XII. CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS 

 IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 



(Read before the Harvey Society of Johns Hop- 

 kins University) 



BY 

 TRIGANT BURROW, M.D. 



NOT infrequently a discussion purporting to relate to a 

 given subject expresses nothing more than the unsophis- 

 ticated views of the speaker concerning some notion or 

 other which he mistakenly conceives the subject to be. 

 Perhaps no theme has suffered more from the disfigure- 

 ments of these naive tendencies than psychoanalysis, so 

 that one does well to distinguish between psychoanalysis 

 and rumors of psychoanalysis. 



The truth is, psychoanalysis labors under the grave dif- 

 ficulties surrounding any subject which offers us an en- 

 tirely novel point of interpretation ; and far more 

 formidable than the barriers of novelty and strangeness is 

 the fact that psychoanalysis is a method which is essentially 

 revolting to our conventional social consciousness, entail- 

 ing harsh incriminations from which we would prefer to 

 turn away. It is a therapeutic procedure which our moral 

 conventions hold in natural repugnance ; it is an unpleas- 

 ant discipline that thrusts before us those things which we 

 dislike to look on. But if the theory on which the method 

 rests is correct, such an inbred antagonism to the precepts 

 of psychoanalysis is of the very essence of its thesis, for 



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