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From its beginnings, psychoanalysis was burdened with a difficult destiny when it accepted the task of bringing to light the occult, somber, and nocturnal aspects of the human being. Proud of his superior nature, both spiritual and moral, but at the same time somewhat unsure of it, man did not wish to know much about his animal instincts, his sexuality and his aggressiveness, and condemned psychoanalysis to preserve his illusions about himself. This occurred regarding psychoanalysis in general, but it occurred to the highest degree where the “depth-psychology” intruded upon man's spiritual heights, showing how even in those spheres where he thought himself to be already close to God—in art, philosophy, religion, and so forth, he continued having his roots in the animal, archaic, and infantile aspects, sources from which he receives—at least in part—the impulses and energies for his sublime creations.
If I remind you of this fact in the history of psychoanalysis, it is not (or not only) to attract your sympathy, in general so well disposed towards those beings and things that have suffered due to human ignorance or injustice, but because that past in the external history of psychoanalysis may still be present, to some degree, within us. Even today, a certain amount of rejection or of antipathy may exist towards any attempt at relating the high to the low, of relating “God” to the “devil,” and it may exist not only in others, but also in us, who declare ourselves to be “friends of psychoanalysis.”