ABSTRACT
Eduard von Hartmann, for instance, called the unconscious the 'Universal Ground'. In contradiction to this, the experimental psychologists, who for a long time regarded themselves not unjustly as the representatives of the only truly scientific psychology, adopted a negative attitude towards the concept of the unconscious, on the ground that everything psychic is conscious and that consciousness alone deserves the name 'psyche'. In France, ever since the time of Ribot, psychologists had kept an alert eye on abnormal psychic phenomena, and one of their most eminent representatives, Binet, even made the pronouncement that the pathological psyche exaggerated certain deviations from the normal which were difficult to understand, and, by throwing them into relief, made them more comprehensible. French psychologist, Pierre Janet, working at the Salpetriere, devoted himself almost exclusively and with great success to the study of psychopathological processes. Sexuality is a fundamental instinct which, as everyone knows, is the most hedged about with secrecy and with feelings of delicacy.
