To be original in this way, they must ignore their sources in the European tradition, and they must be sadistic toward order and reason. In other words, psychoanalysts commit the sin of pride. They are unwilling to recognize their place in the great intellectual tradition of western Europe, and to make what contribution they can to its science and wisdom, however slight that may be. I have added this little psychoanalytical ending for the sake of warning you that you cannot dismiss what I have said in these lectures by psychoanalyzing me. That defense can be used against you as readily as against me.
Psychoanalysis is irrelevant to the merits of any intellectual position.
The essential difference in aim between the moralist and the psychotherapist is that the former is primarily concerned with positive training, the latter with the elimination of defects. Their difference is analogous to that between preventive medicine and surgery. This translation could be carried out in great detail by comparing the Freudian account of the genesis of neurosis with the Thomistic account of unhappiness in terms of sin and vice, especially the relation of capital to superficial sins which corresponds to the relation between complex and symptom in the Freudian analysis. Yet, on the question of truth, Freud is opposed to skepticism and relativism, as on the question of the contribution of the intellect, he is opposed to materialism. All Rights Reserved.