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It is easy to imagine that certain mystical practices may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between the different regions of the mind […]. It may be safely be doubted, however, whether this road will lead us to the ultimate truths from which salvation is to be expected […]. The intention of the therapeutic efforts of psychoanalysis is [instead], indeed, to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organization, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be. It is a work of culture -not unlike the draining of the Zuider Zee.
On March 20th 1930, as he was presenting Civilization and its Discontents before a small number of fellow analysts of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Freud was very critical about the book he had recently published. Richard Sterba, a young pupil of his among the few of them attending that meeting in Berggasse, disregarded the Professor's disapproval of taking notes — an indication that Freud prompted in order to ensure the expressive freedom of the attendants -and did write down as many of Freud's words as possible. He was led by his interest about «the science» he wrote «[Freud] had created, the science to which we have devoted our lives».1
Although I share the reservations that Freud put forward with Edoardo Weiss concerning the scientific value of observations made for a limited use during private