On the History of the Analytical Movement

Our memory is partial. Freud proved this and presented numerous examples from which this conclusion follows. When I present an account of the history of the analytical movement, I can assert that such a ‘partial functioning of the memory’ has not strongly developed in me. I have no loss of memory. I see my first childhood experiences in all their details clearly before my eyes. Early on I made it a habit to face the truth fearlessly; when I fail, I blame myself. I am not vengeful and I find it easy to forgive because I have learned to appreciate what is human in many responses, and this was the case even when psychoanalysis was still unknown to me.

When I try to write such a history of the analytical movement, I have no other motive than to serve the truth and to answer attacks - open as well as covert - the intention of which is to undermine my researches.

I was a sex researcher long before I became acquainted with Freud. Already as a Gymnasium student, I had examined the first sexual experiences of my friends and, later, when I was a general practitioner, I designed a survey in which one was supposed to report one's first sexual experiences. In 1895 - independently of Freud, and still unaware of his teachings - I published my study on ‘Coitus in childhood’ [Stekel 1895]. About a year later in the Vienna general hospital I met the brilliant internist Dr Max Kahane, who died a few years ago.1 We were both looking at a notice that