Charles Darwin—The Affective Sources of his Inspiration and Anxiety Neurosis1

The psychoanalytic study of these particular attributes of Charles Darwin's personality must necessarily be rather abruptly circumscribed. To do thorough justice to Darwin's personality one ought to read everything he published and all the family and personal history that can be had and present the material in an analytical biography. It is hardly necessary to eulogize Darwin's greatness in order to make the analytical study of his inferiorities and compensations acceptable to the hero-worshipping public.

Charles Darwin's contributions to the progress of civilization and welfare of humanity stand second to no man. He has done more for the liberation of human thought than the combined careers of Alexander the Great, Julius Cásar, Napoleon and other imitators, and his character needs no defense. It is of great value to know how he succeeded in refining the autoerotic cravings inherently active in every individual, and in sublimating the father's repressive influence, thereby making it possible for the affective cravings to create the long series of original researches into the mechanisms of nature. It is quite probable that no male can be capable of consistent original thinking who has not succeeded in freeing himself from the parent's resistant domination. As to how much Darwin's sexual life played a part in his scientific curiosity may be estimated from the fact that he laid supreme emphasis upon the mechanism of sexual selection as a determinant for the survival of pleasing attributes, hence variations in structure and movement. He says, in his Descent of Man, that the German naturalist and philosopher Haeckel, was the only scientist whose writings showed that he fully appreciated