Reminiscences of Professor Sigmund Freud

Freud's1 article, Psychopathological Personages on the Stage, which I now make public and which is here printed for the first time, was written in 1904. Four years previously, Freud had published his Interpretation of Dreams in which he laid the foundation for his new psychoanalytic technique. He boldly descended into the obscure depths of the 'unconscious'. For the first time, he marched along on his own way, undaunted among affects, affective psychological stimuli, erotic drives. In a realm in which heretofore man had seen only arbitrariness, obscurity, and absence of laws, Freud discovered laws and well-balanced structure. The images of dreams were no longer the arbitrary play of an imagination which, once the lights were out, began to dream about things without inhibition. On the contrary, these images developed in accordance with definite laws; they had a meaning which could be definitely established by means of a scientific technique. Acheronta movebo, 'I shall move the nether world', wrote the keen investigator with pride and self-awareness. He chose this phrase as the motto of his book. And he did move this underworld—with a secure hand, without fear of conventions or painful results. The mechanisms of this underworld were described and explained scientifically.

From the very outset, Freud applied his method of investigating the unconscious to the various fields of psychic life. First