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When we consider the sentiments, the interests, the general attitude of mind, the qualities of heart—in brief, the personality of the individual who choosing to live his span of days within the cramped and gloomy walls of his self-appointed cell, has set around himself the barriers constitutive of the system of defense which we know as the neurosis, we find certain broad character-ological trends that are of interest in their logical relation to that central factor which the fundamental principle of Freudian psychology assumes as basic in the production of neurotic disorders —the factor namely of an inherent mental conflict.
Whatever clauses of amendment students and co-workers with Freud may, in the cumulative light of investigation, deem it wise to add to the theoretical principles underlying the psychoanalytic system of psychotherapy, whether they lean to the conception of repression or regression, of infantile fixation or contemporary maladaptation, of congenital predisposition or of a primary Inzest-Trieb, this essential factor of an inherent disquiet and inner unrest, of a mind distraught with irreconcilable dissension will still remain the permanent and indisputable basis of the neurosis.