The Gosmologigal Aspect of Freud's Theory of Instincts*

Quite early Freud recognized that the instincts are the most fundamental forces of the psyche. To him they appeared as dynamic factors which, arising out of the soma, beget the powerful forces of great needs in the mental apparatus. He realized that the greatest part of our psychic activity is dedicated to the direct or indirect satisfaction of these needs. It soon became necessary, therefore, to define the concept of instinct. An instinct represents for us a psychosomatic duality. Engendered in organic matter it represents a psychic force, and its concept defines a palpable transition from the physical to the mental. Its impulse we experience psychically; its dependence upon the physical we can prove by physiological experiment. The psychology of instincts is, therefore, that part of the theory of psychic phenomena which seeks the most direct relation to the somatic science of physiology. This relation it has partially found. With his psychology of instincts Freud has built the first firm bridge to a unified science of body and mind. Here for the first time psychology with all its devious ramifications becomes a part of that science which takes living phenomena as the object of its research, becomes, therefore, a part of biology.

It was inevitable that to an investigator like Freud, so deeply imbued with the desire for knowledge, these questions should arise: whence do the instincts themselves take their origin? What mysterious meaning finds expression in them? What do they represent, and when did their first manifestation in living matter begin? All parts of these questions are so deeply buried in the origin of things, recede so far into the beginnings of life that even a great bold thinker like Freud experienced a slight apprehension and a cautious