Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/99

 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 353

refined manifestations of the instincts which make up life. But the instincts are never abandoned. They are only refined. Moreover they persist and occasionally flare up in their 'original image*.

The recapitulation theory, so interesting in other fields of biology, becomes here of the utmost practical significance.

It will be understood, of course, that the idea of recapitulation had been conceived as a principle of mental development and somewhat exploited long before Freud. Various attempts, some of. them more ingenious than convincing, had been made to trace correspondences between the behavior of children and the life of primitive people on the supposition that children and so-called savages stand psychically close to each other.

We have long been familiar with such expressions as 'the childhood of the human race' and by many comparisons we have been led to infer what is implied. The propensity of children for chmbing, for instance, has been described as a vestigial tendency harking back, as it were, to the arboreal habits of man's ancestors. Children's games, peculiar choices, curious likes and dislikes, and many of their imageries have been similarly related. But all such observations were conjectural. Proof was lacking.

Freud has stumbled upon the proof; and what is more, he has had the sagacity to recognise the importance of his discovery for science. He has disclosed the role of ontogenetic recapitulation in the growth and interplay of our psychic forces.

For the first time in the history of psychology we now have the key to the understanding of human behavior in the light of its biological history.

The technique which Freud has evolved largely in the con- nection with the analysis of dreams for sounding, investigating and charting the realm of man's unconscious is one of the most im- portant contributions in the history of science. The practical bene- fits of this discovery have only begun to be realised. Psychology is but beginning to redeem the promise it had long held out of becoming a practical guide in the conduct of our everyday life.

Received May 25, 1921.

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