Character and Destiny(+)

In the mystery of the unity of the ego and the world, of being and happening, in the perception of the apparently objective and accidental as a matter of the soul's own contriving, I see the innermost, core of psychoanalytic theory.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

To talk to the Friends of Psychoanalysis on character and destiny may seem a superfluous undertaking. Whoever has approached psychoanalysis or, even more, has undergone psychoanalytic treatment has shown thereby that he knows, or is at least intuitively aware, how closely interconnected are inner and outer things, the psyche and the course of life, personality and events. For he has associated himself with a science or technique that directs its attention to a very preponderant degree to man's interior and sees here the prime mover of his life in general. Not only have mind and body drawn nearer to each other through this new science, so much so that one even hears it said that to differentiate them is a prejudice,—a view that has already been expressed in other periods of the history of the human spirit, but now rests on the amazing discoveries of psychosomatic medicine; not only mind and body, I say, but also other aspects of “inner” and “outer”, viz. the ego and the world, character and destiny, have drawn nearer together in an amazing manner. Here again we may ask ourselves whether their differentiation—in the usual way—does not entail a prejudice, in view