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PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS               241

The repressed wish, according to Freud, is invari-
ably of a sexual nature:1

"Psychoanalytic investigations trace back the symptoms
of disease with really surprising regularity to impressions from
the sexual life, show us that the pathogenic wishes are of the na-
ture of erotic impulse-components (Triebkomponente), and neces-
sitate the assumption that to disturbances of the erotic sphere
must be ascribed the greatest significance among the etiologi-
cal factors of the disease. This holds of both sexes, * . .

"The conduct of the patients does not make it any easier
to convince one's self of the correctness of the view which I have
expressed. Instead of willingly giving us information concern-
ing their sexual life, they try to conceal it by every means, in their
power. Men generally are not candid in sexual matters. They
do not show their sexuality freely, but they wear a thick over-
coat —• a fabric of lies — to conceal it, as though it were bad
weather in the world of sex. And they are not wrong; sun and
wind are not favorable in our civilized society to any demon-
stration of sex life. In truth no one can freely disclose Ms erotic
life to his neighbor. But when your patients see that in your
treatment they may disregard the conventional restraints, they
lay aside this veil of lies, and then only are you in a position to
formulate a judgment on the question in dispute. Unfortu-
nately physicians art' not favored above the rest of the children
of men in their personal relationship to the questions of the
sex life. Many of them are under the ban of that mixture of
prudery and lasdviousness which determines the behavior of
most Kulturmenschen in affairs of sex. , . .

"It is true that in another series of cases psychoanalysis at
first traces the symptoms back not to the sexual, but to banal
traumatic experiences. But the distinction loses its significance

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