ABSTRACT
Some recent papers of the author have dealt with the amplification of therapeutic technique by means of certain ‘active’ procedures. Freud himself stated some considerable time ago that habitual sexual gratification renders the child ineducable, in all probability because indulgence increases the child’s narcissism, thus making it independent of external influence. The same is true of that kind of re-education which the people seek to effect by means of psycho-analysis. All the manifestations which the people have so far classified as urethral, anal, and sexual habits can be defined as symptoms behind which analysis is able to disclose repressed desires and feelings. Freud's theory of instincts enabled the reader for the first time to understand the psychic motivation of the tendency to repeat earlier experiences as if they were habits: his repetition-compulsion is a derivative of the life-instincts and death-instincts which seek, to reduce all animate matter to a state of equilibrium.
