Chapter IV. Opposition

In the preceding Chapter I have described the favourable aspects of the psycho-analytical movement, of the gradual dissemination of Freud's work. I have next to give some account of the storm of opposition that he had to endure, particularly in the years before the first world war but to some extent for the rest of his life.

There are two great difficulties in the way of describing at the present day the nature and extent of this opposition. The first is that the greater part could not find its way into print; it was simply unprintable. Not that Freud was spared hearing of it. Patients in a state of negative transference, not to speak of ‘kind friends’, saw to it that he was kept well informed. And after all, being cut in the street, ostracized and ignored are unescapable manifestations.

Freud's name had by now become a by-word of sensation—or rather of notoriety—to German psychiatrists and neurologists, and his theories were having a profoundly disturbing effect on their peace of mind. Some day a student of the history of science may wade through the outpourings of abuse and misunderstanding that served as a vent for the explosive emotions that had been aroused. But even so he would get a very imperfect picture of the amount of anger and contempt with which those intellectual circles strove to cover the more panicky emotions that agitated them, for only a small part of the flood seeped through into scientific periodicals, and then only in a relatively civilized form. Most of the invective was to be encountered in unrecorded outbursts at scientific meetings, and still more in the private conversations outside these. Ferenczi well remarked that if the opponents denied Freud's theories they certainly dreamed of them.

The intense wave of hostility that greeted Freud's work in the years before the first world war now seems very remote, but those who experienced it cannot easily forget it. I passed through it not only in America and later on in England, but also in