The other point is the following:  One frequently hears the psychoanalytic method referred to as if it was customary for those practicing it to exploit the sexual experiences of their patients and nothing more, and the insistence on the details of the sexual life, presented in this book, is likely to emphasize that notion.  But the fact is, as every thoughtful inquirer is aware, that the whole progress of civilization, whether in the individual or the race, consists largely in a “sublimation” of infantile instincts, and especially certain portions of the sexual instinct, to other ends than those which they seemed designed to serve.  Art and poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution of character and mental force is largely of the same origin.  All the forms which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation, may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a thorough psychoanalysis.  It is not the sexual life alone, but every interest and every motive, that must be inquired into by the physician who is seeking to obtain all the data about the patient, necessary for his reeducation and his cure.  But all the thoughts and emotions and desires and motives which appear in the man or woman of adult years were once crudely represented in the obscure instincts of the infant, and among these instincts those which were concerned directly or indirectly with the sexual emotions, in a wide sense, are certain to be found in every case to have been the most important for the end-result.

JamesJ. Putnam.

Boston, August 23, 1910.

[1] Translated by A.A.  Brill, nervous and mental disease monograph series, no. 4.

[2] Translated by A.A.  Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London.

[3] Translated by A.A.  Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York.

[4] Translated by A.A.  Brill, Moffatt, Yard & Co., New York.

[4a] Translated by A.A.  Brill, Moffatt, Yard & Co., New York.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Although the author is fully aware of the gaps and obscurities contained in this small volume, he has, nevertheless, resisted a temptation to add to it the results obtained from the investigations of the last five years, fearing that thus its unified and documentary character would be destroyed.  He accordingly reproduces the original text with but slight modifications, contenting himself with the addition of a few footnotes.  For the rest, it is his ardent wish that this book may speedily become antiquated—­to the end that the new material brought forward in it may be universally accepted, while the shortcomings it displays may give place to juster views.

Vienna, December, 1909.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION