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As long ago as 1927 at the Psychoanalytic Congress in Innsbrück I urged that the symptoms of the psychoneuroses should be sought not merely in the period of the second to the fourth year, as was customary at that time. They should be followed more deeply into the period of infancy, or at least to the “trauma of birth”. Otherwise no lasting therapeutic effect could be expected. I knew even then that it would not be enough to extend the border as far as this, but my investigations into deeper territory were not ended, and it seemed wise to keep silent for a while longer. Today, however, I may admit that such extension represented only the first step toward illumination of the problem. In what follows I shall reveal how I reached this point.
When I was still content, according to Freud's formula to pursue the neurosis at the most to the age of two years, I did very often obtain good results, even apparent cures; yet the patients, if observed long enough, all suffered relapse even though the symptoms were seen to be distinctly weaker than formerly. One should therefore at the most, as I stated at Innsbrück, speak of a “relative cure” never of an “absolute” one; that is, one without the possibility of relapse. Finally moreover in not a few of the seriously ill not so much as a relative cure could be obtained, quite apart from the patients with “negative therapeutic reaction,” who always grew worse the more they were analyzed. On the other hand, those more severe cases presented a remarkable situation. They were ever striving to go more deeply and they obliged me to descend to the days of early infancy, even, if necessary, to birth. Yet there the barrier seemed to be reached up to which one could work with certainty.
The history of the development of the neuroses, however, drove us still farther. It soon became evident that the basis of the psychoneurosis,