ABSTRACT
In Dr. Georg German literature Groddeck must be known to many as a physician full of temperament who had always held scientific obscurity in horror, and who, like the original Schweniger, looked at men and things, illnesses and cures, with his own eyes, described them in his own words. Some of his writings appear to be similar to some psycho-analytical theses. According to him the central motive of the latent, illness-causing tendencies is always the sexual instinct; the organism easily and willingly becomes ill if thereby it can satisfy its sexuality or escape a sexual unpleasure. Symbolism, which psycho-analysis has considered rather tentatively as one of the factors leading to the formation of ideas, is for Muller-Weltlein deeply rooted in the organic, perhaps even in the cosmic, and sexuality is the pivot round which the whole world of symbols revolves.
