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The most important conflict with which a small child is faced is his
relation to his parents, the ‘Oedipus complex’; it is in attempting to grapple with this problem that those destined to
suffer from a neurosis habitually come to grief. The reactions against the
instinctual demands of the Oedipus complex are the source of the most precious and
socially important achievements of the human mind; and this holds true not only in
the life of individuals but probably also in the history of the human species
as a whole. The super-ego, too, the moral agency which dominates the ego, has
its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex.
(3) By ‘transference’ is meant a striking peculiarity of neurotics. They develop towards their
physician emotional relations, both of an affectionate and hostile character,
which are not based upon the actual situation but are derived from their relations
to their parents (the Oedipus complex). Transference is a proof of the fact
that adults have not overcome their former childish dependence; it coincides with
the force which has been named ‘suggestion’; and it is only by learning to make
use of it that the physician is enabled to induce the patient to overcome his
internal resistances and do away with his repressions. Thus psycho-analytic
treatment acts as a second education of the adult, as a corrective to his
education as a child.
Within this narrow compass it has been impossible to mention many matters
of the greatest interest, such as the ‘sublimation’ of instincts, the part played by symbolism, the problem of ‘ambivalence’, etc. Nor has there been space to allude to the applications of
psycho-analysis, which originated, as we have seen, in the sphere of medicine, to other
departments of knowledge (such as Social Anthropology, the Study of Religion,
Literary History and Education) where its influence is constantly increasing. It is
enough to say that psycho-analysis, in its character of the psychology of the
deepest, unconscious mental acts, promises to become the link between
psychiatry and all of these other branches of mental science.