ABSTRACT
In the first issue of the Internationaljournal of Psycho-Analysis, Freud (1917a) contributed a paper, "A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis," which I believe is particularly relevant today in understanding the developments in psychoanalysis in the last 50 years. In that essay Freud attempted to demonstrate how psychoanalysis, like other scientific research, has alienated most men by hurting their narcissism, their self-love. He described the three most hurtful blows to human narcissism as follows:
Copernicus and his forerunners put an end to this illusion and proved the earth was much smaller than the sun and moved around that celestial body. That was the cosmological blow to man's narcissism.
