s courage is far more injurious to the credit and greatness of scientific knowledge than an honest error. Retardation of the Emotional Development But let us return to our own case. The following question arises: If the old trauma is not of etiological significance, then the cause of the manifest neurosis is probably to be found in the retardation of the emotional development. We must therefore disregard the patient’s assertion that her hysterical crises date from the fright from the shying horses, although this fright was in fact the beginning of her evident illness. This event only seems to be important, although it is not so in reality. This same formula is valid for all the so-called shocks. They only seem to be important because they are the starting-point of the external expression of an abnormal condition. As explained in detail, this abnormal condition is an anachronistic continuation of an infantile stage of libido-development. These patients still retain forms of the libido which they ought to have renounced long ago. It is impossible to give a list, as it were, of these forms, for they are of an extraordinary variety. The most common, which is scarcely ever absent, is the excessive activity of phantasies, characterized by an unconcerned exaggeration of subjective wishes. This exaggerated activity is always a sign of want of proper employment of the libido. The libido sticks fast to its use in phantasies, instead of being employed in a more rigorous adaptation to the real conditions of life. Introversion