he Psychopathology of Everyday Life,"[3]
"Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious,"[4] the analysis of the case
of the little boy called Hans, the study of Leonardo da Vinci,[4a] and
the various short essays in the four Sammlungen kleiner Schriften, not
only all hang together, but supplement each other to a remarkable
extent. Unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many critics
may think various statements and inferences in this volume to be far
fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension.

The other point is the following: One frequently hears the
psychoanalytic method referred to as if it was customary for those
practicing it to exploit the sexual experiences of their patients and
nothing more, and the insistence on the details of the sexual life,
presented in this book, is likely to emphasize that notion. But the fact
is, as every thoughtful inquirer is aware, that the whole progress of
civilization, whether in the individual or the race, consists largely in
a "sublimation" of infantile instincts, and especially certain portions
of the sexual instinct, to other ends than those which they seemed
designed to serve. Art and poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution
of character and mental force is largely of the same origin. All the
forms which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation,
may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a thorough
psychoanalysis. It is not the sexual life alone, but every interest and
every motive, that must be inquired into by the physician who is seeking
to obtain all the data about the patient, necessary for his reeducation
and his cure. But all the thoughts and emotions and desires and motives
which appear in the man or woman of adult years were once crudely
represented in the obscure instincts of the infant, and among these
instincts those which were concerned directly or indirectly with the
sexual emotions, in a wide sense, are certain to be found in every case
to have been the most important for the end-result.

JAMES J. PUTNAM.

BOSTON, August 23, 1910.

[1] Translated by A.A. Brill, NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH
SERIES, NO. 4.

[2] Translated by A.A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen &
Unwin, London.

[3] Translated by A.A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York.

[4] Translated by A.A. Brill, Moffatt, Yard & Co., New York.

[4a] Translated by A.A. Bril