On Some Of The Standpoints Of Freud And Jung1 (1928)

At the ‘Debate’2 on ‘The Standpoints of Freud and Jung’ I employed my time in exposition of the discoveries of Freud and took occasion to remark that he had no viewpoint peculiar to himself but worked on that shared by scientists generally, namely, determinism. In science this same determinism they now say fails to explain some events in the atom, so we must now modify our dogmatism or rather dogmatic attitude—born of long success—and say that determinism is not now the one and only standard of science; but returning to the non-determined events in the atom, one wonders how they would have been discovered without a long application of determinist methods, so, for the sake of the future of science (to reduce the chances that people may erringly say a thing is not determined when it is) it behoves us all to work on with the determinist principle, counting it no loss but a gain if by our own efforts we are proved mistaken sometimes and thereby a philosopher is made happy.3

At the debate before mentioned the topics centred about sexuality. In his Elaboration Dr. Baynes has put his finger on the most important matter of transference on which I confess to have laid too little stress in my exposition. In this phenomenon the Freudian sees evidence of an automatic repetition of infantile attitudes expressing both a desire for sexual gratification and an inhibiting impulse (conscience—also acting automatically).