Introduction

The following remarks are intended only to serve as a short introduction to the reports presented by Drs. Sachs, Alexander and Radó. In them, for the sake of clarification, certain defining principles are put forward which can be used as a point d'appui to which various views may be referred. For this purpose two complemental series will be chosen, one relating to causal factors, the other to therapy. The former are thought of particularly in connection with the neuroses, but the scheme is of much wider validity.

The first distinction to be effected is between hereditary and acquired factors. The former, those already present in the parental germ cells, are of course not to be confounded with the congenital ones; the latter are really ontogenetic, having been acquired by the individual himself, though before birth.

The hereditary factors may be divided into those of recent origin (e.g. familial) and those of remote (e.g. phylogenetic).

There are three groups of the acquired or ontogenetic factors: congenital, infantile, and current. The first refer to influences acting either before or during the act of birth. The infantile factors may also be divided into two for our present purposes, those the memory of which can be recovered by psycho-analysis and those which have to be reconstructed.