the stiff psychologist of the nineteenth century, with his
plaster-of-Paris categories and pigeon holes and classifications,
labelled the teeming creatures of the mind, becomes anon a strutting
actor upon a multitudinous stage, and an audience in a crowded
playhouse. Scenes are enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a de
Maupassant never could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, the
compulsion, the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner,
the devotion of a life-time, the culture of a nation all furnish bits
for the Freudian mosaic. Attractions and inhibitions, repulsions and
suppressions are held up as the ultimate pulling and pushing forces of
human nature.

But is the problem solved? Is not human nature primarily animal
nature? And do we so thoroughly understand this animal nature? Does
not all this material of Freudianism consist of variations upon social
burdens imposed on the original human nature? To be sure, at every
moment of life, choices have to be made, and choice involves the
clashing of instincts and motives, with victory for one or some, and
defeat for the others. But the Freudian material per se--the sex
material--is it not merely the by-product of a certain state of
society? A sane society would eliminate nearly all of Freudian
disease, but still have original human nature upon its hands. Why is
it that of two individuals exposed to the same situation, one will
develop a complex, the other will remain immune? The only soil we know
of, the real foundation stones of our being and living, are the cells
we are made of. Tell me the cellular basis of a complex, and I will
grant that you have arrived at some real knowledge.

WAY FOR THE PHYSIOLOGIST