sort, the logical goal of a psychoanalytic treatment is not covered by the
securing of a relative freedom from subjective distress, even when combined
with the satisfactory fulfillment of one's biologic mission. A man has
higher destinies than this, and the sense of incompleteness felt by the
neurotic patient, which was emphasized by Janet and is recognized by us all,
must be more or less painfully felt by every man whose conscience does not
assure him that he is really working for an end greater than that here
specified. The logical end of a psychoanalytic treatment is the recovery of
a full sense of one's highest destiny and origin and of the bearings and
meanings of one's life.

On similar grounds I think that the conflicts to which all men find
themselves subjected, must be considered, in the last analysis, as conflicts
of an ethical description. For it is only in ethical terms that one can
define one's relation to the universe regarded as a whole, just as it is
only in ethical terms that a man could describe his sense of obligation to
support the dignity of fine family traditions or the ideals represented by a
team or a social group of which he felt reason to be proud. I realize that a
man's sense of pride of his family, his team, or his country may be a
symptom of narcistic self-adulation; but like all such signs and
symbols--the symbol of the church tower, for example--this is a case where
two opposing meanings meet.

Every act and motive of our lives, from infancy to age, is controlled by two
sets of influences, the general nature of which has here been made
sufficiently clear. They correspond on the one hand, to the numerous partial
motives which psychoanalysis studies to great advantage, and on the other
hand, to the ethical motives which are only thoroughly studied by
philosophy.