Chapter I. Emergence from Isolation (1901-1906)

In 1901 Freud, at the age of forty-five, had attained complete maturity, a consummation of development that few people really achieve. Intellectually he had been precocious enough, but balance in the emotional sphere had been compassed much more slowly. For at least twenty years, certainly from the time of his falling in love when he was twenty-six, there had been continual periods of restlessness, uncertainty, instability and even more definitely neurotic disturbances. A profound self-confidence had been masked by strange feelings of inferiority, even in the intellectual sphere, and he had tried to cope with these by projecting his innate sense of capacity and superiority on to a series of mentors, on some of whom he then became curiously dependent for reassurance. Thus he idealized six figures who played an important part in his early life: Brücke, Meynert, Fleischl, Charcot, Breuer and Fliess, all of whom were good friends to him. The first four of these died in the early nineties before Freud had published anything in psycho-pathology. One of them, the highly neurotic Meynert, had turned against Freud in the end, being incensed at Freud's advocacy of hypnotism. The last two, of whom Freud had thought extremely highly for many years, forsook him to his great disappointment when he persisted in his unpopular work on sexuality.

In 1897 he embarked, all alone, on what was undoubtedly the greatest feat of his life. His determination, courage and honesty made him the first human being not merely to get glimpses of his own unconscious mind—earlier pioneers had often got as far as that—but actually to penetrate into and explore its deepest depths. This imperishable feat was to give him a unique position in history. But three or four years of herculean struggles with those powerful forces in the mind that so strenuously resist such an endeavour brought their reward. He obtained the insight and knowledge that made possible the