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The topic for this discussion is “Psychoanalysis and Social Reality.” A few comments may serve to make clear what area of concern is intended for consideration.
The psychological relations of the individual person to reality is not a new problem to psychoanalysis, and yet we are not able to claim that an adequate conceptualization has been formulated. Before the turn of the century Freud advanced the view that it sometimes is or seems necessary for the maintenance of self-respect in a person that ideas too much at variance with the moral and social ideology shared by him be kept out of consciousness. Should these ideas continue nonetheless to press their claims for expression, serious difficulties ensue and a consequence of such unresolved struggle may be neurosis.10 (In passing, I may note the similarity of this view to contemporary self-theory.) For reasons with which everyone here is acquainted thoroughly, soon after the turn of the century certain unexpected discoveries led Freud to turn his attention away from reality factors and to a penetrating study of intrapsychic processes.9 For a number of years he had only occasional opportunity to interest himself in the person's relations to the external world, except in terms of the inhibition or facilitation of instinctual drive expressions.8
When Freud once again turned his attention to reality factors it was in order to find solutions to various technical problems. (In