Freud then continued with a reference to "the harbour of Schopenhauer's philosophy"; but in groping for a return to the clinical he admitted that "it looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price". Freud eventually decided that he could find a clinical manifestation of the death instinct in the phenomenon of masochism, "hitherto regarded as secondary to sadism ... and suggested that there could be a primary masochism, a self-injuring tendency which would be an indication of the death instinct". In a footnote he cited Sabina Spielrein admitting that "A considerable part of this speculation has been anticipated in a work which is full of valuable matter and ideas but is unfortunately not entirely clear to me: (Sabina Spielrein: "Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens", "Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse", IV, 1912). She designates the sadistic component as 'destructive'." To then explain the sexual instinct as well in terms of a compulsion to repeat, Freud inserts a myth from Plato that humans are driven to reproduce in order to join together the sexes, which had once existed in single individuals who were both male and female — still "in utter disregard of disciplinary distinctions"; and admits again the speculative nature of his own ideas, "lacking a direct translation of observation into theory ... One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray"'.