ABSTRACT
Psycho-analytical interest is focused on the question of the origin of psychic phenomena. In terms of psycho-analysis the problem is this: by what instinctive forces, conscious and unconscious, are these phenomena determined? The analysis of psychological products regularly reveals in them the combined workings of the 'ego-instincts' and the 'sexual instincts'. Psychoanalysis attributes to the latter a far wider significance than that ascribed to them by other schools of thought. Psycho-analysis took as its starting-point the investigation of neurotic symptom-formation. But the more thoroughly the psycho-genesis of a symptom was explored the more definitely did the associations of the patients lead back into the past, and ultimately to early childhood. The authors find analogous thought-processes amongst primitive peoples. The primitive form of thinking persists moreover in the symbolic mode of expression as we meet with it in myths and fairy-tales of different races and in the dreams and other phantasy-creations of individuals.
