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In the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement, the special journals frequently reported clinical examples of “psychopathology of everyday life,” which in my opinion served a very useful purpose. Such reports were both instructive and interesting for the beginner as well as for those who were already experienced analysts. They kept alive what Freud stressed, namely, that one should pay attention to every little thing that the patient expresses verbally or in any other way, and frequently demonstrated that the important revelations thus made furnish the key to the neurotic symptom.
Of late years one rarely reads such reports. It seems that the psychopathology of everyday life is taken for granted as too elementary for serious study. On the other hand, a sound theoretical knowledge of the neuroses is certainly necessary, but we must not forget that, as physicians we are expected to furnish practical results. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to pay strict attention to clinical material.
In 1914 I read a paper before the American Psychopathological Association on “Psychoanalytic Fragments from a Day's Work.”1 It occurred to me that it would be well to show something of what takes place during an office day of a busy analyst. I recall distinctly that many non-analysts present were very much interested and complimented me on this paper. Dr. Morton Prince, who was by no means a convinced Freudian, asked me for the paper for his journal, and then wrote: “I wish you would give us more papers of this kind.” Probably because of my early psychoanalytic training, I have always been alive to faulty acts in myself and in my