This autobiography illustrates modern psychoanalysis' view of the unconscious as a force determining various choices which turn out to be sometime not at all the ones we think to take for rational reasons. As an example, let's think about what happened to me as a penniless refugee in Vienna (Austria) after a week drifting around:

"The key moments of the story, however, demonstrate all the way to the present day how tiny coincidences (the work of the Irrational ) may trigger important decisions. Walking along one of the avenues, I happened to run across one of my colleagues (a...