trivial pursuits

“But are you not making a confusion in your criticism [that psychoanalysis deals only with trivialities] between the vastness of the problems and the conspicuousness of what points to them? Are there not very important things which can only reveal themselves under certain conditions and at certain times, by quite feeble indications? If you are a young man, for instance, will it not be from small pointers that you will conclude that you have won a girl’s favour? Would you wait for an express declaration of love or a passionate embrace? Or would not a glance, scarcely noticed by other people, be enough? A slight movement, the lengething by a second of the pressure of a hand? And if you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure traces of the person you were in search of? So do not let us under-estimate small indications; by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of something bigger”

-Sigmund Freud, 1916 (Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth)

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