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Before the social sciences emerged, some 200 years ago, human relationships were the domain of religion, ethics, and philosophy. The social sciences, being born in an already scientific age, looked, to further their researches, for something like a basic science of the mind. By building itself on observations, experiments, and statistics, psychology—after breaking away from philosophy—offered itself as such a science, trying to reach close proximity to the natural sciences. The natural sciences, however, are still suspicious of the new 'in-law', while the growing demand by modern anthropologists, sociologists, and economists to include psycho-analysis within their training syllabus indicates that academic psychology did not quite satisfy their search for this basic science of the mind.
Psycho-analysis did not start out as a philosophy or even as a general psychology to establish the basic dynamics of the mind. It began quite modestly in the neurological clinic, and the status of psycho-analysis as a tenet basic to the social sciences shows a curious example of Hegelian dialectic, looked at from the point of view of its founder. We know from Freud's autobiography that from early youth he was more curious about human concerns than about natural objects. Throughout his schooldays he wanted to study law and engage in public activities. It was under the influence of Darwin and of Goethe's beautiful essay on Nature that he suddenly decided to study medicine. The change from research work in anatomy and physiology of the nervous system to practical work in nervous diseases seems to have been made under external pressure. That this study, starting out with the physical symptoms of hysteria, should lead him ultimately to the discovery of the basic dynamics of the human mind was certainly not expected by him; but perhaps it was not altogether haphazard.
We know that parallel to the clinical studies on the neuroses (see his 'Early Papers', 1892