Cultural Ferment 809

The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in his study.

individuals repress painful memories from childhood or even infancy).
Sexuality, specifically the repression of sexual urges, formed the basis of
Freud’s theory of the unconscious. One of Freud’s followers described the
role of his mentor’s “dream-work”: “The mind is like a city which during
the day busies itself with the peaceful tasks of legitimate commerce, but at
night when all the good burghers sleep soundly in their beds, out come these
disreputable creatures of the psychic underworld to disport themselves in
a very unseemly fashion; decking themselves out in fantastic costumes, in
order that they may not be recognized and apprehended.” Psychoanalysis
became both an investigative tool and a form of therapy, in which, very
gradually—from several months to many years and at considerable finan­
cial cost—the patient could obtain self-awareness and control over his or
her symptoms, such as hysteria.
Freud’s theories of human development established the irrational as an
intrinsic and sometimes even determining part of the human psyche. Psy­
choanalytic theory, which Freud claimed as a new science, emerged, along
with Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Marx’s writings on capitalist devel­
opment and revolution, as one of the foundations of twentieth-century
thought.

Avant-Garde Artists and Writers and the Rapid Pace of Modern Life

Progress seemed to have a price. At the Paris Exhibition of 1900, which cel­

ebrated the dawn of a new century, an uneasy visitor noted, “Life seethes in

this immense reservoir of energy ... a too violent magnificence.” In The

Wind in the Willows, published in 1908 by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932),

the motor car threatens stability. Behind the wheel, Toad, the amphibian