PREFACE

In the following pages, which take up the applicability and significance of psychoanalysis for the humanities, the subject can be treated in only the briefest form: neither its evolution nor the extensive body of facts on which its conclusive force rests, can be considered. The degree, however, in which the particular humanities are treated by us bears no relation whatever to the cultural importance of these but only to the number of points of contact with psychoanalysis which have thus far been demonstrated. This is determined on the one hand by the share which the unconscious has in the mental products of humanity, on the other hand, by the comparative youth of our science and further by external and accidental influences.

Thus, our attention was directed principally to the outlook for the future in which the question of method which will be applicable to the stating and solution of the problems seemed the most important. In the endeavor to carry out this principal object, we sought to supplement our study of the individual problems, the elaboration of which we have striven to further in the magazine Imago edited by us under the direction of Professor Freud.

Instead of interrupting the text by particular citations and references to the literature, we refer here once and for all to the fundamental writings of Freud as well as to the compilations and periodicals edited under his direction, in which the articles belonging to our subject and the other psychoanalytic literature are to be found.

THE AUTHORS

VIENNA,

Easter, 1913