Basically what Freud saw was a lack of congruence between our thinking and our living. For example, we think that our behavior is motivated by love, loyalty, duty, and so on, and we don't realize that the real motivation is our obsession with power, masochism, and dependency... Most of us live in a world of illusion, where we take our thoughts for reality... He also made a breakthrough in the field of ethics.

Before Freud, honesty meant saying what you believe. After Freud, the phrase "I meant well" has lost its value as an excuse. Good intentions are one of society's best rationalizations for its bad deeds, and nothing is easier than convincing oneself of the sincerity of this rationalization.

Psychoanalysis has given a new dimension to the concept of truth. In pre-analytic thought, a person could be said to be telling the truth if he believed what he was saying. Psychoanalysis has shown that subjective belief is by no means a criterion of truthfulness.

A person may believe that he is acting justly and yet be motivated by cruelty. He may believe that he is motivated by love and yet be driven by a desire for masochistic dependency. Another person may believe that duty is the guiding principle in his life, but his real motivation is vanity. The more he avoids recognizing his real motives, the more he must believe his rationalizations...