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The course of scientific development is distinguished by the collection of facts and the creation of theories to explain these facts. Neither the collection of facts alone nor the spinning of theories alone is science. Freud lifted functional psychiatry, the last of the medical fields to be so converted, from mysticism to science. Now, however, psychoanalysis, as Robbins sees it, must be regarded as unprogressive and anti-evolutionary. In psychoanalysis is found 'the notion of the past adhered to as a fully formed body lying dormant, dissociated or encapsulated somewhere in the psyche, continuing to live in the present without change'. This misconception of psychic life is due to the misinterpretation of two clinical observations: the association of a painful affect usually recalls an earlier painful episode and the neurotic patient has to repeat painful episodes.
The author's opinion that Freud looked at the neurotic phenomena as a literal repetition of events from childhood history is a peculiar misunderstanding. Freud's writings make it quite clear that the patient's reactions are not only determined by new stimuli and the motivating influence of past experiences, but also by the repressed impulses which are constantly striving for expression and discharge. Because of the return of the repressed, or the drive of the repressed for discharge, the patient is inhibited in understanding the difference between the present and the past and his reactions assume the character of rigid patterns.