Some Sidelights on Free Associations1

It has always been the accepted view among psycho-analysts that science in general, and each science in particular, and each individual scientist has a special scientific psychology. The restatement of the obvious is always trite, of course, but it is not always superfluous. I believe therefore that it is not entirely useless to reiterate here the obvious, and to say that when I speak of 'special scientific psychology' I have in mind primarily the unconscious and the affective determinants of this psychology; for the conscious psychology of the scientist or the given science always wears the same cloak of objectivity and dispassionate intellectual detachment which we analysts know to be a perennial fantasy mistaken perennially for reality.

Since it will be generally admitted that anatomic and pathological research and surgery and astronomy and even ophthalmology or dermatology have definite, almost specific, unconscious determinants in each individual who practises the specialties above named, it would be logical to assume that the same postulate is applicable to psycho-analysis too. In a general way all this is true. The well-known necrophilic drives of Vesalius, which possessed him from his childhood on and particularly after his puberty, were ultimately transformed into a revolutionary and creative foundation of the science of anatomy. It is not very difficult to find among the great majority of anatomists, pathologists and surgeons a variety of necrophilic and sadistic trends which are woven into their scientific work and skill. By the same token, the host of anal-sadistic permutations which are nearly always found in the personalities of musicians or mathematicians are no news to psycho-analysts.

Yet we are a considerable distance from the point and the time at which an accurate characterology and psychology of various professions and arts could be achieved. It is not surprising, therefore, that the psychology of psycho-analysis has hardly been touched yet