This is the first English translation of a pioneering paper by Erich Fromm . Fromm sums up, and criticizes, Freud's views on the genesis of neurosis and its treatment in psychoanalytic therapy, with special emphasis on the underlying “patricentric” character of both Freud's personality and his theory, hidden by the bourgeois concept of “tolerance.” By contrast, Fromm presents the differing positions taken by Georg Groddeck and Sándor Ferenczi, positions that would point into the right direction but would lack scientific rigor (Groddeck) or would not go far enough (Ferenczi).