CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS 215 



realizes that he has everything that ought to make a man 

 well and happy, and yet whose every moment is one of 

 unmitigated wretchedness. He is perhaps a prey to pho- 

 bias, obsessions, apprehensions, depressions, sudden and 

 unremitting imperatives, the appalling loss of the sense 

 of reality, to mention the most characteristic symptoms 

 of neurotic states, or he may suffer from digestional dis- 

 turbance, respiratory inhibition (stammering), muscular 

 contractions, etc., and yet is utterly perplexed to account 

 for the plight in which he finds himself, and completely 

 powerless to furnish data that might throw light on these 

 abnormal manifestations. 



In other words, we are in the presence of factors which 

 operate unconsciously. That is, we have to do with or- 

 ganic effects and reactions which fail to attain the level 

 of conscious perception and which are therefore from 

 the conscious standpoint equally impalpable to patient and 

 physician. Let us bear in mind, then, that the sphere of 

 psychoanalysis lies exclusively in the field of unconscious 

 mentation. 



With these distinctions before us, I shall try to explain 

 briefly the basic principles of psychoanalysis, and to show 

 something of what the method seeks to attain. 



In many fundamental respects, Freud's teaching, as has 

 been said, marks a wide departure from the hitherto pre- 

 vailing view as to the interpretation of neurotic states. 2 



In the first place, Freud ascribes all neurotic disorders 

 to the existence in the patient of wishes which are un- 

 recognized, that is, not directly envisaged by him. Wishes 

 of this unpremeditated character he subsumes under the 

 term "unconscious," and gives to the realm of psychic 

 activity constituting, as it were, the abode of such uncon- 

 scious trends, the name of "the unconscious" (das Un- 

 bewusstsein) . 



Secondly, he regards the neurosis as a spontaneous ex- 



2 Forchheimer, Frederick: Therapeusis of Internal Diseases, 

 New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1913, 4, 569. 



