Owing to our different conception of the structure of the dream, the further course of analysis also gains a different complexion from that which it had until now. The symbolic valuation given to sexual phantasies in the later stages of analysis necessarily leads less to the reduction of the patient's personality into primitive tendencies, than to the extension and further development of his mental attitude; that is, it tends to make his thinking richer and deeper, thus giving him what has always been one of the most powerful weapons that a human being can have in his struggle to adapt himself to life. By following this new course logically, I have come to the conclusion that these religious and philosophical motive forces--the so-called metaphysical needs of the human being--must receive positive consideration at the hands of the analyst. Though he must not destroy the motive forces that underlie them, by reducing them to their primitive, sexual roots, he must make them serve biological ends as psychologically valuable factors. Thus these instincts assume once more those functions that have been theirs from time immemorial.
Just as primitive man was able, with the aid of religious and philosophical symbol, to free himself from his original state, so, too, the neurotic can shake off his illness in a similar way. It is hardly necessary for me to say, that I do not mean by this, that the belief in a religious or philosophical dogma should be thrust upon the patient; I mean simply that he has to reassume that psychological attitude which, in an earlier civilisation, was characterised by the living belief in a religious or philosophical dogma. But the religious-philosophical attitude does not necessarily correspond to the belief in a dogma. A dogma is a transitory intellectual formulation; it is the result of the religious-philosophical attitude, and is dependent upon time and circumstances. This attitude is itself an achievement of civilization; it is a function that is exceedingly valuable from a biological point of view, for it gives rise to the incentives that force human beings to do creative work for the benefit of a future age, and, if necessary, to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the species.