Freud and his psychoanalysis are today being assailed as taking insufficient cognizance of the direct influence of the social situation upon the individual. Insecurity, competition, lack of charity, we hear are the chief causes of neuroses and not—as Freud's school teaches—our native constitutions plus early childhood impressions, such as the well-known Oedipus complex, its forerunners and derivatives. The field of 'social' etiologies was the exclusive object of Alfred Adler's research, and although his heirs rarely quote him, the 'new' discoveries in this field are based on his theories. In as much as psychoanalysis long ago absorbed a good deal of Adler's investigations, the 'discoveries' of these newcomers appear to be the products of cryptomnesia. Psychoanalysis has always reckoned with social factors, the Oedipus complex itself being one of the first social experiences of the infant.