ABSTRACT
Psychology makes no claim to priority in regard to the understanding of human nature, except in one respect: that is to say, in the making of this study a science. Good doctors have always been good psychologists in so far as they could feel the patient’s position in his relation to external reality and also in his relation to his private inner world. But doctors, when they talk about human nature, say silly things just as other people do. Intuitive understanding of human nature must often prove unreliable as a guide in the more general field of social living. The scientific approach to the phenomena of human nature enables us to be ignorant without being frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of weird theories to explain away the gaps in knowledge. Sigmund Freud invented and developed a method, an instrument of scientific research into human nature which has turned out to be and a method of treatment.
