Foreword

Foreword.Vorwort.

The present collection owes its origin to the intention of making the assured and fruitful results of modern research into the unconscious life of the soul accessible to the people. What has been set down scientifically in learned works, books and journals is to be presented in this series in language as generally intelligible as possible, and new experiences and findings will be communicated as well. We are of the opinion that not only all the humanities but also the most varied fields of daily life stand in urgent need of the psychanalytic method created by Sigmund Freud, a method so much admired and praised, but also so much misjudged and slandered, if they are to be delivered from the distress that now prevails. Without a method that penetrates into the unconscious depths of the creating mind, we cannot solve many of the deepest and most important riddles of the human mind, and we stand at a loss and helpless both in education and in many of the decisive problems of life into which the grown man is again and again driven; whereas psychanalysis, though only psychanalysis rightly understood and practised, opens to us a wide realm of knowing and of working.

The editors of these writings are men of science and of practice. Dr Pierre Bovet is full professor of child psychology at the University of Geneva and director of the École J. J. Rousseau, which is, as is well known, a kind of college for the methods of teaching. Dr Eduard Claparède has made himself a respected name as a child psychologist in France and in Germany; he too is a full professor at the University of Geneva, and he directs a polyclinic for children as its physician. Dr Ernst Schneider was director of the higher teachers’ seminary in Bern and now teaches child psychology at the University of Riga. He has gained a rich experience in the analysis of the young. Dr Emil Oberholzer practises in Zurich as a physician for nervous and mental diseases. I need not introduce myself to the reader.

May a rich blessing come forth from our writings for the people within and beyond the borders of our country!

Zurich.

Dr O. Pfister, Pfarrer.