Wit and its relation to the unconscious · Sigmund Freud
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
In 1908 when it was agreed between Professor Freud and myself that I should be his translator, it was decided to render into English first the following five works: _Selected Papers on Hysteria and Psychoneuroses_,[1] _Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex_,[2] _The Interpretation of Dreams_,[3] _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_,[4] and the present volume. These works were selected because they represent the various stages of development of Professor Freud’s Psychoanalysis,[5] and also because it was thought that they contain the material which one must master before one is able to judge correctly the author’s theories or apply them in practice. This undertaking, which was fraught with many linguistic and other difficulties, has finally been accomplished with the edition of the present volume, and it is therefore with a sense of great satisfaction that the translator’s preface to this work is written. But although the original task is finished the translator’s work is only beginning. Psychoanalysis has made enormous strides. On the foundation laid by Professor Freud there developed a literature rich in ideas and content which has revolutionized the science of nervous and mental diseases, and has thrown much light on the subject of dreams, sex, mythology,[6] the history of civilization and racial psychology,[7] philology,[8] æsthetics,[9] child psychology and pedagogics,[10] philology,[11] and mysticism and occultism.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.