BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



to be borne. It was the discovery, or at least the novel 

 formulation, of a new order of mental mechanism. 



The concepts of the Freudian system can hardly be 

 reduced to a synopsis. Yet, as a guide to the account that 

 follows, it may be stated that the purpose is to explain the 

 motivation of conduct in all its varieties. The instinctive 

 urges, the sex urge most of all, supply the energy and give 

 set and direction. The urge to power, mastery, regard, is 

 the ego urge. When these meet with opposition, there 

 results conflict, frequently below the conscious level. Such 

 unconscious or suppressed tendencies may come to expres- 

 sion symbolically, in dreams; they may lead to a neurosis 

 or maladjustment. Character traits arise from sublimations 

 and compensations for such frustration. The systems of 

 emotionally tinged ideas become complexes when elabo- 

 rated, and become fixations when expressed in a personal 

 relation, notably that of child to parent. Childhood 

 influences dominate in the total personality, and the family 

 relation sets its course. Much of it is in sex terms. Psycho- 

 analysis is a method of revealing buried complexes of 

 ideas from which maladjusted individuals suffer. Phobias 

 and obsessions thus take their root and grow. The same 

 processes are at work in the primitive unconscious and 

 are responsible for totem and taboo, for myth and fairy 

 tale, all of which carry a Freudian plot. Social repression 

 in terms of a censorship plays a large part. Upon this 

 outline has arisen an elaborate system of interpretation 

 calling for hypothetical divisions of the ego as the nucleus 

 of the strivings which make the personality and account 

 for its desires and behavior. 



The Freudian psychology, a piecemeal structure with 

 slight architectural unity to begin with but growing by 

 irregular additions from clinical experience, offers an 

 inviting opportunity to illustrate how variously a specific 

 advance extends the psychological insight. Beginning with 



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