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 by this technique; at most the beginning of the analysis is made easy for the patient (though this is not quite without its use in certain cases). To be able to crawl through a barbed wire fence without some enticing end in view testifies to an ascetic strength of will which you can expect neither from the ordinary person nor from the neurotic. Even the Christian religion, whose moral demands certainly reached a great height, thought it no scorn to represent the near approach of the Kingdom of Heaven as goal and reward of earthly pain. In my view, the doctor may well speak of the rewards which follow the toils of analysis. But he must not depict himself or his friendship, in hints or promises as reward, if he is not seriously determined to keep his word.

In regard to your criticism of my outline-definition of the conception of psychoanalysis, it must be observed that the road over the steep mountain is the line of least resistance only when a ferocious bull waits for you in the pleasant valley-road. In other words, the line of least resistance is a compromise with all demands, and not with inertia alone. It is prejudice to think that the line of least resistance coincides with the path of inertia. (That’s what we thought in the days when we dawdled over Latin exercises.) Inertia is only an immediate advantage and leads to consequences which produce the worst resistances; as a whole, it does not lie in the direction of least resistance. Life along the line of least resistance is not synonymous with a man’s regardless pursuit of his own egoistic desires. He who lives thus, soon painfully perceives that he is not moving along the line of least resistance, for he is also a social being, and not merely a bundle of egoistic instincts, as some people rather like to depict him. This is best seen among primitive men and herd-animals, who all have a richly developed social sense. Without it, indeed, the herd could not exist at all. Man as herd-animal has therefore by no manner of means to subject himself to laws enforced on him from without; he carries his social imperatives within himself, a priori, as an inborn necessity. As you see, I here put myself in decided opposition to certain views—I think quite unjustified—which