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The paper investigates for the medical profession the reasons why psycho-analysis, in spite of a development of more than a quarter of a century, has found, especially in medical circles, but a limited expansion, and why there are comparatively few who are thoroughly familiar with its theory and practice. These reasons lie partly in the difficulty of the conversion of the preponderatingly physical line of thought to a point of view entirely new to them, which is demanded, together with the introspection of psychic processes. The second difficulty lies in the practice of psycho-analytic 'experiment', which alone can bring complete empiric conviction concerning the psycho-analytic position; its entire fruitfulness only unfolds for the first time after years of practice.
The third difficulty is the most comprehensive; one can make use of the psycho-analytic experiment exhaustively upon others only if one has first submitted one's own person to the experiment with an experienced analyst. The complexes present not only in neurotics, but in all cultured persons, and the more or less unabated tension that survives in them—the reaction of which is instinctively dreaded—bring with them that this central primary condition for the fundamental grasp of psycho-analysis is underestimated.
Author's Abstract.