ABSTRACT
It is a fact that areas of experience normally inaccessible to a person can be partially recaptured by means of drugs, hypnotism or other techniques which provoke a radical change of consciousness. In the late nineteenth century in Europe the method of choice was hypnotism. Freud noted the reluctance with which these new areas of experience were confronted, and traced out the ingenious manoeuvres adopted by people to avoid them. It is not surprising that psychoanalysts are nowadays asked to treat a significant number of the children of parents who are either analysts themselves or have been analysed. The overt complaint was that this young man, who was obviously very intelligent, could not adapt to his academic course sufficiently well to learn anything. Another patient who had been watched anxiously in child-hood found her sessions with the author painful and embarrassing.
