Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/92

 *jections of human ideas into transcendental regions, contravening the prescription of the theory of cognition.

We have thus no right to speak of a sexual instinct existing in nuce, as we then give an arbitrary explanation of phenomena which can be explained otherwise, and in a more adequate manner. We can speak of the manifestations of a nutrition instinct, of the manifestations of a sexual instinct, etc., but we have only the right to do so when the function has quite clearly reached the surface. We only speak of light when the iron is visibly luminous, but not when the iron is merely hot. Freud, as an observer, sees clearly that the sexuality of neurotic people is not entirely comparable with infantile sexuality, for there is a great difference, for instance, between the uncleanliness of a child of two years old and the uncleanliness of a katatonic patient of forty. The former is a psychological and normal phenomenon; the latter is extraordinarily pathological. Freud inserted a short passage in his "Three Contributions" saying that the infantile form of neurotic sexuality is either wholly, or at any rate partly, due to a regression. That is, even in those cases where we might say, these are still the same by-paths, we find that the function of the by-paths is still increased by regression. Freud thus recognizes that the infantile sexuality of neurotic people is ''for the greater part'' a regressive phenomenon. That this must be so is also shown through the further insight obtained from the investigations of recent years, that the observations concerning the psychology of the childhood of neurotic people hold equally good for normal people. At any rate we can say that the history of the development of infantile sexuality in persons with neurosis differs but by a hair's breadth from that of normal beings who have escaped the attention of the expert appraiser. Striking differences are exceptional.

The more we penetrate into the heart of infantile development, the more we receive the impression that as little can be found there of etiological significance, as in the infantile shock. Even with the acutest ferreting into history, we shall never discover why people living on German soil had just such a fate, and