ABSTRACT

Festive occasions frequently engender a cheap optimism: imperrnanence and insignificance are denied, and a prosperous future is cheerily predicted. The future generation of psychoanalysts will have to accomplish two specific tasks before it can mobilize the creative initiative and, secondarily, the resources of talent that will enable it to move more deeply into the territory of man's psychological experiences. The highest ideal of the psychoanalyst is his commitment to truth. Specifically, he strives to see psychological reality clearly and realistically, to unmask and discard the illusions and falsifications that arise in consequence of wish-fulfilling tendencies in himself and in those he wants to help. The rest are instrumentalities in the service of the search for unembellished and unmitigated psychological truth. From the beginning of life, it is empathy, the psychological extension of an understanding human environment, that protects the infant from the encroachment of the inorganic world.