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The author points out the fundamental importance and the difficulty of studying human instinct and then gives a concise summary of the contributions of psycho-analysis to this obscure problem by sketching the development of Freud's own views. Freud's interest in instinct was at first only incidental to his study of dream and neurosis; its importance grew on him slowly, and only after thirty years did he venture to theorize about it. Since he was impressed from the start by the significance of conflict in human life, his conception of the mind has remained throughout a dualistic one. 'The terms in which he has at various periods formulated the nature of this conflict represent his contribution to the theory of instinct.'
For fifteen to twenty years Freud used as a working hypothesis the simple dual classification of ego instincts and sex instincts. This enabled him to formulate his theory of neurosis as due to conflict between ego and libido. His conception of instinct is psycho-physiological inasmuch as he regards the source of an instinct as a bodily stimulus. He distinguished between aim and object of instinct. Differences between instincts are due to difference in their sources, as he illustrated in regard to the 'partial impulses' arising in the various erotogenic zones whose integration gives rise to the adult sexual impulse. Since instinctual stimuli arise within the organism and are always being engendered, they cannot be avoided by flight. Where they cannot be gratified through the outer world, they have to be dealt with by such means as repression, turning against the self, or reversal of aim. The plasticity of the sexual instinct, its capacity for displacement both of aims and objects, 'impressed Freud profoundly and inclined him to postulate a similar capacity on the part of other instincts and emotions. For instance, he speaks of love turning into hate. … This is a part of his theory that some of us find hard to follow, since it would appear t