ABSTRACT
Ever since its beginning in the 1890s, psychoanalysis has suffered from two major sets of barriers obstructing the general acceptance of its views and observations. The first set consists of the very nature of the observations themselves, many of which are concerned with feelings that are far indeed from what civilized man would like to believe about himself. This is intrinsic, and little can be done to mitigate it. The second set, however, is concerned with Freud's personality and background and the tradition to which these two factors have given rise; of which we may list many features, such as the divorce from the methods of experimental science and from contemporary biology, the esoteric language, highly questionable and most un-biological concepts such as primary narcissism, the libido theory, and the death instinct; and above all the intense identification between analyst and analytical trainee, which has led to the ossification of ideas into rigidly held ideological beliefs, instead of tentative theories that need dispassionate consideration and await experimental confirmation or disproof. Barriers of this kind are unnecessary and urgently require dismantling.
