Here probably
Freud's enthusiasm at first carried him too far and the most important
modification he has made in his views occurs at this point: he now
attaches a preponderant influence to heredity. He has realized that sexual
activity in one form or another is far too common in childhood to make it
possible to lay very great emphasis on "traumatic lesions" of this
character, and he has also realized that an outcrop of fantasies may
somewhat later develop on these childish activities, intervening between
them and the subsequent morbid symptoms. He is thus led to emphasize anew
the significance of heredity, not, however, in Charcot's sense, as general
neuropathic disposition but as "sexual constitution." The significance of
"infantile sexual lesions" has also tended to give place to that of
"infantilism of sexuality."[281]
The real merit of Freud's subtle investigations is that--while possibly
furnishing a justification of the imperfectly-understood idea that had
floated in the mind of observers ever since the name "hysteria" was first
invented--he has certainly supplied a definite psychic explanation of a
psychic malady. He has succeeded in presenting clearly, at the expense of
much labor, insight, and sympathy, a dynamic view of the psychic processes
involved in the constitution of the hysterical state, and such a view
seems to show that the physical symptoms laboriously brought to light by
Charcot are largely but epiphenomena and by-products of an emotional
process, often of tragic significance to the subject, which is taking
place in the most sensitive recess of the psychic organism.
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