ABSTRACT
In neurosis, as in certain forms of criminality, we deal with the per sistence in the present of motives and ideas that were made unconscious in childhood. This proposition, which is basic to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, has been criticized on the grounds that it overaccents the element of fixity in personality, and underaccents the roles of social factors and events occurring after the period of childhood, in the determination of neurotic and deviant behavior. This chapter states the case for fixity. It attempts to show by means of a case study that traumatic experiences in childhood may have effects that ramify throughout the personality and help to determine an adult's thoughts, feelings, and actions. At the same time, however, it is argued here that even though we retain and utilize this essential component of psychoanalytic theory-which may indeed have been overaccented by Freud and other psychoanalytic writers-we may still give all due attention to social factors and to later as well as early events in the individual life. The task is to assign proper weights to each of these kinds of factors and to understand their interrelations.
