CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS 213 



the neural elements but with the psychology of the social 

 element as presented in the individual unit, for the dis- 

 turbances with which psychoanalysis has to cope entail in 

 every instance a psychic disharmony based on the indi- 

 vidual's relation to the social environment. It is an in- 

 teresting fact that in every psychoanalysis there is dis- 

 covered the influence of some hidden presence who stands 

 in such instance in the closest personal relation to the 

 patient and constitutes the important factor in the produc- 

 tion of the neurosis. 



Before considering, however, the theory, the instruments 

 and the aims of psychoanalysis, it may be well to mention 

 certain misconceptions in regard to the method. Perhaps 

 we shall gain ground if, before attempting to say some- 

 thing of what psychoanalysis is, I say a word as to what 

 psychoanalysis is not. 



Already I have made intimation of the element of sex- 

 uality as an etiologic factor in the manifestations we call 

 neurotic. Many will doubtless have heard of the inevitable 

 implication in the psychoanalytic method of treatment of 

 the sexual sphere of the patient's life. Some probably 

 will either have explicitly heard, or have tacitly gathered, 

 that psychoanalytic presupposes the existence in the life 

 of the patient of some secret perversion of the sexual in- 

 stinct, and that it is the task of the psychoanalyst to extort 

 a confession of some such hidden misdemeanor. There- 

 fore it is but natural if, from the prevailing trend of cur- 

 rent hearsay, it will have been inferred that this new 

 method of psychotherapy proceeds on the assumption that 

 nervous disorders hysteria, obsessional and imperative 

 states, so-called neurasthenia and psychasthenia are in- 

 variably to be explained by the hidden presence of some 

 abnormal mode of sexual indulgence, and, therefore, the 

 origin of a neurosis, according to Freud's interpretation, 

 is linked with the idea of some species of sexual delin- 

 quency. 



As widespread as this conception has become, nothing 



