You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Ladies and Gentlemen, —I hope that this paper may enlist your interest in a line of work upon which I have been engaged during the last few years. It is my belief that the investigations which I have attempted may illuminate and define with greater distinctness certain problems familiar both in our daily practice and our theoretical work.
I intend to go, without further preface, to the heart of the matter, and I trust you will not be disappointed if the title of my paper has led you to expect that I was about to put forward a method hitherto unknown to psycho-analysis, for this is not the case. A study of our literature—amongst the works of Freud I would name especially Hemmung, Symptom und Angst —makes it clear that psycho-analysts may legitimately adopt the comparative method.
The body of knowledge which we now possess should, I think, enable us to apply such a method to a considerable number of neuroses and thus, side by side with our general theory of the neuroses and our specialized studies, to formulate by degrees a comparative theory.
Certain precautions must, however, be taken in order to ensure that the facts observed shall be faithfully recorded and that a check shall be kept on the conclusions drawn. It may be that our findings will relate not merely to the qualitative aspect of phenomena: the quantitative factor also may have to be examined. If so, we must not fail to bear in mind that, at present, we know no way of measuring libido.
When we review the material which awaits our investigation—that is to say, when we scrutinize our patients—we may well be dismayed at the task before us. Instead of pure neuroses, such as are described in our specialized studies, we see a medley of heterogeneous symptoms, abnormalities of character and perversions. Irritated by this confusion, we are tempted to disparage our systematic classification, until we learn from experience that only with the aid of this much-despised theory can we hope to introduce order into the