Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/87

 PSYCHO ANALYSIS AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 341

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rather, a rediscovery of that truth in terms of concrete psycho- logic data, facts.

Scientific discoveries so wide in their range of applicabihty, so novel — even revolutionary — and of such tremendous consequence ' as those which form the major body of psychoanalytic theory, cannot but rouse extreme scepticism, even hostility— at first.

That is precisely the fate that psychoanalysis has met at the hands of critics too startled by the new principles to iew them with objective detachment.

Psychoanalysis is nothing short of revolutionary, exactly as Darwinism has proven to be. That the introduction of conceptions compelling a rearrangement of fundamental principles should create havoc is only to be expected. Such a change foretells the doom of the old and customary viewpoints whose protagonists will not i.f^l yield the ground without a struggle.

Now, psychoanalysis challenges the whole group of scientific dis- ciplines in any way related to the operations of the mind. It requires all psychologic branches of learning to undertake nothing less than a restatement in terms of evolutionary dynamics of the principles upon which they are based. Freudian psychology has sounded the vM " - death-knell of static, descriptive, atomistic psychology just as surely

■%i# " as Darwinism has put an end to the pre-evolutionary biology.

The world at large cannot remain long indifferent to the Freudian transformations of psychology. This is not merely a matter con-
 * ^ ' ceming specialists. The controversy raised by psychoanalysis does

not center on theoretic problems and abstract points such as are popularly supposed to be dear to the dry-as-dust scientist. The problems raised by psychoanalysis relate most intimately to the ' practical concerns of health and everyday living. If Freud be correct, if the unconscious, for instance, plays the r61e he assigns to it and if it is truly possible to get at it through the analysis of dreams and of the other formulations and products of the un- conscious by means of the technique he has evolved, we have in our hands, for the first time in the history of science, a scientific method for controlling our psychic energies and for properly directing their outward flow. Through psychoanalysis, at last, mental health, efficiency, education of mind and body, human welfare generally — racial as well as personal — become subject to purposive direction and control, exactly as the forces of nature are today in the engineer's hands. •: ■ - :_,.■... i

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