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The author attempts to reveal the psychodynamic basis for certain central tenets of Mach's scientific philosophy. Mach's antipathy to atomistic hypotheses in science is traced to aggressive attitudes toward his father. The symbolic equation of atoms, stones, and testicles links father with atoms. His idea that 'cause' should be replaced by the concept of functional interdependence of phenomena was expressive of his wish to eliminate masculine dominance and to see the world as a flowing stream (feminine) of phenomena with no variable privilege in status; none of this was 'the cause'. His view that the world should be regarded as a complex of sensations, with rejection of the concept of things-in-themselves, is related to the erosion of his childhood narcissistic solipsism by adolescent heterosexual drives. Mach had arrived independently at such concepts as determinism, the unconscious, and the lasting influence of childhood experiences. He speculated that study of these phenomena might lead to increased knowledge of 'the primitive history of mechanism, and besides, might also lead to the founding of a general genetic technology …'.