Without wishing to enter fully into the question of technique, I must here meet an objection that is constantly heard. It is that the so-called unconscious phantasies are only suggested to the patient and only exist in the minds of psychoanalysts. This objection belongs to that common class which ascribes to them the crude mistakes of beginners. I think only those without psychological experience and without historical psychological knowledge are capable of making such criticisms. With a mere glimmering of mythological knowledge, one cannot fail to notice the striking parallels between the unconscious phantasies discovered by the psychoanalytic school and mythological images. The objection that our knowledge of mythology has been suggested to the patient is groundless, for the psychoanalytic school first discovered the unconscious phantasies, and only then became acquainted with mythology. Mythology itself is obviously something outside the path of the medical man. In so far as these phantasies are unconscious, the patient of course knows nothing about their existence, and it would be absurd to make direct inquiries about them. Nevertheless it is often said, both by patients and by so-called normal persons: “But if I had such phantasies, surely I would know something about them.” But what is unconscious is, in fact, something which one does not know. The opposition too is perfectly convinced that such things as unconscious phantasies could not exist. This a priori judgment is scholasticism, and has no sensible grounds. We cannot possibly rest on the dogma that consciousness only is mind, when we can convince ourselves daily that our consciousness is only the stage. When the contents of our consciousness appear they are already in a highly complex form; the grouping of our thoughts from the elements supplied by our memory is almost entirely unconscious. Therefore we are obliged, whether we like it or not, to accept for the moment the conception of an unconscious psychic sphere, even if only as a mere negative, border-conception, just as Kant’s “thing in itself.” As we perceive things which do not have their origin in consciousness, we are obliged to give hypothetic contents to the sphere of the non-conscious. We must suppose that the origin of certain effects lies in the unconscious, just because they are not conscious. The reproach of mysticism can scarcely be made against this conception of the unconscious. We do not pretend that we know anything positive, or can affirm anything, about the psychic condition of the unconscious. Instead, we have substituted symbols by following the way of designation and abstraction we apply in consciousness.