Both states, hypnosis and group formation, are an inherited deposit from the phylogenesis of the human libido—hypnosis in the form of predisposition, and the group, besides this, as a direct survival. The replacement of the directly sexual tendencies by those that are inhibited in their aims promotes in both states a separation between the ego and the ego ideal, a separation with which a beginning has already been made in the state of being in love.
'The neurosis stands outside this series. It also is based upon a peculiarity in the development of the human libido—the twice repeated start made by the directly sexual function, with an intervening period of latency.[1] To this extent it resembles hypnosis and group formation in having the character of a regression, which is absent from being in love. It makes its appearance wherever the advance from directly sexual instincts to those that are inhibited in their aims has not been completely successful; and it represents a conflict between those instincts which have been received into the ego after having passed through this development and those portions of the same instincts which, like other instinctive desires that have been completely repressed, strive, from the repressed unconscious, to attain direct satisfaction. The neurosis
- ↑ See Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 4. Auflag'e, 1920, S. 96.
