Louis E. Bisch – Your Inner Self

 

Preface

Introduction

Chapter I

The Inner Self

The Unconscious or Subconscious.

Chapter II

The Urge of Desire

The Libido: Nutrition—Self-Preservation—Repro­ductive—Ego—Individual Differences.

Chapter III

The Span of Life

Five Periods of Development: Infantile Period— Period of Over-Idealization of Parents—Period of Criticism of Parents—Adolescent Period—Adult Period.

Chapter IV

Early Helps and Hindrances

Fixations—The CEdipus and Electra Myths.

Chapter V

The Conflict of Life

The World of Reality—The Pleasure-Pain Principle— Repressions.

Chapter VI

Unconscious Mechanisms

Complexes—The Psychic Censor—Introversion and Extroversion—Regressions—Sadism and Masochism —Ambivalence.

Chapter VII

Safety Devices

Defense Reactions—Organ Inferiority—Conversion— Dreams—Sublimation.

Chapter VIII

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of

Historical Discussion—The Unfulfilled Wish—Value of the Dream—Childhood Dreams—Adult Dreams— Underlying and Precipitating Causes—Dream Sym­bols—Manifest and Latent Contents.

Chapter IX

Investigating the Inner Self

The Dream-Work—Condensation—Displacement— Dramatization—Association Method—Resistances— Reaction Time—Analysis of Sample Dreams.

Chapter X

Sex Development

Erogenous Zones—Heterosexuality—Homosexuality —Auto-Eroticism—Narcism—Sex Hygiene.

Chapter XI

Nervous Breakdowns

Definitions—Ordinary Nervousness—Sex Factor in Neuroses—Phobias—Anxiety Neuroses—Compulsion Neuroses—Hysteria—Neurasthenia—Psychasthenia.

Chapter XII

What Is Insanity?

Definitions; Differentials between Neuroses and Psychoses; Dementia Praecox; Mental Hygiene.

Chapter XIII

Curiosities of Everyday Life

Losing Things—Forgetting Names and Duties— Slips of the Tongue—Mistakes in Reading and Writing—Unintentional Actions—Mental Telepathy— Superstitions—Wit and Humour—Method of Investi­gation.

Chapter XIV

The Inner Self and the Arts

Ancient Folk-Lore—Primitive Religions—Imitative and Creative Art—Art as a Normal Compensation— Sublimation—Genius.

Chapter XV

Conclusion

 

Preface

Many books have been written and will continue to be written about the intricacies and mysteries of the mind. The very Multiplicity and diver­sity of mental processes and the dominant role they play in determining happiness or misery, success or failure, indicate the interest everyone should feel in them.

Out of the wealth of data, sometimes conflict­ing, which has been laboriously gathered by scientific investigators, sufficient information has been correlated to make at least certain mental reactions understandable. Theories based upon this attested knowledge are found to be of prac­tical use in everyday life. Nobody can afford to treat carelessly or in a scoffing spirit the trend of scientific thought on so vital a subject.

The brain is the controlling sensitizer—the switchboard—of the entire organism, organic and functional. An insight into its workings cannot fail to be invaluable to any individual. The scientist is no longer satisfied with the older “effect psychology” which confined itself to observing the results merely of brain activity, but he looks deeper and searches for causes and reasons. If he can discover why a person be­haves in such and such a way under certain circumstances rather than in some other manner, he will in time be able to regulate the cause, i. e., the mental process, and wisely to direct the effect, i. e., the behaviour itself. We are begin­ning to realize that men and women, despite hereditary influences, are not the victims of fatalistic predetermination. They can in large measure become captains of their souls—if they only know how. Knowledge of the inner self is essential to self-mastery.

No human being can hope to guide his own craft toward efficiency and happiness unless he is honest and plucky enough to acknowledge his weaknesses, and has the courage and per­sistence to probe his inmost thoughts and face what he finds there.

A dreaded disease is betrayed to a doctor’s eye by unmistakable symptoms. For the patient to deny the presence of the disease and refuse the regimen necessary to its cure can result only in a life of invalidism, shortened and suffering. Nor can a refusal to admit a basic fault of character, signs of which jump to the eye of a trained observer, have other result than a life­long handicap, carrying imminent risk of dis­aster.

Sigmund Freud, with his psychoanalytic doc­trines, has undoubtedly gone further in his fear­less search for underlying, motivating, and causative factors in human characterology than any of his predecessors. Whether we accept the conclusions of the psychoanalytic school in their entirety or not, any unprejudiced student of normal and abnormal psychology must admit that a new avenue of approach has been blazed, and that many mental reactions, hitherto un­explainable, have received a possible and often probable interpretation.

And if one is engaged in actually applying these theories in trying to help those who are mentally harassed—not the insane, mind you, but those, of whom there are thousands, who suffer from fears, obsessions, depression, morbid self-depreciation, insomnia, deficient concen­tration, poor memory, lack of self-confidence, and what-not, and who face the treadmill drudgery of life with misgivings and despair— the hopeful results rouse even greater enthusi­asm. No one can undergo a psychoanalysis— or even study its principles—without emerging a stronger and happier person from the mental house-cleaning and setting in order. If psycho­analysis is anything at all it is a character- builder.

Most of us go through life haphazardly, with no clear plan and with no higher ideal of action than that we have been put here and must make the best we can of it. But how much more we could make of ourselves if we understood better the impelling forces within us which, wisely controlled and directed, make for supreme suc­cess and happiness but, if misunderstood, cause miserable failure and unhappiness.

In treating so obscure a subject as the mind, the writer hesitates to use arbitrary statement, yet his voice must sound a clear note of authority or he will be denied a hearing. It is understood, therefore, that he will present only carefully attested hypotheses which have already supplied the solution to many difficult problems and that in marshalling his evidence he will avoid an obscuring excess of detail. His aim is to pro­mote interest in this subject, a knowledge of which he regards as so practically helpful, and to stimulate an appetite for a wider knowledge than can be condensed within the limits of so brief a handbook.

Although the science of psychoanalysis has hundreds of books and articles to its credit, and a tendency to popularize the subject is greatly in evidence at the present time, perhaps a some­what different angle of approach to this highly complex subject may prove acceptable.

The author is particularly indebted to Miss Edith Child for constructive criticism of the manuscript as well as for compiling the index and selecting the terms to be included in the glossary. For stimulating interest, appreciative acknowledgment is due to Mrs. Sara Lindsey Porter and Mr. James Hay, Jr.

Louis E. Bisch.

Hillcrest Manor,

Asheville, N. C.

March 10, 1922.

 

 

 

Introduction 

Just as the dissection of the human body is essential to an understanding of its structure, just as the development, of an antiseptic, and later of an aseptic technique for surgery was essential before many disease processes could be attacked at their seat, just so psychoanalysis is the essential method for uncovering and for dealing with the disorders of the human mind. But in the same way that the dissection of the human body and the application of the sur­geon’s knife had to win their way to public ap­proval before they could be widely used for good in the understanding of the human body and in the treatment of illness, so has psychoanalysis to win its way to public approval before it will receive that general support which is necessary as a background—before it can attain the far- reaching results for which it is adapted and which are possible by its use. One of the most im­portant ways by which this new method of psychology can come to popular recognition, understanding, and acceptance is by reducing its highly scientific and complex conceptions to simple, understandable English, supported by concrete and apt illustrations from actual ex­perience. This method of popularizing has al­ready been attempted by many, and many more will follow. One must be satisfied to be a worker among workers in such a field, and to contribute his bit along with others. Nevertheless, each contribution bears the distinctive stamp of the personality of the contributor, both in the selection of the material and in the way of pres­entation, and therefore becomes to that extent an original contribution. This little book is such an original contribution by the author, Dr. Bisch. It is interestingly written in a style that is both entertaining and vigorous, and at the same time sufficiently condensed so that it may well secure a wide reading.

The understanding of the human mind and of the nature of mental disease has come to the fore in the past decade with surprising rapidity, and it is probably not without significance that such a stimulated interest should arise at a moment in the world’s history when events, which are succeeding each other with startling rapidity, are obviously in their nature psychological, and when the dangers which society has to face are equally obviously of psychological origin. Every contribution to popular literature, therefore, which helps in the direction of sane thinking is a distinct asset and should be welcomed by all who are striving for the best solution of the many complicated social problems that now confront us. The students of me.ntal disease are in a peculiarly advantageous relation to all these various problems, and it is well that they should speak forth their thoughts as the author has done in this book regarding “Your Inner Self.”

William A. White.

 

 

Chapter I THE INNER SELF The Unconscious or Subconscious

You are what you are to-day because of every­thing you have been from the cradle up to the present time.

Thus we summarize the innumerable factors that in their effects combine to produce the character and personality of the human adult. From the moment of birth—nay, even in the mother’s womb according to some scientists— every thought, feeling, and experience has a bearing upon mental development. Character and personality are like composites, gradually built up; or better still, like a component of forces constantly changing in an infinite variety of ways with no single factor too insignificant to produce perhaps an indelible impression.

An experience occurring to a child of five may have a direct bearing upon its whole future life. A fright, an unexpected discovery, a love interest during these tender years may be responsible for making or marring an entire career. The shame of undeserved punishment may burn into a child’s brain and its scar never be effaced. A dread of closed places (“claustrophobia”), because of which a woman dared not enter an elevator, street car, theatre, or, at times, even her own room, was traceable directly to a shock received at the age of eight when in a game of “hide and seek” a playmate forgot to unlock a closet in which she had been hidden.

Such experiences are often forgotten—in fact, usually are. It does not follow that the more important an experience is the more likely it is to be remembered. A factor that determined the failure of a whole lifetime was lost to memory soon after it happened, although its influence was felt indirectly through other channels. The woman mentioned above had completely forgotten the accidental carelessness of her playmate.

This leads to the interesting conclusion that we do not possess simply one mind but, in effect, really two. We have an unconscious or subcon­scious as well as a conscious mind.

Such a classification may seem arbitrary, and in a sense it is, yet it helps us to understand the curious manifestations of mentality.

Like a diamond, the cut surface of which is an inseparable part of the stone mass and the stone mass an inseparable part of its cut surface, so stands the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. The facets of the diamond have no thickness, they are just the top. Pene­trate them for ever so small a fraction of an inch and you immediately have left the surface and are within the stone mass underneath. The latter, in turn, derives its value and brilliancy from the cut surface. One is absolutely and in­separably dependent upon the other.

Consciousness is the medium through which we receive impressions from the outside world. By means of our sense organs—eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin—we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. All these mental images of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch linger in consciousness only for the briefest period. Often with astonishing rapidity they are submerged into the underneath, the unconscious, in order to be put away and stored up for future use. The reason con­sciousness holds them only for a short time is that room must be cleared as quickly as possible for new impressions.

I examined a patient who complained that her thoughts passed to and fro, recurring with mad­dening repetition. She couldn’t thrust ideas away. New impressions thronging from the outside world bewildered her. She no longer could think clearly. Her mind was all in a hodge-podge. In her case consciousness had lost the power of submerging ideas quickly. This woman was developing a mental disease.

The conscious mind is the intermediary be­tween the unconscious and the world about us. We pass a friend in the street; we greet him. We proceed on our way looking at the shop windows, occupied with other thoughts. At night, in conversation at dinner, we recall the meeting of the afternoon and describe it. Having during the interval, for purposes of convenience, stored away the visual image of our friend in the fore­conscious,[1] we are able at will to recall it in mi­nutest detail.

Although the unconscious is actually a store­house for all our experiences we cannot always lay our hands on them when we want to.

Again, we may have difficulty in banishing a thought, or as we say, forgetting it. This hap­pens when some strong disagreeable emotion is attached to the conscious impression.

For example, suppose the man we met has for­feited our friendship by betraying our confidence. Not only shall we have an unpleasant feeling while passing him, but his image and the pain­ful associations it recalls will keep bobbing up again and again into consciousness, and very likely form a continuous undertone to other thoughts, until the pressure is relieved by ven­tilating the whole incident through the talk at dinner time.

Further, in this underneath mind—in this your real inner self—there is an orderly arrange­ment of what is stored away.

Science has already discovered that to certain portions of the brain is given the task of storing up certain kinds of impressions; they have a specialized work to perform. In the back of the head, in the occipital lobes, are the centres for sight. The speech centre is supposed to be on the left side of the brain, above and in front of the ear. Future experimentation will doubtless determine in much greater detail this localization of function. It may be added here that most of the work of the brain seems to be taken up by the left side, the right being, relatively speaking, dormant.

The unconscious has well been called one’s historical past. The multitudinous events of each day, but especially its landmarks, are all recorded there.

You will ask whether every experience, im­portant or not, is actually engraved somewhere in the unconscious and is never effaced. Do not some impressions gradually fade out? Is there no such thing as absolute forgetting?

All mental images may conveniently be divided into two types, the purely intellectual and those to which some emotion is attached. The aver­age thinker, pondering the obscurity of Ein­stein’s Law of Relativity, may be exerting the highest intellectual effort of which he is capable, but the subject is so abstract and impersonal that it arouses in him no emotion whatever. An impression of this intellectual type, when relegated to the unconscious mind, tends to fade out because it lacks the vitalizing element, emotion. To Einstein himself, however, all thought on this great law which he has formu­lated, is doubtless surcharged with intense emo­tion.

If, on the other hand, we contemplate even abstractly mother-love, a thrill within us marks the stirring of emotion. If furthermore this thought is transferred from the abstract to the concrete and attached to some woman, the thrill strengthens, the impression made on the un­conscious is deepened—the record will be per­manent.             ,

The mind, in its infinite variety, is indeed a complicated mechanism. Yet it is a machine like any other organ of the body, and its work­ings can be studied.

The brain is the solid substance or material of that machine. It is made up of various parts called nerve cells and nerve fibres. The function­ing or working of these nerve cells produces thoughts. All the thoughts considered together and bound together into a system constitute the mind.

All other organs of the body are machines also and each organ has a definite work to per­form. Just as the brain cells manufacture thoughts so do the liver cells manufacture bile and store up sugar in the form of glucose.

When all the liver cells are doing their work properly you are pleasantly unaware of their action. When certain of these cells begin to secrete too little and get out of kilter in some way

with the rest of the liver, then this organ gets sick and perhaps for the first time you appreciate the fact that you have a liver.

This is the essence of all disease, a disharmony or wrong functioning of the parts of an organ or its disharmony as a whole with the rest of the body.

What has been s^id is true also of the mind. When the mind functions well, when the con­scious and the unconscious are working in har­mony, there is a sense of well-being, a feeling of being properly and intimately attuned with na­ture and the world in which we live.

If our two minds are not cooperating, if the inner, unconscious self is in disharmony with the outer, conscious self, well-being disappears and in its stead come uneasiness, worry, and depression.

It is the inner self that we must study, that vast, complicated storehouse that has made us what we are. Let us enter and examine its con­tents. Perhaps our mental commodities are not labelled correctly, perhaps they have been shelved wrongly or have been mislaid. If we enter fearlessly, ready and willing to face facts as they are without cavil or prejudice, we are certain to profit by the experience if, indeed, we do not actually set our mental houses in order.

Chapter II THE URGE OF DESIRE The Libido: Nutrition — Self-preser­vation — Reproductive — Ego — Individual Differences

Everyone has within him a something that

keeps him going despite adversity. You may or you may not realize the existence of this hope­ful, driving power within. Whether you do or not, it is there just the same exerting its influence upon your thoughts and actions constantly.

Suppose you are a man in business and have had a poor season. The outlook is gloomy; money is tight. Your creditors, like a wolf-pack, are closing around you. Bankruptcy looms dangerously near. Is it surprising that you are full of forebodings, depressed, and heart-sick?

As you contemplate the ruin and disgrace threatening, do you immediately rush to the bureau drawer for your revolver? On the con­trary, self-destruction is by no means your first thought. You review the situation, you cast balances, you weigh and consider all possible ways of getting out of the morass of your diffi­culties. Now and again a ray of hope makes itself felt. Business may take an unexpected turn for the better. Your largest creditor is friendly; he will give you breathing time. In the face of despair you still hope on.

Suppose you are a woman, the mother of a sick child you idolize. Suppose, further, that it is your only child and, to make the picture even sadder, suppose your husband is dead. The physician has told you that the little one has barely a fighting chance. Should he die you feel that the mother-love within you would perish likewise. You would just as soon be bur­ied alive as have such a catastrophe overwhelm you.

Do you, in turn, prepare for suicide should the apparently inevitable occur? Again, no! Instead, you make diligent and even frantic search for any ground of reassurance. You trace back the child’s heredity—strong stock on both sides. You appeal to your friends for their opinions of your child’s chance of recovery and treasure any crumb of comfort they offer. You send up heart-broken prayers to God to save your heart’s idol. You stumble upon the thought that the doctor may be wrong. Are not doctors human and may they not often be mistaken? A small, inner voice whispers that your only child simply cannot die. From some unknown source you have gained courage to struggle on and face the issue.

How vital to human beings is their instinctive resistance to the paralyzing grip of despair! The average man and woman will fight to the last ditch before relinquishing hope.

The nervous system is the toughest element in the whole human machinery. It will endure untold abuses before breaking down. It is questionable whether any other organ can with­stand what the brain can, and for so long.

But anxiety is not the only thing that will wear the nervous system down.

Men, and women, too, will slave all day at business and then slave most of the night in social ways. They have an idea that speeding up their pleasures is an antidote to their daily toil. The devotees of bridge regard it as a won­derful recreation. So it is in small doses, but no game demanding mental effort, however slight, can have any other effect than a dangerous depletion of nervous energy when practiced for hours at a stretch at the expense of outdoor rec­reation and sleep.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for play, and eight hours for sleep is as true a maxim now as it ever was. If it might be modified in any way the eight hours of sleep might profitably be increased to nine or even ten/’

It is absurd to argue that fatigue from hard mental work should be counteracted by hard physical exercise. Mild exercise in the open is excellent in such cases: a short brisk walk, a not too strenuous game of tennis, or a dozen holes of golf. Playing tennis too long and too violently or spending an entire day at golf ceases to activate the muscles in carrying off waste prod­ucts and simply adds to the wear and tear of the entire organism.

Tough as the brain and nervous system are, they have their limitations. With continued abuse the offender sooner or later “pays the piper.” Furthermore, exercise and diversion are not sufficient to restore shattered nerves.

This inner, propelling force that holds us to the task of living is unconscious; we scarcely realize its existence. The psychoanalytic t6rm for this forward-looking element of our inner selves is the Libido.

No person is free from libido; everybody pos­sesses it. We are born with it; it is instinctive.

We can no more deny our libidinous energy than we can deny that we live. It is life itself. It pervades all our thoughts, actions, and feel­ings. It is the animating spirit of everything. Without it we should lead U merely vegetative existence.

Libido is the desire of life, the wishing of life, the pleasure-seeking of life. We have heard of the “will to power.” This is the will to life.

Hope, desire, urge, wishing, striving, ambition —all are synonymous with libido.

Although there are a great variety of ten­dencies that may properly be classed as libidi­nous, psychologists generally recognize four main divisions. The first is the Nutrition Libido, the second the Self-Preservation Libido, the third the Reproductive, and the fourth the Ego Libido, or Personality.

The first three of these ensure the well-being and continuance of the race.

The Nutrition Libido is the most elemental of the four.

A baby’s first wail is a hunger cry; its first instinctive movement is a groping for the moth­er’s breast. Were this not so, the human race would perish speedily. To feed and sleep and rouse to feed again, rounds out the first months of a baby’s life. Other pleasures such as play come later. Throughout life the nutrition libido is a primary need. The satisfaction of hunger should always be attended by a sensation of pleasure. The glutvon displays an over-strong nutrition libido that has never been refined; that of the epicure is over-refined.

The nutrition libido is insistent; its demands, through force of habit, periodic. Having re­solved to achieve slimness by fasting, or to proclaim resistance to injustice by a hunger- strike, you may deny its urge for even a suc­cession of meals. But the libido will win out in the end. You must yield to its demands or starve to death.

This quality of an inexorable demand upon consciousness is a salient characteristic of all types of libidinous energy. Libidinous demands must be satisfied in some sort of fashion, else peace of mind is shattered and the physical well­being of the whole body suffers.

The Libido of Self-Preservation is instinctive in its action.

Absorbed in a brown study, you start to cross a crowded street. An automobile bears down upon you. Without conscious thought on your part, your muscles are set in action. You has­tily draw back. The action which saved you was automatic and instinctive. The libido of self-­preservation was alert.

Should you be walking in a park and meet a lion escaped from the zoo, dignity and the shining polish of your patent leathers would be forgot­ten. You would make for the nearest available tree shouting lustily for help. Your self-pres­ervation libido has set your propulsive muscles agoing with lightning rapidity. Whether you ran because you were afraid, or were afraid—as William J ames, the psychologist, states—because you ran, the end is the same. The conscious process of running away marks the instinctive action of your libido.

Some analysts rank the libido of self-preserva­tion as above all others in importance. In the lower forms of life it is the chief law of existence. In man and the higher animals we have the in­fluence of family love. The male will protect his mate with his own body; parents will feed and defend their young at the cost to themselves of self-denial and bodily hurt.

Later, man gradually learned the wisdom of giving a square deal to his fellow man because thereby he would secure for himself a square deal in return. Self-interest is still, you see, the ruling motive, but man has learned to pro­ject his self-preservation libido on to another, to put himself into another’s place. Altruism has been born!

It is from such huhible beginnings that, as eons passed, the noblest abstract libidinous qualities have been developed: mercy, charity, justice, and many others.

The cynic and the materialist would attribute all such idealistic traits to a self-interest mo­tive. An eye so jaundiced might as well refuse to admit the stainless purity of the water-lily because of the slime in which its roots are em­bedded.

The person who makes the best of his life and who is of the greatest value to society is the one who is best adjusted. His keener sense of proportion enables him to gratify his own striv­ings without infringing the needs and rights of others.

When we come to the question of reproduction we are at once treading upon dangerous ground. It is dangerous because it is so readily and often misunderstood.

Reproductive Libido does not mean and was never intended to mean merely the gratification of sex.

Sex is necessarily included in the concept of reproduction, but, considered in its grossly sensual aspects, sex plays but a small part in the broader, wider, idealized sense in which the term “reproduction” is employed by analysts.

Can anything be more beautiful and uplifting than reproduction of the species ? Does not the continuum of a child growing to adulthood and bearing a child, and so on for generation after generation, come as close to an earthly im­mortality as anything conceivable?

Reproductive libido is really love-life. It includes not only the love one bears another of the opposite sex but it includes as well a love for all growing things—flowers, plants, trees, ani­mals—all manifestations of nature that move in cycles, that mature, decay, and are renewed by birth.

Persons with a strong reproductive nature do not necessarily want a dozen children. They may be childless but they glory in the forces of nature about them, and feel attuned to and in harmony with nature.

Of the urge of reproduction is born the creative desire. To reproduce is to build over

again, to modify, to add something new—in short, to invent. Painting a picture, writing a book, carving a statue, and even building a house or establishing a big business—all are among the various manifestations of repro­ductive libido.

The big, actively doing men and women in the world are those with the strongest repro­ductive libidoes.

Women feel the call of the reproductive libido in its narrow sense more forcibly than men. Maternity seems more insistent for expression than paternity. Because of the polygamous tendencies of all males, especially lower animal forms, sex desire has usurped to a varying but considerable degree the sum total of libidinous reproductive energy in the male at the expense of fatherhood. Still another cause that aids this result is the fact that man’s greater freedom of activity has given him more opportunities than to the average woman for creative pursuits, all of which are substitutes for the gratification of per­petuating the race.

Reproductive libido cannot be denied. If it cannot be fulfilled in procreation, it demands a substitute outlet.

Suppose a woman refuses marriage because she has made a solemn vow always to care for her parents while they live. Suppose, further, that when finally she is free to marry, her child­bearing period is over, or that offers of marriage are not forthcoming. What has become of her reproductive libido all this time? It is probably knocking at the door of consciousness for recog­nition as strong as ever, and not unlikely has been responsible for the dissatisfaction, restlessness, and vague yearnings that have harassed her for years. It being too late for actual fulfilment, what is she to do? Such women adopt children, teach children, or devote their lives to something that carries the symbols of motherhood with it.

Ego Libido really means Personality.

It is the instinctive urge or desire to be well thought of, to be acceptable to fellow men, and possibly to tower above them in some way. Ego should not be interpreted as meaning con­ceit. The latter is an exalted opinion of oneself without adequate reason. Ego is self-respect.

We should realize our strength as well as our weaknesses, our good qualities as well as our bad ones. So many of us are eager enough to knock the other fellow, but how few of us remember to give praise! Well-justified praise never de­velops conceit. Unjustified praise may.

Away back in antiquity materialism held full sway and it was every man for himself. As civilization advanced, as in the herding stage, individuals learned that it paid to live together in tribes and clans. Cattle had to be protected, and this was too big a job for any one man. Therefore there developed a division of labour, one specializing as a herder, another as a hunter, and still another as a fighter. The advantages of give and take became apparent.

With community interest the desire to excel followed naturally. The men were spurred on to excel in strength or prowess, the women to lead in child-rearing and home-making. The women who were superior mated with the more desirable males. These gradually acquired more property rights and their authority became more pro­nounced. Thus the ego libido came into being.

Personality is synonymous with ego. One is not born with personality, only with the po­tentials or possibilities of its development. Conscious recognition of the ego libido is the fore­runner of its unfolding.

It may be added that although all individuals are alike in certain ways, each in turn differs from every other in other particulars. We speak of these variations as Individual Differences. Even twins are not absolutely identical in character make-up.

One person differs from another also in the amount and the dynamic force of libidinous energy. Although all persons have a repro­ductive libido, not all have it to the same degree. Among women, and one’ naturally expects women to possess this urge strongly, there are those who care nothing for matrimony or a family and who nevertheless appear adjusted and happy without revealing any traits that would seem to be reproductive libido substitutes.

Many of the things which have been set down about libidinous energy are self-evident. This is the best argument that analytical psychology is true and effective.

Nevertheless, the obvious is too often over­looked. In psychoanalysis nothing is too ob­vious or too insignificant for recognition. With such a system the workings of the mind become understandable and directive.

Chapter III THE SPAN OF LIFE Five Periods of* Development: Infantile Period—Period of Over-Idealization of Par­ents—Period of Criticism of Parents— Adolescent Period—Adult Period

Life is a continuous process and the mind gradually unfolds itself from birth on. Through vital forces that steadily evolve, the infant in arms passes into childhood years and finally into adulthood. Between one step and the succeed­ing one no sharp line of demarcation can be drawn.

It is convenient, however, to distinguish five periods of development. In each stage the individual shows fairly definite traits, all with a bearing upon later life.

The Infantile Period begins the life of the child outside the mother’s womb. It is a most auspicious time, not only for the mother, but for the child as well. It lasts about five years. It is the first stage of development and actually surpasses all other subsequent stages in funda­mental importance.

Have you ever stopped to consider that the newly born infant is, comparatively speaking, the most stupid animal brought into existence? This leaves out of account the tremendous possi­bilities for later development in which the young of the human species towers far above the rest of the animal kingdom and thus truly earns for itself the awe-inspiring title of homo sapiens. A puppy, a colt, or a chick is able to shift for itself in a relatively short time, whereas a baby requires years of care and training before it can cut its mother’s apron strings and face the world unprotected and unaided.

Unless an infant is fed, clothed, and kept clean it will perish. Every want must be attended to wisely and untiringly. There is nothing hap­hazard or experimental in rearing an infant. To do so properly is a most difficult and painstaking undertaking.

The woman with a strong reproductive libido takes to child-bearing and child-training natu­rally and joyously. It is a direct expression of her inner yearnings. Those who try to evade maternity and to shirk its responsibilities either have a weak reproductive libido, or there are psychological factors which have interfered and which should be studied and corrected.

Admittedly, then, a child is the most stupid of little animals, yet this initial stupidity is a protective trait of highest importance.

Just because the infant is so helpless and dependent, it is bound to accept submissively the teaching and training that its elders force upon it. In this way the civilization of gener­ations that have gone before is handed down to the child in tabloid and, as it were, pre-digested form. If the sum total of knowledge, amassed by preceding generations—each in turn adding its quota of experience—had to be puzzled out afresh by every child through personal, and often bitter, experimentation, intellectual develop­ment and racial progress would advance at a snail’s pace. The child is the heir of the ages!

Biologists have presented convincing evidence that the child, as it develops from the embryo at conception, passes through stages of physical growth which reenact in quick succession periods of development of animal life from the very beginnings. The foetus at one period of its uterine development shows gill slits like those of fishes. The pineal gland in the brain is the remains of a former third eye. The appendix, although a functionless organ in man, in the rabbit is about eight inches long and is essential for digestion. There are other examples of left­over organs of lower species.

This development of the individual is called ontogenetic. The developmental history of a race is called phylogenetic. It is stfated as a biological axiom that ontogenetic development repeats phylogenetic. More simply worded, it took hun­dreds of thousands of years to perfect the human being, and even to-day we find that its primitive development entails its passing through stages of progress characteristic of a whole species of the lower forms of animal life.

Another proof of this can be found in certain :ases of feeble-mindedness. A condition known as Mongolism, for instance, is thought to be caused by an arrest of development of the foetus, due to certain exhaustion factors in the mother’s ivomb. All such feeble-minded children look dike. Their stubby, flat noses, short squat liands, and grimacing, imitating ways suggest the ape.

In the same way that the infant before birth shows physical similarity to lower animal forms, 30 also is its mind at first simple and crude. Wholly self-centred, it interprets all pleasures in terms of bodily sensation. It accepts greedily all that is offered. It is above all pleasure-seeking and pleasure-loving.

Warm food (milk) and soft, swaddling clothing give it a sense of well-being. Caresses and softly modulated words of endearment soothe it. The child’s eyes sparkle with delight and it coos, from sheer pleasure.

The child remains for months unconcerned as to the question whence these pleasures come. For a long time it is simply a bundle of sen­sations, purely physical—or, if you will, animal— in nature.

Later, curiosity, a primary instinct, spurs the child to think, investigate, and to repeat its various pleasure feelings whenever possible. It dawns upon the child’s consciousness that cer­tain dimly differentiated figures in its tiny cosmos are its masters, able to impose their will upon it, for pleasure or for discomfort. In order to obtain the maximum of the pleasurable or the minimum of unpleasant friction, the child is led to a ready compliance with the will of the ruling powers. Selfishness is still the dominant motive. Obedience through love has not yet appeared.

In this hold which the parents have upon their offspring, in this subjection which the child must accept whether or no, lies the secret of the tremendous importance of the infantile period.

The first five years of life are determining the trend for all the years that follow. The tiny feet may easily be set upon the wrong road. The task of moulding the plastic mind of the infant is one on which parents should enter thoughtfully and with preparation.

I recall a cultured and refined gentleman who complained of his inordinate desire to destroy life—to kill. An ardent hunter in his day, he had always delighted in shooting small birds as well as big game. He confessed, and shame­facedly at that, to having experienced often a thrill of delight when dispatching a wounded animal with his hunting knife or twisting the neck of a palpitating robin.

“I’m glad I have kidney disease,” he said, “because it prevents my hunting. Otherwise I’m sure I’d go right on killing. I sicken at the thought of the innocent animals I have slaugh­tered.”

A mental analysis brought to light the fact that the nurse employed by his parents during his third and fourth years not only encouraged the child to catch insects, beetles, and cater­pillars, on the ground that they were “nasty,” but also taught the little fellow to stamp out their lives with his foot.

Hereditary influences play a part, but it is environment during the first years that makes the most lasting impression. Even a faulty heredity can be largely modified, if not entirely overcome, by proper training.

As the child advances and begins to realize the source from which its pleasures are derived, it responds with grateful appreciation and admi­ration. This ushers in the Period of Over-Ideal­ization of Parents.

Lacking standards of comparison, the tot of five or six endows his mother and father with omnipotence. In later years, during adoles­cence, another sort of hero-worship appears, but in this the object of adoration and imitation is usually an older person of the same or opposite sex, or even a story-book character.

In children between five and eight this over­idealization often reveals itself in their play. The little girl’s biggest and most beautiful doll typifies her mother; the general at the head of the column of toy soldiers is identified in the boy’s mind with his father. Children, at this stage of their development, also boast to each other of their parents’ powers. “My father can lick your father” is a familiar boast.

Whole-hearted as this admiration is, broaden­ing experience gives new standards. Before long they are dispassionately comparing their own parents with those of other children. This is the Period oj Criticism of Parents.

Johnny Jones idolizes his policeman father and till now has felt honest pride in the family Ford. But up the street lives Willie Smith, and Willie’s father has recently bought a Packard. Willie’s taunt, “Flivvers ain’t no class; we’ve got a Packard,” finds a weak place in Johnny’s armour. He may snap back that “anyhow his Dad is a cop and wears brass buttons and can lick the stuffing out of any old lawyer,” yet he realizes that Packards cost more than Fords, and for the life of him he cannot see why his father doesn’t buy one.

Johnny’s shaft, too, has gone home. Willie is quite unable to understand why his father has chosen so drab a profession as the law, when other glittering walks of life are open to him.

Both children are troubled. The prestige of their respective fathers is tarnished; their in­fluence subtly undermined. These idols are be­ginning to totter on their pedestals.

It is during this carping stage that children often put embarrassing questions—preferably before strangers—and give “back talk.” They learn a new fact at school and come home primed to trip their parents into a confession of igno­rance.

But all these annoyances which parents have to put up with are healthy signs. The child is beginning to stand on his own feet, to develop an independence of thought which in later years will blossom forth as an ability to face the world alone.

This critical spirit is a sign of mental activity, and by no means betrays a lack of affection. On the contrary, it indicates an unconscious desire on the child’s part to prove its idol flawless.

The period of criticism lasts until about the twelfth year. It is followed by the Adolescent Period.

Adolescence is the great viaduct which joins the tender years and adulthood. It is a dis­tinctly formative, confused, and topsy-turvy stage of development. Its psychological charac­teristics are unlimited in variety. An entire book could easily be written concerning its vagaries and contradictions.

The outstanding features of the adolescent period are emotional stress and strain. The sex apparatus has now matured and sex thoughts crowd the mind. Some callow youngsters enjoy these new sensations and the interest in the opposite sex which they evoke, while others, still under the spell of parental devotion, worry over them, fear them, and’try to fight them down. A fourteen-year-old boy whom I knew interpreted as disloyalty to his “sweetheart mother” a love feeling roused by a girl whom he met at dancing-school. A girl of sixteen felt ashamed to meet her father’s eye whenever she received a letter from a youthful admirer.

The tortures that adolescents often go through are seldom fully realized. They swing from heights of ecstasy to pits of despondency. At one time the world on whose threshold they are standing seems to beckon with cheerful and in­viting aspect. At another it haunts their thoughts as a place of terror and threatening dangers. Girls sometimes feel that if their mother died they would instantly kill themselves. Then again, with a yearning for freedom almost uncontrollable, they actually begin to plan how best they can run away from home and earn their own living. Such emotional upheavals may even lead to suicide.

From twelve to eighteen young people need all the sympathetic understanding of which their elders are capable. Few adolescents confide their inner struggles and when they do it is sel­dom to their own parents, sisters, or brothers. Confession is almost never volunteered.

The average adolescent needs the guiding hand of one who is strong in character and ripe in the experience of life. They are quick to detect sham, and under no circumstances should they ever be lied to. Information on sex matters should be given by the parents simply, truthfully, and fully. Such first-hand knowledge is an incalculable protection to the growing boy or girl.

The saddest mental disease of all is Dementia Pracox. It is mental derangement of the young and begins during adolescent years. Seclusive, day-dreaming, erratic children should always be suspected. Once firmly established, dementia praecox is a progressive and incurable deteri­oration of all mental faculties. Yet a thorough analysis of the subject’s thoughts and feelings— a true confession of the inner self—may prevent its development.

Whether or not the most advanced and pro­gressive minds pass through the most turbulent adolescent periods is open to question. Suffice it to say that many of our keenest, brightest, and most successful adults have done so.

This hazardous period is not necessarily termi­nated at eighteen. Some persons are very slow in emerging from adolescence entirely. When they do, they enter upon the final stage of de­velopment—the Adult Period.

It would be difficult to define in psychological terms just what an adult is. Actual age seems to have very little to do with the matter. Men and women may have reached the proper stature and their physiques may impress one as mature, yet their bodies may be governed by minds that are adolescent, if not infantile in character. I daresay most of the failures of life can be traced to inability, for some reason or other, to develop out of adolescence. It is like a full-grown dog who still has patches of puppy wool sticking to his pelt.

An adult could be perhaps described as a hu­man being who has developed and adopted a set of concepts of his own which he cannot very readily be persuaded to give up and which, in­deed, he may even try to foist on other people.

Among the cardinal attributes of adulthood are emotional stability, intellectual control, a planfulness of life, and a ripening of judgment gradually developed out of the hits and misses of experience.

Perhaps some of my readers feel that they have fallen short of such an ideal. It is particu­larly such persons who would profit by a con­fession of the inner self.

Chapter IV EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES Fixations—The CEdipus and Electra Myths

As the individual passes through the five stages of development discussed in the previous chapter, the four main libido urges come more and more to the fore and try to assert themselves. The reproductive libido lies practically dormant until adolescence. The nutritional presents it­self for recognition and satisfaction at the very threshold of life.

In any development by successive stages, be it mental or physical, some elements will progress regularly and successfully from one stage to another, while others will be retarded in their onward march, still others arrested—that is, stopped at some stage from developing any further.

In average individuals—that is, the majority of persons—the libidoes pass through all five stages from that of the infantile period up to and through the adult period successfully and with­out hindrance.

Other persons may develop like the majority in this respect but somewhat more slowly. Among these we might find a boy of eighteen still subdued, without initiative, cowed by his parents whom he still over-idealizes, and reason­ing much as he did when a child of seven. This lad will eventually reach adulthood although it may take him ten years longer than the average person. All his libidinous urges, or some of them, were retarded in their development.

A second type of case would be one in which one or more of the libidinous urges were arrested in their development at one or another of the five stages of the span of life.

Suppose a man of thirty-five, engaged in a business of his own, still retains his childish attitude of reverence toward his omnipotent father in the way that children do during the over-idealization period. This man, despite his adult years, has been rendered so dependent upon the parental direction that he is unable to buy a bill of goods of any consequence without first obtaining the approval of his father. At thirty-five he still feels much as he did at six or seven.

As long as the father lived, the child’s vene­ration might be very convenient in making things easy for him. But what would happen after the father’s death? Certainly he would find him­self seriously handicapped, and the loss of his props might mean business ruin.

When any libido is arrested in this way in the course of its development we speak of the result as a Fixation. In the case just outlined it would be a fixation of the self-preservation libido.

We never find all libidinous urges crippled by fixations. This could appear only in feeble­mindedness. Usually it is one or two great libidinous strivings that are fixed. Fixations may occur to one of the main four (nutrition, reproductive, self-preservation, ego) and in ad­dition some other libidinous urge that can prop­erly be classed under one of these.

Fixations are usually handicaps, yet all per­sons, no matter how successful and adjusted they may be, have some. It is not so much the ques­tion of how many fixations one has, as it is the question of their relative importance and the stage of development at which the fixation took place.

The illustrative case above shows a harmful fixation toward the father—a distinct handicap in the battle of life. If this fixation had oc­curred later, during the adolescent period, the man in question would have felt rather doubtful and uncertain of his own judgment and would have been swayed more by his father’s opinions than by those of any one else. Although still a handicap this adolescent fixation would not be so dominating.

We all have some fixations concerning one or both of our parents. Their influence can never be wholly shaken off.

Many fixations, then, are handicaps, but not all. On the other hand, certain fixations es­tablished during the first and second periods act as stabilizers to character. During the first eight years of their child’s life parents have a practically unobstructed opportunity of fixing character traits of a helpful, activating variety. If they neglect this chance, it will never be theirs again in a like degree. The enduring influence of early ethical or religious training is a good example of such a benign fixation.

The unwise checking of a child’s normal curi­osity will cause a harmful fixation. Children at an early age become curious as to how babies are born and where they come from. The arri­val of a new baby in the household or next door sets the child questioning. An ignorant nurse almost always supplies a fictional explanation that the baby was brought by a stork and dropped down the chimney; that it came in the Doctor’s black bag, or was found in a cabbage in the garden. Even mothers too often will evade the issue in some similar way.

A child of any reasonable alertness of mind is not satisfied. The explanation does not tally with such facts of animal life as he may have ob­served. He scents a mystery. Before long the vulgar talk of some playmate, who has possibly already received an evil initiation into life, makes it seem that this mystery which centres in the mother he adores is itself evil, connected with things he has been taught to regard as “naughti­ness.” He may even go so far as to fancy that these stories have been told him to hide some action of which his parents are ashamed. Or in his deep love for his mother he may feel intense hatred for his father, whose victim he considers her to be.

These ideas may seem too morbid to be har­boured in the mind of the average child, but they are fairly typical of the harvest of evil actually reaped from the unwise checking of a quite natural and innocent desire for information.

We focus our attention upon fixations that are hindrances rather than upon those that are helps, because the former cause trouble and the latter do not. Fixation hindrances prevent the indi­vidual from developing to his fullest possibilities and often lie at the root of nervousness. Fix­ation helps, on the other hand, are the rule and are preponderant in normally adjusted persons.

Compare the action of germs. The disease- producing germs play such havoc that we are apt to think of germs as always harmful. Yet many germs are not only harmless but distinctly vital and beneficial to the human family. Were it not for certain kinds of bacteria that manu­facture nitrogen in the soil, agricultural products would be tremendously diminished, and might, indeed, entirely cease to appear.

The love relationship between the child and its parents is the strongest tie that exists. It is probable that the love between mother and son is even stronger than that between father and son, while the father-daughter love is more powerful than that between mother and daughter.

At first thought these statements may seem far-fetched. Families may come to mind where this rule does not appear to apply. Although a cursory investigation might lead one to such a conclusion, deeper study and a mental analysis of the individuals in question would undoubtedly bring to light the preponderating influence of the mother—the mother fixation.

Sophocles, the Greek poet, crystallized this fun­damental principle in his drama “CEdipus Rex.” Laius, the father of CEdipus, and king of Thebes, had been warned by an oracle that he would die at the hands of his own son. Hence, soon after the birth of CEdipus, Laius gave the child to a shepherd with orders that it be put to death. Having compassion for the baby, the peasant secretly spared its life. CEdipus therefore grew up ignorant of his royal parentage. Later, when full grown, CEdipus met Laius in a narrow path, quarrelled with him, and killed him. He then wandered on to Thebes not knowing that his victim was his father.

It happened that the city of Thebes was being terrorized by a monster, the Sphinx, which stood at the gates and propounded a riddle to every passer-by. Those unable to solve the riddle were devoured. (Edipus solved the riddle and slew the Sphinx.

In gratitude for its deliverance Thebes made CEdipus king and offered him in marriage the hand of Jocasta, the wife of the former monarch.

Thus CEdipus, unknowingly, married his own mother. Certain versions have it that later, when the tragedy was discovered, Jocasta hanged herself and (Edipus put out his own eyes.

A somewhat similar idea is to be found in the “Electra”. Here the daughter of Agamemnon incites her brother, Orestes, to slay their mother in revenge for the death of their father. There is depicted the overpowering love between father and daughter at the expense of the mother.

As generally applied, the CEdipus fixation (often known as the CEdipus complex) is made to include both mother-son and father-daughter relationships.

Hundreds of plays, poems, and novels have been written since the time of Sophocles in which the CEdipus plot has been used in one way or another. This, in itself, proves the enormous sway which the CEdipus myth has had over hu­man thought and behaviour.

Since the CEdipus fixation is the strongest of all, it is highly important to understand what the effects of the mother and father training upon son and daughter respectively are. Here arises a question of pedagogics. Is it more ad­visable that the mother supervise the teaching of the son and the father the daughter, or vice versa? Or is it better that the father try to influence the son, and the mother the daughter, so as deliberately to neutralize the powerful CEdipus fixation which is certain to exert its influence sufficiently anyway? Again, during what years—in which of the five periods of development—would such deliberate interfer­ence with natural laws best serve their purpose?

Questions such as these are not easy to answer. They will continue to be held increasingly important to educators as the doctrines of psychoanalytic psychology in their ramified application to various activities of life become more generally accepted.

Savages and ancient peoples instinctively recognized the CEdipus fixation. They also realized its sex dangers, for they took great pains to prevent such close intermarriages as between father and daughter (incest). Had they not felt that the strong love existing between parents and children might result in an intimacy leading to race degeneration, marriage taboos would prob­ably not have been established until moral and religious forces had become operative centuries later among civilized nations. This underlying principle of race preservation has been carried still further in our present day and age so that even cousin marriages are held by many to be dangerous.

Parents often unwittingly bring the CEdipus idea to the fore within the family circle especially when there are a number of children of opposite sexes. Too often the mother shows distinct favouritism for her sons while the father shows a like preference for his daughters. The children, somehow seeming to feel the naturalness of such preferences, accept them without protest or complaint and by showing similar preferences themselves, in turn establish the CEdipus fixation upon an even stronger foundation. What was unconscious preference now becomes conscious. What was formerly natural and rather hap­hazard now becomes deliberate.

Women patients have often told me that their mothers had the greater influence upon their lives, while men have credited their father’s dominance as the more important. These cases may not justly be classed as exceptional. In some of them the parent of the opposite sex had died young and the influence did not persist. Sometimes it was a brother who usurped the place of the father, while in others it was an older sister who substituted the mother. Here, then, the CEdipus principle still ruled although it had been transferred.

Like appeals to the unlike and the attraction between opposite sexes is always stronger than that between persons of the same sex. The fascination is largely unconscious, but it is fundamental and irresistible. * It is the result of the CEdipus fixation.

Much more could be written about the theory of fixations, and reference will be made to them again later on. To sum up, fixations are emotional foundation stones which condition the whole supervening framework of later life. One fixation, especially when firmly established in the early years, may make non-eflfective a host of others and influence a lifetime. Some are conscious but the most are not.

Fixations are tremendously motivating un­conscious factors that either retard or propel human conduct. Only a thorough searching of the inner self will reveal them in their true light and relationship.

Chapter V The World of Reality—The Pleasure- Pain Principle—Repressions

The conditions and circumstances amid which the child finds itself on emerging from babyhood into a consciousness of actualities, we call the World of Reality.

Take it by and large, the world of reality is an unsympathetic place, progressing according to the law of the “survival of the fittest,” despite all that civilization and enlightenment have effected in the course of the ages to modify primitive ruthlessness and train men in the art of living as social units. It is full of harsh and uncompromising facts—a bleak contrast to the rose-lit, softly padded world of fairyland and romance within which a little child lives, sur­rounded by parental love and care.

However, even long before the child comes into actual conflict with this world of reality, he has grown to realize with ever-increasing clearness that he cannot have his own way in every­thing, that his every wish cannot be gratified, that to avoid reprimands and punishments he must yield to conditions imposed upon him from outside. If he does what he is bidden to do, he not only escapes punishment but wins praise and caresses as well, or perhaps gains some coveted pleasure.

Even in this family world the so-called Pleasure-Pain Principle is already in full oper­ation as a motivating factor conditioning the child’s acts, and is therefore well on the road toward becoming an important criterion of be­haviour.

The boy who is spanked for stealing from the kitchen window where they have been cooling apple turnovers destined by his mother for “company” dessert, learns by a simple appli­cation of cause and effect, in this case his father’s hand, that he is likely to suffer an even more severe infliction of pain if he steals from a neigh­bour. Later experience adds the knowledge that similar rigid standards prevail in the world of reality, that society has established police courts to punish like offences.

Pleasure and pain seem at first to be con­sciously noted. After a time they automatically and unconsciously exert their influence in regu­lating whether or not, and to what degree, the nutrition, reproductive, self-preservation, and ego libidoes shall express themselves in the world of reality. It is much like the matter of walking. At first the child walks by a conscious and deliberate effort. Later walking becomes automatic and unconscious.

We have, then, a human being with instinctive, dynamic, libidinous desires trying to assert them­selves, placed in a world that is real, relatively fixed, and unchangeable—cold, hard, and stern.

If any libido expresses itself in the world of reality and succeeds—that is, is approved by the world and allowed to succeed—the individual experiences a pleasure sensation. If any libido tries to express itself in the world of reality and fails—that is, the particular form of its ex­pression is not tolerated by the world—a feeling of pain results, [jivery time a libido is approved and succeeds, the resultant pleasure emotion makes the libidinous urge bolder in its attempt again to express itself successfully. In the same way, every time a libido is denounced by the world’s verdict and fails, the resultant pain emotion renders it timid and tends to discourage it from trying to express itself again.

One boy, in the presence of the “gang,” calls another a coward. Immediately the self-preser­vation instinct of the other boy comes into play, likewise his ego libido, and he not only resents being taunted but he resents it particularly before his friends. A fight follows. If he wins he will be the more ready to retaliate upon other boys if they attempt a similar attack. If, how­ever, the boy “gets licked,” he will probably be more cautious the next time in showing resent­ment. If he gets the worst of it each time he stands up for his rights, he will undoubtedly be­come afraid to defend himself no matter how great the provocation. The pleasure feeling of success emboldens him. The pain feeling of failure intimidates him.

Exactly the same principles hold true for adults. The world of reality as comprehended by a grown-up man and woman is infinitely more stern and cruel than that experienced by the parent-protected child. Not only that, but libidinous urges—especially the reproductive— are decidedly more insistent after adolescence.

Throughout the duration of life the pleasure- pain principle operates as a fundamental moti­vating factor.

The normal adult, without the tangible pro­tecting influence of his parents, stands quite alone, face to face with the world of reality. His ego libido leads him to try to conquer it in some way, by earning his own living, by getting married, by developing his intellectual capa­bilities or what-not. In some of his libidinous strivings he succeeds, in others he fails. In all these efforts we may picture him as coming into contact and more or less into conflict with con­ditions as they are.

The instinctive urges which he is able to ex­press successfully are not of much concern for us since they do not result in disappointment and despair, hence mental illness. Our vital interest is in studying the mental state that follows his inability and failure to express the urges in the world of reality. To be sure, no one fails in all his libidinous wishes. Everyone, however, fails in some.

Bearing in mind the difference between the conscious and the unconscious minds, you will see plainly that if the conscious mind were for­ever to harp on the failures of the unconscious libidinous strivings, it would before long be un­able to give thought to anything else; it would cease to be a directing organ, and would sooner or later lapse into a hopeless muddle of con­fusion. ^It is very necessary, therefore, that the conscious mind protect itself in some way so that it can go on with its activities without being dominated by the dread of an overshadowing disappointments]

Therefore, wfien the conscious mind is worried by disappointment (by thwar’tings of libidinous desires in the world of reality) it tries to rid itself of these disturbing thoughts, to “forget” them. Psychologically this means that the conscious represses the disturbing thoughts from the conscious into the unconscious.

Everybody has repressions; nobody can be entirely free from them. Every unconscious mind is full of repressions.

The lower animals in a state of wildness have the fewest repressions because, in the first place, their libidinous urges are not numerous and are more pronouncedly of a self-preservation, nu­trition, and reproductive character than any­thing else, and secondly, they express these instinctive desires without hindrance or re­straint at every opportunity. Morals, social customs, and the laws of civilization are non­existent for them. They eat when they like and when they can; they kill other animals and fight for their lives when attacked; they mate pro­miscuously in accordance with the law of their kind.

Savages show a certain community interest, and from that development follows of necessity the restricting of instinctive urges for the good of the other members of the tribe or clan. They may still show aYi animal ruthlessness toward those of another tribe, but within their own federation, of whatever sort, they inhibit their libidinous desires to a greater or less degree.

In the highly organized society in which man lives repressions are naturally most numerous. People cannot do what they like or even say what they like. Society, after hundreds of years of development and change, has put its stamp of approval upon certain forms of conduct while at the same time disapproving, condemn­ing, or even punishing certain other forms. Whereas at one time “might was right”—the self-preservation libido holding full sway over and above all other considerations—nowadays the fighting abilities are not accepted as a standard. Persons who persist in forcing their own wills and desires upon others by sheer might are put in jail. Hundreds of examples could be given of things considered quite right in the past that are now absolutely taboo. In the Middle Ages highway robbery was a sort of sporting proposition; to-day footpads rank as the lowest type of criminals. Sex license and laxity were greater years ago than at present. Society, by its manners, customs, and taboos, has es­tablished the monogamous marriage state and the home as fundamental standards, and pro­miscuous sex expression is forced to resort to clandestine and secret outlets in order to escape the censure of the modern point of view.

(To be civilized, educated, and refined means, ‘in effect, having one’s libidinous desires so under control that they harmonize with the dicta of society so far as possib^ Our whole edu­cational system has been formed to teach the lesson that it pays to be inhibited and controlled. Education points out the road we must take to gain this self-mastery. It also shows what has happened when others have wandered from the path. A thorough, deep, and broad insight into the sum of human experience leads to suggestions how instinctive, unconscious demands can be sub­stituted and expressed in acceptable forms.)

The mentally sick and inferior, psychopaths and criminals, have not learned from life these vital lessons. They persist in thinking, feeling, and acting like the savages and the lower animals. Their social instincts remain primitive and underdeveloped. Although they are “more to be pitied than censured,” society must necessarily protect itself against them—must, in fact, make them protect themselves against themselves. But the method of protection adopted need not be the reformatory and the prison. Psychological understanding suggests the hospital and the asylum.

We will grant, then, that pleasure and pain are the primary emotions which operate as guides in prompting or inhibiting the expression of libi­dinous urges. As a rule, these urges when ful­filled give a very distinct pleasure feeling (eating as a satisfaction of the nutrition libido); or the feeling of discomfort or pain is unmistakable when they are thwarted (disappointment in a love affair).

There is another group which should be con­sidered in this connection. When the indi­vidual can no longer discriminate whether a given experience in the world of reality is rousing within him sensations of pleasure or pain he be­comes consciously confused and is in danger of what is known as a “nervous breakdown.” He is like a ship that has lost its rudder. He begins to drift aimlessly, losing interest and ambition, feeling that there is nothing to live for. He doesn’t know what he wants. He has lost the standards by which he has lived—the standards which reward by a pleasurable emotion be­haviour of a certain sort, and which inflict dis­comfort or pain when he acts otherwise.

Confusion is a danger signal because it indi­cates that the emotional life of the individual is not working in harmony with intellectual think­ing. Under such conditions thinking may gradually become more and more muddled and, as consciousness begins to realize the dilemma, depression is likely to follow. Should fear super­vene in addition, the individual is in a critical state. Fear is the most powerful undermining emotion that exists.

There is a cause for everything—even an ex­cuse. There is just as much reason why some succeed and are happy as why others fail and are miserable. There is a scientific, causative evo­lution of the individual step by step and year by year. This evolution largely concerns the ways and means by which the libidinous urges have succeeded in expressing themselves and the suc­cess with which consciousness has been able to repress them or substitute them.

Chapter VI UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS Complexes—The Psychic Censor—Intro­version and Extroversion—Regressions— Sadism and Masochism—Ambivalence

It has been pointed out that consciousness tries to forget unpleasant experiences. This is equivalent to saying, in psychoanalytic par­lance, that libidinous strivings which have been thwarted in the world of reality are repressed into the unconscious in order to get them out of the way.

All  such unpleasant and annoying conscious ideas that have been repressed’ ”are’ cailed Com­plexes.

A complex, then, is a repressed thought to which a disagreeable emotion is attached. It may be an idea which has been extremely painful for consciousness to bear, or one which has relative­ly little pain attached to it. Nevertheless, it is always something which consciousness wants to forget. Definite sex feelings toward the oppo­se site parent (CEdipus complex), of which the individual is ashamed and which he struggles against, would be of the former variety. Fi­nancial inability to purchase an automobile may serve as an example of the latter.

All complexes are lodged in the unconscious and try to reenter the conscious. The amount of force which characterizes this effort toward reentrance is conditioned by the amount of emotion attached to the repressed idea. That is, if the thwarted desire was intense in the beginning and it was accordingly difficult to give the desire up and to repress it, the complex which results from the repression will put forth a correspondingly intense effort to reenter con­sciousness.

A girl falls in love. Back of her love interest and energizing it is the reproductive libido, seeking outlet and expression. The sex urge is intense and pervasive and thoughts of the one she loves naturally throng her mind. The lovers quarrel and the engagement is broken. Immediately consciousness tries to eliminate all thought of her lover who has now become the symbol of the thwarted reproductive libido. The girl uses all available means of forgetting her disastrous experience. Sooner or later she succeeds in repressing the love affair with its painful emotional associations. This repression becomes a complex in the unconscious.

But such complexes, such thwarted desires, are not so easily set aside. The complexes try to reenter consciousness, seeking again oppor­tunity for fulfilment in the world of reality. The pressure of this urgent thought may cause the girl to fall in love with another man, or, lack­ing a fresh stimulus, to renew relations with her former sweetheart.

This outline illustrates the main principles. It may be added that a thwarted love affair does not represent all the sex repressions which such a girl may have. Others might be disappoint­ments concerning the successful rivalries of her friends and inability to travel or to attend social functions where the opportunity of meeting men is favourable. Because of their relative insig­nificance compared to disappointment in love such complexes might never make a strong effort to reenter consciousness, the girl accepting her lack of opportunities philosophically as inevi­table. The unconscious is full of disappoint­ments with slight emotional content such as these.

Another factor may now be added to the theories studied thus far. This concerns the way in which consciousness keeps repressed material repressed.

The mechanism by which complexes are kept from reentering consciousness as long as possible is known as the Psychic Censor.

Just as the nurse of a convalescent person withholds letters containing bad or exciting news md delivers to the patient only those which are pleasurable and will not disturb, so the mental psychic censor stations itself between conscious- less and unconsciousness, as it were, and stands juard. One might say that all complexes are considered by the psychic censor as persona ton grata in consciousness. Since consciousness las ostracized them through repression it is the censor’s business to see that they remain exiled.

Were it not for the psychic censor, libidinous lrges would certainly succeed in breaking :hrough their repressions and disturb conscious- less all over again. As a matter of fact, strong, •epressed libidinous urges often do so succeed, )ut by far the greatest number are not able to >ass this guardian of consciousness unless they ire disguised.

The forms of disguises by means of which complexes may elude the psychic censor will be taken up in the next chapter.

Philosophers, such as Ostwald, James, Jung, and others, have attempted to divide people into two main classes of more or less opposing ten­dencies: one objective and materialistic, clearly- comprehending the facts and conditions of life and making a sane submission to them; the other idealistic and subjective, living more or less in an imaginary world of their own creation, impatient and rebellious when brought into sharp conflict with the active world and its exactions. The former are influenced by the main currents of their time, swim with them rather than against them. Such make wise teachers, sound states­men and politicians. Above all they dovetail well with the world of reality in which they live. The latter do not succeed in matters of personal contact or persuasion as they are seclusive, shut- in, speculative, and dreamy. Creative geniuses are apt to be of this type.

In his book, “Mechanisms of Character Formation,” Dr. William A. White adapts the psychoanalytic principles to these conceptions in a very clear and pertinent way. I shall quote him here because what he says fits in well with the general exposition under consideration:

With respect to this whole problem it would seem that there should be some broader general principle under which this body of facts could be grouped. This principle I believe exists in the terms of the libido. In other words, the broadest basis upon which men can be divided into two camps rests upon the answer to this question, Where is the libido going? Without? or Within? Does he attach his libido to objects in the outside world? or does he find his main interests within? In contemplating the world only as he sees it reflected within himself? Is he of the extroverted or introverted type?

By Extroversion, then, is meant the harmo­nizing of libidinous urges with the world of reality. Introversion means the inability or failure of the libidinous urges to harmonize with the world of reality.

Although individuals may often be classed as predominantly either extroverted or introverted, no one belongs exclusively in one category or the other. Decided extroverters may possess certain introverted traits. Introverters may be somewhat extroverted. It is the judicious blend of introversive and extroversive characteristics which produces the most sympathetic and attrac­tive types of personality.

The more an individual is repressed because of his strivings being thwarted in the world of reality the more introverted he becomes. Dur­ing adolescence introversion may become so marked as to result in Dementia Prcecox. On the whole, introversion is not an advantageous trait from the standpoint of mental hygiene. It makes for timidity and an attitude of turning one’s back on the facts of life that may lead to disastrous results.

Freud has likened the libido to a stream or river which flows steadily onward throughout life. Should it become dammed because of an obstacle in its way, the stream will either rise to a sufficient height to overcome the obstacle or it will become stationary and flow backward, as it were, filling up and enlarging smaller streams which had been directions of lesser resistance to the river in the earlier beginnings of its course. Putting it another way, the river returns to a former and earlier pattern or manner of flow. It has been hampered and thwarted. It returns now to filling up pools and ponds and side tributaries just as it did when it was in its infantile stage of development before it dis­covered a proper channel and outlet.

The human libidinous urges are like that. Repressions lead to introversion and this, in turn, tends to result in what is known as Re­gression.

When the libido regresses it returns to former stages of development and gains satisfaction by expressing itself as it did years before. In short, it again becomes infantile.

Just as the libidinous fixations were halts and arrests at various levels of progress marking the span of life, so libidinous regressions are an attempt to return (a retreat) to the sheltered protection of childhood days. A defeated libidinous urge may regress and seek refuge in the very first stage of development—the infan­tile period. The adult under these circum­stances then very probably looks to his mother for assistance and guidance as in the days when he was a helpless toddler. Should the regression stop at the period of over-idealization, our sub­ject might very likely gain compensation for his life’s disappointments by comparing the superior­ity of his own parents to the men and women who worsted him in the world outside. A regression to the criticism period might find the thwarted one railing at his parents for a bad bringing-up, offered in excuse for his own adult failures.

This gives you a working idea of regression. The matter is not entirely simple. Frequently libidinous regressions do not display themselves in such evident fashion but are highly symbolized and disguised. They are, nevertheless, reducible to the fundamental principles mentioned.

Akin to this general subject of libidinous urges and their conflict with the world of reality are Sadism and Masochism.

Technically, these terms refer to abnormal sex practices and both are derived from the names of sex perverts, the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch. Although sadism in its re­stricted sense would refer to sex gratification derived from physical suffering given to others, and masochism to sex gratification derived from being physically tortured by someone else, it is advantageous to apply these expressions in a much broader sense. In this more compre­hensive meaning they refer to pleasure derived from causing pain to a beloved object (sadism)- and to pleasure derived from receiving pain from a beloved object (masochism)—the term “be­loved object” including not merely a sex object but any other thing, animate or inanimate, upon which libidinous interest is centred in the world of reality.

When the lover pinches the cheek of his sweet­heart we recognize the sadistic element, but the same conception of sadism may be applied to the man who glories in the announcement that he has “punished his work” for that day. In the one case it is sadism in connection with the reproductive libido; in the other it is sadism linked with the ego libido, the man’s work being dear to his heart, one of his beloved objects. The same mechanism is operative when the lover teases his sweetheart, tries to make her jealous, or promises to write every day and then de­liberately fails to do so, only in these instances the sadism is more disguised, less tangibly phys­ical, and more highly symbolized.

Examples of masochism can be found in the attitude of women toward motherhood. The patient endurance of the mother in bearing the malaise of pregnancy and the pangs of travail, and her unshakable, uncomplaining love toward her children from infancy onward may be re­garded as masochistic traits. Physical and mental suffering gladly borne by women for the sake of their beloved ones occur so frequently that it is probable that the female sex is by nature more masochistic than sadistic.

Extroverters are not timid in their efforts to harmonize with the world of reality, for they plunge into the thick of the struggle and grap­ple with problems fearlessly. Accordingly, they are also sadistic. A man so tender-hearted that he would feel remorse every time he got the better of a competitor would cut a sorry figure in business. Virility, strength, ambition, power are sadistic. In like manner introverters are apt to be masochistic.

In discussing the topics of pleasure and pain, extroversion and introversion, and sadism and masochism, the reader has probably been struck by the fact that we have been studying oppo­site and apparently opposing tendencies. This predilection to comparison in terms of oppo­sites is a well-recognized mental attribute. It was touched upon in the consideration of the pleasure-pain principle. The perception or re­cognition of opposites is spoken of as Ambiva­lence.

We could not conceive of a mountain if we did not also understand the conception of a valley, nor could we picture a valley without knowing what a mountain is. The same intimate re­lationship between opposites exists in multitudi­nous reactions of the mind. High suggests low; tall, short; thick, thin; happy, sad; beautiful, ugly; white, black; and so forth to innumerable examples.

In psychoanalysis the theory of ambivalence has an even deeper significance. As expressed by Bleuler, ambivalency “gives to the same idea two contrary feeling tones and invests the same thought simultaneously with both a positive and a negative character.”

It is by this same token that people can hate the most those whom they have loved the best—- love and hate being ambivalent. This principle also explains many of the strange thought that people find themselves harbouring—ideas and feelings that shame them and make them be­lieve they are “losing their minds,” no other possible reason seeming plausible.

The mechanisms of the unconscious are intri­cate, and as we study them they seem more like fiction than the peculiarities of human behaviour which they attempt to explain. Nevertheless, as hypotheses they succeed in unravelling the mysteries of life—they work! As William James would say, they are “pragmatic.”

The more practical applications of the theo­retical principles discussed in this section will appear in due course as our study of psycho­analysis proceeds.

Chapter VII SAFETY DEVICES Defense Reactions—Organ Inferiority— Conversion—Dreams—Sublimation

A patient who had recently begun psycho­analytic treatment said to me one day: “My unconscious must be a seething caldron.”

This forceful metaphor expressed the state of his inner self rather well. Mental analysis had led him to realize the pent-up and repressed emotions which had been influencing him for years to the detriment of success and happiness but of which he had remained blissfully ignorant —consciously unaware.

The unconscious is, in truth, often a seething caldron in cases where the conscious torments— the symptoms—are almost unbearable. But in the great majority of cases the situation is by no means so alarming and although low mutterings may at times be vaguely heard from that part of the mind which is not consciously recognized, the outward manifestations of disturbances within are not particularly insistent and dra­matic.

It often takes a long time—years, in fact— before some people realize that they are losing their grip, that they are not up to former stand­ards of efficiency, that their thoughts and actions are in any way unusual. To be sure, there are also persons who watch themselves continually and are ever on the alert for abnormalities of thinking and behaviour. Being excessively intro­spective is just as bad as not being introspective enough. Over-watchfulness would not be so likely to produce evil results were it scientific and based upon psychological premises. The difficulty is that the more laymen think about themselves, the more bewildered, as a rule, they become. In the wake of confusion come fear and mental distress.

People are apt to wait altogether too long be­fore they seek advice and help. Were early -nanifestations of mental disharmony only treat­ed in time, more actual cures could be effected and hopeless cases would become a rarity, rhe very earliest suggestive signs should receive attention even when they are noticeable in :hildhood. It is never too early to begin a study of the inner self.

Although nature’s workings are not always perfect they nevertheless have a self-protective quality that is marvellous. Nature has many safety guards and appliances which it brings into use in both organic and mental difficul­ties. Were it not for such protective devices human beings would succumb long before their time.

Some of the most interesting safeguards as regards mental processes are known as Defense Reactions.

As the term implies, defense reactions are modes of speech or action, defensive in character, that are set up in order to hide something that the individual does not wish known. In other words, as the unconscious is not always per­mitted to express itself in the conscious just as it would like to, the psychic censor disguises un­conscious desires in such a way that they will not cause offense to consciousness. Defense reac­tions then are poses, intended to hide what the individual really thinks or feels. They might be likened to the sheep’s clothing in which the wolf masqueraded were it not that such a comparison would tend to convey the impression that defense reactions always conceal some shameful con­dition. This is not true. Defense reactions for the most part are quite harmless both in purpose and content.

In the last analysis, the unconscious is strictly selfish, primitive, animal, and often ruthless in trying to express itself for the benefit of the organism. Consciousness is the intermediary between this animal striving and the world of reality. The conscious has come to know that certain methods of behaviour and speech are taboo in this world of reality and can be allowed expression only at the risk of punishment (cen­sure, social ostracism, loss of prestige, etc.). Hence defense reactions are set up in order to protect the individual from criticism despite the often unfortunate strivings (from the refined social viewpoint) of the barbaric and selfish unconscious. Defense reactions are like make- believe, a sort of play acting.

The proverbial old maid who “hates” men be­cause they are so deceitful is a case in point. She doesn’t really hate men at all. Her repro­ductive libido has perhaps long since passed through the stages of seeking a love outlet, one or more disappointments in the world of reality having resulted in repression. Yet her conscious­ness is reluctant to admit such defeat to her friends (ego libido striving) therefore she sets up a defense reaction so as to disguise her real feel­ings. She says she has chosen not to marry be­cause men cannot be trusted.

There are defense reactions of which people are wholly unaware while others are more or less conscious and show purposeful deliberation.

The man who claims he abhors alcohol may be exhibiting a defense reaction against a conscious dread of becoming a drunkard. In fact, one should suspect all varieties of over-emphasis or exaggeration as possible simulation, although the individual may not altogether consciously realize that he is putting up a defense. Many of the eccentricities of human beings are also explain­able on this basis. There is a cause for every­thing, and when human behaviour deviates markedly from the normal the reason may not even be far to seek.

Unconscious defense reactions are often re­sponsible for very valuable reforms, the very ardour of the reformers, which stimulates them to renewed and vigorous efforts, being conditioned by the strength and force of their own repressed libidinous strivings. Thus, people have gone to their deaths advocating a reform. They are willing and even eager to suffer the extreme penalty for their convictions because deep down in the inner self lies the ambivalent possibility of themselves yielding to the very failing they are trying to eradicate in others.

Through similar mental processes a reformed drunkard becomes the most enthusiastic of ab­stainers. Likewise proselytes show an excess of devotion to the new faiths they have em­braced.  ,

Among those whose mental conflicts have ad­vanced to the stage where they are suffering from actual symptoms, defense mechanisms are com­mon and often peculiarly interesting in the way in which they have been evolved.

A student kept insisting that he was being teased by his classmates and that he suspected it was because they were jealous of his musical ability. The truth was that his piano playing was below the average and his performance in other studies of merely passing grade. His suspicions fed his ego which needed consolation. Here was a defense reaction to an inner real­ization of his own mediocrity.

Another student complained that his eyes pained when he read nights. He was worrying because he couldn’t study. He insisted that he wanted a college degree above everything else and “wouldn’t quit the university for anything.”

An hour’s analytical conversation proved con­clusively that the trouble which interfered with study was not his eyes. His eyesight was, in fact, normal. The crux of his trouble was his being in love with a girl who said she wouldn’t marry him until he had been graduated. If his eyes “went back on him” he would be excused from going on with his college course and could marry so much the sooner.

Over-sensitiveness, for example, is a frequent defense reaction against an unconscious feeling of inferiority caused by thwarted and suppressed ego libido. Persons of this type do not realize it, but they are afraid lest some inability or failure which they want to hide or some weakness which they are ashamed of may crop out and give them away. Therefore they are always on the alert looking for signs of a disparaging or contemp­tuous attitude toward them.

I knew a man who was extremely sensitive to what people said to him and about him. He had a way of referring conversations to himself. If he overheard a remark meant for someone else he would immediately wonder whether he himself was not being discussed. He was of attractive bearing, a fluent talker, and showed no anti-social tendencies. One would never have thought from meeting him that he was suspicious or sensitive. For years he had trained himself so well that his defense was perfect.

Yet, at the analytic confessional, he admitted the dread from which he suffered. He related how not infrequently he would return home from an evening’s entertainment thoroughly ex­hausted from watching and wondering. For hours he would think and think and think, trying until his head ached to settle to his own satis­faction whether anybody had made any dispar­aging remarks about him.

This was rather an extreme case, yet it proved to be curable. The patient was finally made to realize consciously the complexes which his de­fense reactions symbolized. To set down the entire psychoanalysis of the case would take up a whole volume. Suffice it to say that the main complex which was dug out of his inner self had to do with a secret sex practice that the patient had battled hard to overcome during the years of his early manhood.

As an example of a conscious and deliberate defense reaction there comes to mind the case of a married woman who became infatuated with a man who was not her husband. In order to pre­vent her husband from embracing her she began to cough and said that she must be developing tuberculosis. She admitted being ashamed of her trickery at the time but could not bear to permit the caresses of her husband whom she respected, but had ceased to love, and who was unaware of her change of heart. After a while her coughing became a habit, weakening her respiratory apparatus. Finally a physician said that there was danger of her developing tuber­culosis and she was sent to a sanatorium and doctored for about a year.

This patient never had tuberculosis and never did develop it. Nevertheless, all attention was centred upon her lungs. Her difficulty was mental, and a psychoanalysis revealed the true state of affairs and uncovered the original defense reaction which had precipitated everything. An interesting feature of this case is that the patient mastered her infatuation for the other man long before she shook off her dread of tuberculosis.

Dr. Alfred Adler, formerly a co-worker with Freud, has built up a system of individualistic psychology based largely upon the compensatory reaction (defense reaction) which certain ana­tomically defective organs undergo, or to which other healthy organs respond in a compensatory way. His theories were undoubtedly inspired by the Freudian hypotheses yet they have taken an original turn that is stimulating.

It was stated in the first chapter that disease is a disharmony or wrong functioning of the parts of an organ or its disharmony as a whole with the rest of the body. This statement implies that health means a complete harmony of activity between all the organs including the brain. It follows, therefore, that if there is an organic defect in one of the bodily organs one ought to be likely to find a compensatory reaction—a defense reaction, if you will—in the brain. The mind would show some over-determined adaptability to the diseased physical defect, the cause being an attempt on the part of the mind to bring the entire body back into as complete harmony as possible. This, in truth, appears capable of demonstration in many cases, and is, in effect, the Adler viewpoint.

In his “A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear,” Professor G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, has this to say:

In the effort of the psyche to foster the important organs and functions which it selects for its special care, organic defect may be compensated by excess of nervous activity. Indeed, most compensations are in the psychic though not necessarily in the conscious field. No one is perfect, and hence compensation is necessary for all. It makes for, if indeed it does not make, consciousness itself. Those organs and functions which the psyche cannot directly or indirectly control decay or become stigmata. Where the brain fails to establish a compensatory system we have all the hosts of neuroses and psychoses. The existence of sub- or abnormal organs or functions always brings Janet’s sense of incompleteness or insufficiency, and this arouses a countervailing impulsion to be complete and efficient which those to whom nature gave lives of balanced harmony do not feel. The ideal goal is always to be a whole man or woman in mind and body, and this may crop out in the childish wishes that are sometimes fulfilled in dreams, in the ambition of the boy who aches to be a man, and in general in the desire to overcome all defects and to evolve a full-rounded, mature, powerful, and well-balanced personality. To illustrate, each bilateral organ compen­sates for defect in the other, one sense for another, like touch for sight in the blind. Mozart had an imperfectly developed ear; Beethoven had otosclerosis; Demosthenes stammered and, as if mythology had recognized this law, many of the ancient gods were defective. Odin had but one eye; Tyre, one hand; Vulcan was lame; Vidar dumb. So, too, the ugly Socrates made himself a beautiful soul. A man with a weak digestion becomes a dietetic expert in battling with fate. Little men walk straight, tall men stoop. Handsome men are superficial. A subnormal eye intensifies the visual psyche.

Very much of the total energy of all of us and still more of that of neurotics and psychotics is spent in developing and using devices of concealment of diseases and defects. Thus often the higher protective and defensive mechanisms come to do the work of the subnormal function even better than it would do it. Conversely, compensation has its limits and when it breaks down we have anxiety, the most compre­hensive of all fears and the alpha and omega of psychiatry, the degree of which is inversely as the ability to realize the life-wish of self-maximization.

Interesting as these theories of organ inferi­ority are and that peculiarities of thinking can often be explained and cured on such a basis, still more wonderful, perhaps, is the converse of such phenomena—cases where psychic processes (complexes) give rise to organic defects where no demonstrable anatomical disease exists.

I am referring to the Conversion symptoms which one finds in cases of true hysteria. Here we may find total blindness or paralysis or some other symptom although every part of the eye is intact and normal or, in the case of paralyzed arms, the bones, muscles, joints, and nerves fail to reveal structural changes.

The mental mechanisms here are of a defense reaction variety. The complex, being unable to reenter consciousness and make its demands known symbolically, transfers itself to an or­ganic member. Proper and prompt psycho­analysis can often restore such patients com­pletely.

Two other mental safety valves should be mentioned here for purposes of completion—the Dream and the process known as Sublimation. The dream will be discussed in the two succeed­ing chapters while sublimation will be reserved for the very end.

Chapter VIII THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF Historical Discussion—The Unfulfilled Wish—Value of the Dream—Childhood Dreams—Adult Dreams—Underlying and Precipitating Causes—Dream Symbols— Manifest and Latent Contents

Nothing in the entire field of interpretative psychology yields quite the fascination one finds in the study of dreams. Although the dream is often commented upon by the uninitiate as being foolish and senseless, its scientific investigation has yielded perhaps more valuable data about the workings of the inner self than any other single source.

Ancient peoples had a superstitious reverence for dreams, and the old soothsayers, who were regularly numbered among the entourage of a reigning monarch, practised a highly respected calling. Their explanations of dreams were looked upon as amounting to divine prognostications and not infrequently wars were begun and national policies determined upon because such and such a dream was interpreted to mean that a certain course should be pursued. It was its supposed prophetic characteristic that lent the dream a fictitious value.

In discussing dreams in “A General Intro­duction to Psychoanalysis/’ Freud says:

As far as we know, all ancient peoples attached great importance to dreams and considered them of practical value. They drew omens for the future from dreams, sought premonitions in them. In those days, to the Greeks and all Orientals, a campaign without dream interpreters must have been as impossible as a campaign without an aviation scout to-day. When Alexander the Great undertook his campaign of conquests, the most famous dream interpreters were in attendance. The city of Tyrus, which was then still situated on an island, put up so fierce a resistance that Alexander considered the idea of raising the siege. Then he dreamed one night of a satyr dancing as if in triumph; and when he laid his dream before his interpreters he received the information that the victory over the city had been announced to him. He ordered the attack and took Tyrus. Among the Etrus­cans and the Romans other methods of discovering the future were in use, but the interpretation of dreams was practised and esteemed during the entire Hellenic-Roman period. Of the literature dealing with the topic at least the chief work has been preserved to us, namely, the book of Artemidoros of Daldis, who is supposed to have lived during the lifetime of the Emperor Hadrian. How it happened subsequently that the art of dream interpre­tation was lost and the dream fell into discredit, I cannot tell you. Enlightenment cannot have had much part in it, for the Dark Ages faithfully preserved things far more absurd than the ancient dream interpretation. The fact is, the interest in dreams gradually deteriorated into super­stition, and could assert itself only among the ignorant.

The literature of dreams is an extensive one. Probably the first to treat the subject scientifi­cally was Aristotle. Since then hundreds of scientific and pseudo-scientific treatises have been written, a few even working along the lines of our modern conceptions. It remained for Sigmund Freud, however, to make an exhaustive investigation of the dream, and his “Interpre­tation of Dreams,” first formulated in 1899, established a landmark in this branch of psy­chology.

It is interesting to note that in 1911, in his preface to the third edition of this work, Freud stated that his “sexual theories,” especially as regards dreams and the psychoneuroses, had gradually been forced upon him because of deeper and wider study. It is these very sex theories—according to their author, the product of his riper thought and research—that have been most attacked by critics. The reader must remember, however, that, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, sex must not be taken in a purely literal sense nor must it be confused with the sensual. Furthermore, should the reader pursue his studies of psychoanalysis and read original works of Freud and other continental authors, he should keep in mind the fact that Europeans talk of sex matters with much more freedom than we do in America. Psycho­analysis only incidentally deals with the grossly sexual at all.

I have enlarged upon Freud’s contribution to psychology in his dream interpretation because in this remarkable book he has developed the technique of psychoanalysis. Not alone did it clear away the mysticism shrouding the whole subject of dreams but it laid down fundamental principles by which types of mental disturbance, hitherto inaccessible, were made capable of treat­ment, and even cured.

According to Freud, the dream always ex­presses an Unfulfilled Wish in waking life. The prophetic theory of the dream has long since been discarded except in so far as a wish, being some­thing that looks toward the future, may con­tain a warning for the dreamer. Indeed it may, through a mere coincidence, prove actually prophetic.

The dream, then, stands for thwarted desires, things that the individual has been deprived of or disappointed in in the world of reality. In psychoanalytic parlance, the dream embodies complexes, complexes being nothing more than suppressed desires and wishes that have been submerged into the unconscious. To state it in still another way, the things that conscious­ness is unable to express or fulfil in the outside world are repressed; these repressions, if they mean a great deal to the individual, will re­appear at night, during the sleep state, in the form of a dream.

The dream is a safety valve. Like the safety valve on a boiler, it permits steam to escape and prevents an explosion. If people did not dream, their mental maladjustments would be pro­portionally increased. Dreaming, therefore, al­though it betrays the presence of complexes— from which, to be sure, no one is absolutely free— is of actual advantage to the dreamer.

People claim sometimes that they do not dream. The probability is that they do dream but do not remember their dreams. Since everybody has complexes of some sort it is more than likely that everybody dreams.

Freud stresses the advantageous character of the dream in his “Introduction to Psycho­analysis,” when he says:

The dream is not a disturber of sleep, as calumny says, but a guardian of sleep, whose duty it is to quell dis­turbances. It is true, we think we would have slept better if we had not dreamt, but here we are wrong; as a matter of fact, we would not have slept at all without the help of the dream. That we have slept so soundly is due to the dream alone. It could not help disturbing us slightly, just as the watchman often cannot avoid making a little noise while he drives away the rioters who would awaken us with their noise.

In children one finds the clearest and best examples of the dream’s expression of unfulfilled wishes. The child’s life is simple compared to that of an adult. Accordingly, libidinous thwart- ings are of a more simple type, hence the unful­filled wishes as expressed in their dreams are likewise clearly and simply expressed, with the minimum of disguise.

A child of four who had asked for a doll, dreamed that the doll was in her nursery. On the following morning she cried when the new doll was not actually to be found.

A poor boy of six dreamed a few days before Christmas that Santa Claus got stuck in the chimney and had to leave behind a large part of the toys destined for other children.

Freud relates a dream of a little girl of three and a quarter years who had experienced her first boat ride on a lake and, being reluctant to leave the boat at the landing, had cried bitterly. The next morning she said, “Last night I rode on the lake.”

To understand children’s dreams does not require any special knowledge of psychoana­lytic technique. Happenings of the previous day of the child’s life usually give the clue to the wish element expressed in the dream.

On the other hand, to interpret and find the wish element in adult dreams is often a laborious and painstaking process. Besides, adult dreams are often so jumbled, involved, and sketchy, that only an expert in analysis can decipher them.

As is the case with children the dreams of adults can often be traced to some recent happen­ing during waking life that seems to have started the dream off. A person walking along the street hears the whir of an engine, and looking up sees an aeroplane above the house-tops. That night this person dreams that an aeroplane of peculiar design—long, tortuous like a snake, and made up of many segments—squeezed itself through the bedroom window, perched itselfon the foot-board of the bed, and talked in Esperanto.

Had a child seen this aeroplane it would very likely have dreamed of seeing it again, more or less as it actually appeared. The adult, how­ever, although also dreaming about the aero­plane, sees it in dream life as a peculiar, bizarre, and distorted monster-like object that has marvellous properties of adaptability and talks a suggested universal language.

To explain the dream by saying that an aero­plane had been seen by the dreamer the same day really explains very little. Why does not the dreamer dream about the aeroplane unchanged as a child would have done? Why, also, does the aeroplane turn in the dream into a living, talking monster? Why, furthermore, should he dream of an aeroplane at all after this particular experience, though he did not when he saw them on previous occasions? Why, also, does not every person who shares the experience with the dreamer also dream of aeroplanes that night and in exactly the same way?

Although it is true that some especially vivid or unusual occurrence of w^raking life may be the immediate cause of a dream, there must be also an underlying cause for the dream embody­ing the wish-fulfilling element.

We speak of an Underlying Cause and a Precipifating Cause for every dream. The difference may be likened to the two main causes of the French Revolution. The precipitating cause of the French Revolution was the storming of the Bastille prison; the underlying cause was a deep- seated distrust and fear of the nobility on the part of the bourgeoisie for many years before that. Without the background of class hatred, the destruction of that famous prison might not have precipitated that merciless inquisition.

So, also, in the case of dreams. Something in the environment which has made a vivid im­pression upon consciousness precipitates the dream, but the form which the dream takes, the disguises which that particular thing assumes, indicate the complex in the unconscious which constitutes the unfulfilled wish. Like prisoners of war these complexes are forever trying to escape from the unconscious and express them­selves in the conscious. Suddenly an oppor­tunity presents itself, something impresses con­sciousness which the complex realizes can be used as a disguise. When this something—the happening of the waking day—is stored away at night in the unconscious, the complex, realizing that this something is not obnoxious to con­sciousness as it itself has been, makes use of the disguise (in the example cited, aeroplane) and escapes into consciousness, just as a prisoner of war might hide under a load of hay and cross the frontier undetected.

The frontier dividing the conscious and the un­conscious is, as we have learned, guarded by the psychic censor. If the original repression has been powerful and the complex is particularly unwelcome in consciousness, the complex must needs disguise itself very cleverly in order to get by the censor. Therefore, when a dream is ex­ceedingly mixed up, melodramatic, or absurd, the complex behind the dream must also have been very obnoxious to consciousness if so much disguise had to take place in order to elude the dream censor.

The interpretation of dreams then largely be­comes a problem of interpreting disguises. These censored disguises are called Dream Symbols.

Although certain symbols often mean the same thing, even when appearing in the dreams of different persons, interpreting dreams by means of commonly accepted meanings of symbols would be both a hazardous and unscientific pro­cedure. For example, when a woman dreams of a basket of fruit, though the complex wish is very probably motherhood (basket being the symbol of womb and fruit of foetus) this interpre­tation of the symbol in the individual under consideration might be an exception to the general rule and prove incorrect.

Careful and accurate analysis demands that all dream symbols be interpreted without refer­ence to their meaning in other cases. For this the so-called “association method” is employed which will be discussed in the following chapter. Dream symbols and all other kinds of symbols are a most interesting study and much work has been done along these lines. It must not be forgotten that all language is symbolic and that the interpretation of symbols in a dream is noth­ing more than the translation of the language of the dream.

The dream symbols most commonly recog­nized—standard symbols—are interesting. The works of Freud and others treat the subject of symbolism exhaustively. Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, in “The Technique of Psychoanalysis,” enum­erates a few of the standard symbols as follows:

The patient’s own body is most frequently spoken of as a house. Nakedness of the body is frequently indicated by clothing, uniforms, draperies, hangings, nets, etc. . . . The male body is symbolized by flat things, the female body by irregular ones, mounds, hills, rolling landscapes, etc. . .

Birth symbolisms centre about water; going in or coming out; saving people, animals, objects from the water. Death wishes are represented by reduction of the libido, going into the dark, going away, on journeys, on the railroad, etc.

Again I would like to emphasize that the interpretation of dreams by reference to the meaning of standard symbols is a dangerous practice. Every dream should be analyzed on its own merits, and the personality and ante­cedents of the dreamer himself must always be taken into account.

In contrast with the simplicity of children’s dreams the complexity of adult dreams re­quires still further elucidation.

In practically every dream one is able to recognize two meanings or contents: a Manifest Content and a Latent Content.

The manifest content is the subject that the dream is evidently about. In the case of the aeroplane dream it is, of course, an aeroplane. The underlying complex which is responsible for the aeroplane symbol constitutes the latent content.

Children’s dreams are all manifest content. In adult dreams, the manifest content is of relatively slight importance as compared to the meanings latent in the unconscious complexes which are striving to express themselves. It often takes hours of analysis to arrive at the latent content. But it is the latent content that must be sought out by every means available.

It is not uncommon for a patient to present a dream for analysis and say, “You can’t make me believe, Doctor, that this absurd stuff that I have dreamt expresses an unfulfilled wish.” The absurdity usually lies in the fact that the patient has overlooked the all-important point that the manifest content does not express the unfulfilled wish and that it is only a symbol of it, sometimes disguised in such a way that it por­trays just the opposite of the real, hidden mean­ing which the dream censor did not dare let pass through.

A young lady of twenty, with everything in life to live for, related a dream of the previous night which she had decided could not possibly be true. She had dreamt that she was lying in a casket dead.

I agreed with her that she probably had no actual desire, consciously or unconsciously, to die and urged her to tell me all she could remember about the dream. Miss X. stated that in her mind’s eye she could see herself in the casket, that the room was banked with flowers, that it was crowded with mourners, and that the min­ister preached a very eulogistic sermon about her. When asked to fix her attention on the various incidents just related and to tell me what then came into her mind she suddenly remarked that there was one thing she found she had over­looked. She now remembered that one of the mourners, a middle-aged man, in passing the casket had said, “How beautiful she looks!” and that he had stooped over and kissed her.

The part of the dream which the patient had forgotten constituted the real repression of her consciousness and gave the clue to the un­conscious complex responsible for it. By fur­ther analysis it was established that Miss X. had secretly fallen in love with the middle-aged man of the dream, a friend of her father’s and mar­ried. Her libidinous strivings toward him had, of course, been held taboo by her consciousness, which was refined and conventional. Repression had taken place, but the thwarted love complex had managed to escape from the unconscious and had expressed itself in the dream in a highly censored and symbolized form. In short, in order to rouse an emotional response in the object of her affection, she had to be dead. In this case the manifest content pointed to death while the latent content revealed love.

Dream psychology is a fascinating study but it is often extremely difficult and complicated. In this small volume only the outstanding points can be touched upon. The next chapter will deal in greater detail with the interpretation of dreams.

Chapter IX The Dream-Work—Condensation—Dis­placement—Dramatization—Association Method—Resistances—Reaction Time—An­alysis of Sample Dreams

As a rule, dreams are highly involved and considerable explanation is required to make clear the methods by which their symbolic hieroglyphics can be deciphered to spell out the story of unconscious desires.

In the transmutation from unconscious mecha­nisms (latent) into manifest dream material, marked changes take place. This transmu­tation Freud calls the Dream-Work. And he stresses the point that the reverse process, work­ing backward from the manifest dream to its latent content, is the crucial task set in dream interpretation. It is this last that constitutes the true investigation of the inner self.

Freud recognizes three main methods through which the dream-work is carried out. One is Condensation, another Displacement, and a third Dramatization.

Condensation is readily understandable. It simply means that the dream composes into a small compass unconscious material that may be quite diversified and elaborate in its original de­tails. The dream is a great time-saver. It flashes upon the visual screen of the mind scenes and incidents which are condensed and shortened out of all proportion to what would occur in waking life. Only the salient features, the “purple patches,” are selected for portrayal, and these often with astonishing vividness while connecting links are largely omitted. Hence, though it may take only a few lines to describe a dream in words on paper, a dozen pages may be required to give the full interpretation.

Displacement is not so easy to explain. It demonstrates the particular function of the dream (psychic) censor. Emphasis is placed upon happenings in the dream that are relatively unessential to its meaning, while important, highly symbolistic, repressed material is sub­ordinated and passed over hurriedly. Dis­placement also accounts for the fantastic ab­surdities which so often appear in dreams. It is largely through the mechanism of displacement that the psychic censor is able to beguile con­sciousness and so keep the dreamer from awaken­ing.

Through the process of dramatization the dream-work transforms unconscious thoughts (complexes) into a more or less coherent suc­cession of mental pictures. There results a sort of picture-play of thoughts—the representation of mental activity (thoughts) by visual images. Sometimes we feel ourselves actually a part of the dream, but as a rule we are outside observers watching a “passing show” of which, however, we are ourselves always the central figure. Upon awakening, we are aware that the experi­ence through which we have passed, though vividly real at the time, has been somehow different from what the same series of happenings would have been if experienced actually when awake. We feel as if we had been watching a motion picture in which we are ourselves act­ing.

We have learned that the brain is a mecha­nism akin to other machines and that the product of its workings, the thoughts, are arranged in some sort of orderly way. This orderly arrange­ment is brought about by means of nerve tissue— delicate, microscopic strands known as “associ­ation fibres”—that run in every direction and link all thought processes together. There is no such thing as a single, solitary thought, off and apart by itself. Every thought is connected up with every other thought by means of association fibres in the same way that any one telephone instrument is connected up somehow—no matter how roundabout or devious the way—with every other telephone instrument in a city.

If a person fixes his attention upon any word or any particular thought and then lets his mind drift along in an aimless fashion, without trying to direct it, one thought will suggest another, now quickly, now more slowly, for just about as long as one cares to continue the experiment. This means that the direction of attention is travelling along association fibres.

This Association Method has been a fruitful means of exploring the unconscious. The princi­ple is regularly employed in interpreting dreams and its use has also been of value in the detection of crime.

Let me call your attention to still another mechanism or characteristic of mental activity which should be taken into account. I refer to the so-called Resistances that appear in the course of an association test or dream analysis and which have such vital significance. Perhaps this can best be illustrated by an example.

Suppose I start with the word house and trace along the association of ideas it suggests. House makes me think of brick, then red; red suggests a red hat I saw a woman wearing on the street yesterday. Following this there come into my mind one after the other dress, window-dresser, Christmas display in the stores, and then the name Santa Claus. Here I find myself hesitat­ing. My thinking, my free flow of associations, is halted. I return to the word Santa Claus and concentrate upon it. I find I have difficulty in getting away from that word. My stream of thought seems to have balked at some obstacle and that obstacle, the harmless name of old Santa Claus. I try again; I focus all my at­tention upon the word. Presently I seem to see his long white beard; then I see his face; then- !

Ah! I know why I hesitated before! I recall that at Christmas I had put on a Santa Claus mask to entertain a party of children. Instead, I frightened one of them into an hysterical attack and I felt upset not only because the serenity of the Christmas gathering had been disturbed but also because I realized I had shown lack of foresight. “A fine exhibition of stupidity for a specialist in nervous diseases,” I thought.

Psychologically speaking, I halted at the word Santa Claus because I had a resistance at this point concerning that word. More than that, the resistance was due to emotional repression— my chagrin over my stupid behaviour at a Christmas celebration. I had forgotten the incident the day after it occurred, but although my consciousness had freed itself of its em­barrassment, the suppressed incident was still lurking in the unconscious. Then later (to­night as I write these lines, fully three weeks later), starting with a train of thought on the word house, my stream of thinking proceeded from one association to another (along associ­ation fibres) until it happened upon the emotional complex (the Christmas incident) where it lay in hiding. Immediately auto- protective mechanisms came into play and my psychic censor tried to prevent the incident from becoming conscious again, recalling the distress it had originally caused me. This accounted for my inability to continue the associations. My thinking got jammed. I offered resistance to giving up my secret.

As I mentioned above, word association tests are sometimes given for purposes of crime detection. In such cases a long list of words is used—perhaps a hundred—and the suspect is asked to reply to each word as it is called out with the first word or thought that enters his mind. If the word book is called, he might reply with paper; to the word chair he might answer table; to white, snow; to tree, green; to beautiful, ugly; and so on through the list.

Now if the prisoner is suspected of arson and it is believed that the fire was started in the cellar, the examiner interpolates in the list of what might be called “indifferent” words, certain words suggesting the crime. Instead, therefore, of giving the words book, chair, white, tree, and beautiful, one after the other, he might insert the word cellar between chair and white, and fire after beautiful. The list would then read: book, chair, cellar, white, tree, beautiful, fire.

The words on such a list are often spoken of as “stimulus words” and the words given in reply by the suspect as “responses.” The time that elapses between the giving of the stimulus word and the response is called the Reaction Time.

It has been found that every person has an average reaction time and if he be tested out on one of the standard lists of one hundred words, such as the Woodworth-Wells or the Kent- Rosanoff list, the most usual response will require a half second, or one fifth of a second, or some other time-length. In a way, the shorter the reaction time the more alert is the mentality, yet no individual has exactly the same reaction time for every stimulus word, although the majority may be identical.

But more interesting and important still is the fact that when a stimulus word is given that deals with emotional processes—that is, is connected by association fibres with complexes—the reac­tion time is markedly increased.

Thus, in the case of our arson suspect, should his average reaction time to the indifferent, non- emotional words, be one fifth of a second, his reaction time to such words as cellar and fire might be several seconds. Consciously or un­consciously he would grasp that he is caught revealing emotion, “giving himself away.” The passage of these emotions would consume time which the stop-watch of the examiner does not fail to record. Accordingly, under the grilling of what might be termed a psychological “third degree,” the prisoner either clears himself of the arson accusation, or unwittingly accuses himself, or at least puts his innocence in question. The presumption is that were he entirely innocent (and, I might add, ignorant) of the actual facts of how the building was set afire, his average re­action time of one fifth of a second would follow the words cellar and fire just as it did the other words of the list. Hesitation, display of emotion, lengthened reaction time—all point to complexes. In short, they betray resistances.

To return to the subject of dreams, Andre Tridon, the author of “Psychoanalysis—Its History, Theory, and Practice,” relates a dream he himself had, and gives its interpretation. As he says, “The way in which our dream seeks solutions for mental conflicts is well illustrated by one of my dreams.” In this example it does not take much analysis to discover the wish fulfilment in the manifest content itself. The quotations that follow are in Doctor Tridon’s own words:

One night before the date set for a lecture which I was to deliver on a rather delicate subject, likely to involve me in difficulties, and which I would have preferred not to de­liver, I had the following dream:

I was seated on the stage at Carnegie Hall where an enormous audience had gathered to hear me. The chair­man was busy making various announcements. I looked at my feet and discovered that I wore bed slippers. I felt embarrassed at that undignified detail of my toilet and for a second or so planned to go home and return in more conventional attire. I finally decided to stay. Then, as the chairman was beginning to announce me, I looked for my lecture notes, and could not find them. I made an effort to remember the outline of my lecture and could not recall anything whatever. I then decided to dis­appear without warning the chairman. As I emerged into the hall, I met two women I knew and felt the need of explaining my action. I explained to them that the heat was nauseating me and that I would have to go home. A few steps further down the hall I met a physician who looked at me and said with deep compassion, “The poor fellow is very sick.” Then I began to vomit and went home.

The dream offered me several excuses for breaking my engagement. My appearance was undignified (bed slip­pers), I was not sufficiently prepared, I was sick. I se­cured a friendly physician’s testimonial as to my physical condition.

The choice of sickness (nausea) made by the dream, is the more interesting, as hysterical vomiting is often brought about by a more or less unconscious unwilling­ness to perform an unpleasant task.

While the dream was, in its general make-up, an “anx­iety dream,” still, for the time being, it had solved the problem raised by that unpleasant lecture engagement and had replaced one form of mental anguish by one infinitely more bearable.

My self-protection urge wished me to cancel the engage­ment. The dream cancelled it, at the same time giving plenty of satisfaction to my ego urge: Carnegie Hall, one of the largest halls in New York, where, by the way, I have never spoken, a large audience, and finally humiliation avoided, thanks to my physician’s statement as to my mental condition, which “saved my face.”

I may add that at the time I was expecting the particular physician who appeared in the dream to perform a similar service for me. One of the two women was a hospital nurse I had seen the day before (an actual event from my previous waking state).

Finally the dream-work did not simply give me advice as to means of breaking my engagement but dramatized the breaking of that engagement.

Resistances appear regularly in the interpre­tation of dreams. In order to analyze dreams one takes the important parts, the salient fea­tures, of the dream and then asks the dreamer to think aloud and tell everything that comes into his mind (association method). Sometimes he may continue associating for a considerable time before any hesitancy or emotion displays itself. When he does (as in the case of my own associ­ations with house and the hesitancy at Santa Claus) it means that a complex has been reached. Studying and correlating these complexes inter­prets the dream and brings to light, into the conscious, the unconscious, suppressed unful­filled wishes.

Shortly after beginning an analysis a patient dreamed that she was standing in the room of a castle watching a group of men sitting at a table.

These men wore long, black dominoes and masks, and seemed to be discussing what sentence should be pronounced upon her. Suddenly one man arose who was not masked. He beckoned to the patient and mysteriously opened a secret door in a side wall which led to the outside, where a boat lay as if in waiting. As her rescuer bowed her into this boat it sped off as if by magic, and soon the castle was lost to view. At this juncture the patient awoke with a feeling of happiness.

By means of free association it was found that the room of the castle symbolized my former consulting room in New York City which was heavily panelled in oak; the masked figures around the table stood for the patient’s symp­toms which were harassing her; the unmasked figure that arose and rescued her was myself, the analyst; while the secret door in the wall was psychoanalysis itself. In other words, the un­fulfilled wish symbolized by this dream meant that the patient was hoping I might cure her of her ailments by means of psychoanalysis which up to that time in the course of treatment was still a mysterious subject—a secret door to which I alone held the “open sesame.”

In concluding this chapter I will add two dreams related by Freud in “A General Intro­duction to Psychoanalysis.” His own interpre­tation of these dreams is also included:

1. On July 13, 1910, toward morning, I dreamed that I was bicycliyjg down a street in Tubingen, when a brown Dachshund tore after me and caught me by the heel. A bit further on I get off> seat my self on a step_y and begin to beat the beast, which has clenched its teeth tight. (/ jeel no dis­comfort from the biting or the whole scene.) Two elderly ladies are sitting opposite me and watching me with grins on theirfaces. Then I wake up and_y as so often happens to me_y the whole dream becomes perfectly clear to me in this moment of transition to the waking state. Symbols are of little use in this case. The dreamer, however, informs us, “I lately fell in love with a girl, just from seeing her on the street, but had no means of becom­ing acquainted with her. The most pleasant means might have been the Dachshund, since I am a great lover of animals, and also felt that the girl was in sympathy with this characteristic.” He also adds that he repeatedly interfered with great dexterity in the fights of scuffling dogs and frequently to the great amazement of the spectators. Thus we learn that the girl, who pleased him, was always accompanied by this particular dog. This girl, however, was disregarded in the manifest dream, and there remained only the dog which he associates with her. Perhaps the elderly ladies who simpered at him took the place of the girl. The remainder of what he tells us is not enough to explain this point. Riding a bicycle in the dream is a direct repetition of the remembered situation. He had never met the girl with the dog except when he was on his bicycle.
2. “Father is dead, but has been exhumed and looks badly. He goes on livings and the dreamer does everything to prevent him from noticing thatfact.” Then the dream goes on to other things, apparently irrelevant.

The father is dead, that we know. That he was ex­humed is not really true, nor is the truth of the rest of the dream important. But the dreamer tells us that when he came back from his father’s funeral, one of his teeth began to ache. He wanted to treat his tooth according to the Jewish precept, “If thy tooth offend thee, pluck it out,” and betook himself to the dentist. But the latter said, “One does not simply pull a tooth out, one must have patience with it. I shall inject something to kill the nerve. Come again in three days and then I will take it out.” “This ‘taking it out’,” says the dreamer suddenly, “is the exhuming.”

Is the dreamer right? It does not correspond exactly, only approximately, for the tooth is not taken out, but something that has died off is taken out of it. But after our other experiences we are probably safe in believing that the dream-work is capable of such inaccuracies. It ap­pears that the dreamer condensed, fused into one, his dead father and the tooth that was killed but retained. No wonder, then, that in the manifest dream something senseless results, for it is impossible for everything that is said of the tooth to fit the father. What is it that serves as something intermediate between tooth and father and makes this condensation possible?

This interpretation must be correct, however, for the dreamer says that he is acquainted with the saying that when one dreams of losing a tooth it means that one is go­ing to lose a member of his family.

We know that this popular interpretation is incorrect, or at least is correct only in a scurrilous sense. For that reason it is all the more surprising to find this theme thus touched upon in the background of other portions of the dream content.

Without any further urging, the dreamer now begins to tell of his father’s illness and death as well as of his re­lations with him. The father was sick a long time, and his care and treatment cost him, the son, much money. And yet it was never too much for him, he never grew im­patient, never wished it might end soon. He boasts of his true Jewish piety toward his father, of rigid adherence to the Jewish precepts. But are you not struck by a con­tradiction in the thoughts of the dream? He had identi­fied tooth with father. As to the tooth he wanted to follow the Jewish precept that carries out its own judg­ment, “pull it out if it causes pain and annoyance.” He had also been anxious to follow the precept of the law with regard to his father, which in this case, however, tells him to disregard trouble and expense, to take all the burdens upon himself and to let no hostile intent arise toward the object which causes the pain. Would not the agreement be far more compelling if he had really developed feelings toward his father similar to those about his sick tooth; that is, had he wished that a speedy death should put an end to that superfluous, painful, and expensive existence ?

I do not doubt that this was really his attitude toward his father during the latter’s extended illness, and that his boastful assurances of filial piety were intended to distract his attention from these recollections. Under such cir­cumstances, the death-wish directed toward the parent generally becomes active, and disguises itself in phrases of sympathetic consideration such as, “It would really be a blessed release for him.” But note well that we have here overcome an obstacle in the latent dream thoughts them­selves. The first, part of these thoughts was surely un­conscious only temporarily, that is to say, during the dream-work, while the inimical feelings toward the father might have been permanently unconscious, dating perhaps from childhood, occasionally slipping into consciousness shyly and in disguise, during his father’s illness. We can assert this with even greater certainty of other latent thoughts which have made unmistakable contributions to the dream content. To be sure, none of these inimical feelings toward the father can be discovered in the dream. But when we search a childhood history for the root of such enmity toward the father, we recollect that fear of the father arises because the latter, even in the earliest years, opposes the boy’s sex activities, just as he is ordinarily forced to oppose them again, after puberty, for social motives. This relation to the father applies also to our dreamer; there had been mixed with his love for him much respect and fear, having its source in early sex intimidation.

From the onanism complex we can now explain the other parts of the manifest dream. He looks badly does, to be sure, allude to another remark of the dentist, that it looks badly to have a tooth missing in that place; but at the same time it refers to the “looking badly” by which the young man betrayed, or feared to betray, his excessive sexual activity during puberty. It was not without lightening his own heart that the dreamer transposed the bad looks from himself to his father in the manifest con­tent, an inversion of the dream-work with which you are familiar. He goes on living since then> disguises itself with the wish to have him alive again as well as with the promise of the dentist that the tooth will be preserved. A very subtle phrase, however, is the following: “The dreamer does everything to prevent him {thefather) from noticing the fact ” a phrase calculated to lead us to conclude that he is dead. Yet the only meaningful conclusion is again drawn from the onanism complex, where it is a matter of course for the young man to do everything in order to hide his sex life from his father. Remember, in conclusion, that we were constantly forced to interpret the so-called tooth­ache dreams as dreams dealing with the subject of onanism and the punishment that is feared.

You now see how this incomprehensible dream came into being, by the creation of a remarkable and misleading condensation, by the fact that all the ideas emerge from the midst of the latent thought process, and by the creation of ambiguous substitute formations for the most hidden and, at the time, most remote of these thoughts.

The latter of the two dreams that Freud ana­lyzes may seem involved and, perhaps, the inter­pretation somewhat obscure in places. Several re-readings may be necessary before it becomes clear.

It is for these very reasons that I have selected this dream and its interpretation. It empha­sizes the psychological insight that is necessary for correct dream analysis. The dream-work often performs its tasks only too well. The real inner self is most cleverly disguised.

On the other hand, there are dreams that are comparatively simple to translate. The one of Doctor Tridon is an example. Others, again, require hours upon hours of the most concen­trated kind of thinking, backed by long experi­ence in the actual practice of psychoanalysis. Persons who have been analyzed often acquire a facility in interpreting their own dreams which is quite remarkable. Parenthetically, also, per­sons who claim they never dream often begin to dream very productively after a psychoanalysis is once begun.

Chapter X Erogenous Zones—Heterosexuality— Homosexua lity—Auto-Eroticism—Nar- cism—Sex Hygiene

At several places in the preceding chapters attention has been drawn to the animal, primi­tive nature of the inner self. It is not my in­tention to overstress this feature, yet I wish to emphasize it again at this point, when opening the discussion of sex development, because it is characteristic of persons who are just beginning the study of psychoanalysis to be loath to accept this premise.

Psychoanalysis is a science, and science is always impersonal and logical, aiming at insight into the facts of nature as they are, and not as we might prefer them to be. The concept of man as an evolutionary development from lower and less highly organized animal forms is not a psy­choanalytic hypothesis but an accredited bio­logical one, widely and generally accepted.

It is in harmony with this theory of man’s origin that we find the child, practically from birth on, swayed by primitive and animal instincts (the libidinous urges). These were developed, it is supposed, during the process of evolution to safeguard the welfare of the individual and the race, and thus to ensure the continuance of this very evolutionary process. We conclude, therefore, that they are a most important feature of the prenatal equipment and of the racial inheritance of the young of the human species.

All the knowledge the world now possesses has been based and built upon hypotheses, which were tried out by applying them to a series of actual problems and testing whether the so­lutions they afforded were logical and acceptable. Does the theory work? is it of wide application? are the vital questions.

Not so many years ago chemical formulas were interpreted by means of the atomic theory. Since then matter has been reduced to even smaller proportions and the atomic theory has been supplanted by the so-called “ionic”—a question of electro-chemistry. New elements were discovered by the old theory that atoms were the smallest particles into which matter could be divided, and the new conception of still smaller particles (ions) with rather different properties and modes of action has not upset the science of chemistry nor compelled it to discard previous discoveries.

So it is with the comparatively recent theories of psychoanalysis, and particularly with the way analytic science interprets sex development and sex behaviour. Freud’s original explanations may be correct and true or they may not. The fact that their boldness may shock some should certainly not weigh too heavily against them. Investigators like Adler (already referred to apropos of “organ inferiority”) and Jung of the Zurich school, have already diverged some­what from the Freudian premises and have decidedly lessened the importance which Freud himself gives to sex. These and other side- hypotheses are not revolutionary, nor are they subversive of the earlier, Freudian theory. Rather they are natural outgrowths from it, branches of the parent tree, and integral parts of the main trunk. The newer theories cannot be justly appraised unless their relation to the science of analysis as a whole be taken into account.

Lastly, sex must not be narrowed down to small limits. In its broadest sense it embraces the whole love-life. (v.p. 17.)

The factors of sex development which are here set down may not be as Freudian as his ultra-con­servative followers might prefer; nevertheless, they are Freudian in principle, and have been found to be understandable and practical in lecture courses and in treating patients.

Everyone accepts the fact that during the adolescent period—at the time of puberty—sex consciousness has become a factor to be reckoned with. What is not understood or accepted “by everyone is that the sex instinct (reproductive libido) has antecedents dating back to earliest childhood. The sex life of the individual does not arise spontaneously and suddenly. It is a gradual development from birth, step by step, and year by year. To be sure, its ultimate potentials come to maturity and vigorous action at puberty when the sex life is said to begin, but in no sense should we think that sex is a hidden, dormant instinct until puberty, or that childhood is sexless.

To quote from Chapter III, under the dis­cussion of the Infantile Period: “The child’s mind is at first simple and crude. Wholly self­centred, it interprets all pleasures in terms of bodily sensations. It accepts greedily all that is offered. It is above all pleasure-seeking and pleasure-loving. Warm food (milk) and soft, swaddling clothing give it a sense of well-being. Caresses and softly modulated words of endear­ment soothe it. The child’s eyes sparkle with delight and it coos from sheer pleasure.” In short, children are in the beginning little more than bundles of sensations.

The term sensation is here used in a restricted sense to mean pleasure and pain derived from physical contact. Especially during the first weeks of the child’s existence physical contact with its skin and the mucous membranes of the mouth and even the gastro-intestinal tract supply it with its most vivid sensations of pleasure. Although babies also derive pleasure sensations from seeing bright-coloured objects and from hearing melodious sounds, these come somewhat later. In fact, newly born infants shrink from the light. They are also deaf for the first twenty-four hours and may remain so for several days, this defect being probably due to absence of air in the cavity of the middle ear.

But the infant’s sensibility to touch and taste begins at birth, and this sensitiveness is especially well marked in the lips and tongue. The same is true of their ability to distinguish degrees of hot and cold, and very young infants sometimes will refuse a nursing bottle that is not of an agree­able temperature.

It is obvious why sensations referable to the lips and tongue should be present and so acute at birth. It is nature’s way of safeguarding the nutrition libido—of ensuring breast feeding.

We see, then, that one part of the skin and mucous membrane of the body is more highly sensitized than any other part even as early as birth. That part is the mouth. The analytic term for an area that is capable of giving unusual pleasure when stimulated (touched) is Ero­genous Zone. Since the mouth erogenous zone is the first and the most important for a number of years it is called a Primary Erogenous Zone.

Freud maintains that there is a sex element— unconscious to the child, of course—in the suck­ing of the nursing period which stimulates the erogenous zone of the mouth. That the child experiences the keenest physical pleasure from this act and expresses its gratification in various ways cannot be denied. Freud himself raises the question whether it is justifiable to include in the term sexual “each and every organic enjoy­ment.” Possibly another term might be found better suited to this particular physical pleasure. The chief point, however, is not the name chosen but the recognition of the fact that the child’s keenest pleasures are associated with mouth sensations.

Freud insists that the child is not sexless. His own arguments are here appended, the passages being again selected from “A General Intro­duction to Psychoanalysis”:

You have on the whole gained very little for what you are so anxious to maintain, the sexual purity of the child, even when you can convince me that the activities of the suckling had better not be called sexual. For from the third year on, there is no longer any doubt concerning the presence of a sexual life in the child. At this time the genitals already begin to become active; there is perhaps regularly a period of infantile masturbation, in other words, a gratification by means of the genitals. The psychic and social expressions of the sexual life are no longer absent; choice of an object, affectionate preference for certain persons, indeed, a leaning toward one of the two sexes, jealousy—all these have been established independently by unprejudiced observation, prior to the advent of psy­choanalysis, and confirmed by every careful observer. You will say that you had no doubt as to the early awaken­ing of affection, you will take issue only with its sexual nature. Children between the ages of three and eight have already learned to hide these things, but if you look sharply you can always gather sufficient evidence of the “ sexual” purpose of this affection. What escapes you will be amply supplied by investigation. . . .

From about the sixth or the eighth year on a pause in, and reversion of, sexual development is noticeable, which in the cases that reach the highest cultural standard de­serves the name of a latent period. The latent period may also fail to appear and there need not be an inter­ruption of sexual activity and sexual interests at any period. Most of the experiences and impulses prior to the latent period then fall victim to the infantile amnesia, the forgetting we have already discussed, which cloaks our earliest childhood and makes us strangers to it.

It is true, as Freud states, that scientists, medical and otherwise, have noted sex mani­festations in children long before the onset of puberty. During puberty the transfer of erog­enous primacy from the mouth zone to the genital zone is unmistakable. It is for this reason that onanism is so common during the adolescent period.

Thus, as the child develops there is a transfer of organic pleasure-sensations from one part of the body to another. Later, at puberty, when the reproductive organs begin actually to func­tion, and the child shows signs of beginning its independent life of thought and action, normal individuals, if they have fallen into the habit of onanism, gradually give it up because the over­idealization of the adolescent period leads them to centre their interests in the opposite sex and away from their own gross physical pleasures. In other words, the animal, primitive, self­centred traits of early childhood disappear. They no longer interpret pleasure largely in terms of their own bodies. They now take their keenest pleasure in psychic (mental) sensations.

To be sure, the development just outlined comes on gradually and, one might add, subtly. All persons do not progress just alike.

As sex development is a gradual progression from one stage to another it is easy to understand that some persons might be halted in this pro­gression. Instead of transferring to the oppo­site sex in a normal heterosexual way they might either continue to enjoy unduly pleasures de­rived from their own bodies (as the onanist does) or they might develop just a little further and find pleasure in duplication of their own sex namely in the person.of another of the same sex. incidentally, this latter is true of many normal female adolescents as a transition stage and often is a ‘substitute for onanism which is more com­mon to boys. The phenomenon is known as a “crush.” If such a love attachment to the same sex continues for years—to the exclusion even of interest in the opposite sex—and is never broken, such persons become more and more distinctly homosexual, their attachment being a fixation in the course of their sex development.

All of us are somewhat homosexual, not only because of the self-pleasure fixations already mentioned but also because one’s love and fixation for the parent of the same sex prepares the way for the possibilities of affection for other individuals (strangers) of the same sex. Thus the affection of friendship between men, as well as between women, may be very strong and idealistic. Although such attachments illustrate homosexuality, they usually have nothing what­ever to do with abnormal sexuality. They are simply highly valuable, symbolized substitute outlets for very natural fixations in childhood.

Persons who have fixations in that they show marked self-gratification like a child are also spoken of as being auto-erotic. Another term that has been coined for this type is Narcism. According to mythology, it was Narcissus who fell in love with his own image as reflected in a pool of water. Individuals who receive pleasur­able gratification in admiring themselves, as young children do, are said to be, in psycho­analytic parlance, Narcistic.

Women—and men, too—who spend hours in dressing themselves and in mirror-gazing are manifesting narcistic tendencies. Many hours are wasted by such persons in the procedure of self-adornment.

What might be interpreted as fundamentally sex fixations are often symbolized in non-sexual habits. Excessive smoking and gum chewing are fixations from nursery days. Likewise, over-indulgence in eating is a regression to stimu­lation of the primary erogenous mouth zone. Drunkenness may be interpreted in this way.

Besides, since the entire gastro-intestinal tract is nothing more than a hollow tube suspended inside the body and is directly connected with the mouth, its functioning may be held in bondage by the same laws that govern disturb­ances referable to the mouth (or anus) and may be traceable back to erogenous sensations first brought into play years ago. Many persons who suffer with “nerves” also complain of “indigestion.” Treating such “functional” stomach and intestinal disorders directly with drugs, as though they were of pure organic origin, may alleviate distressing symptoms for a time, but only a complete psychoanalysis, a thorough probing of the inner self, will reveal the unconscious complexes which are responsible.

Erogenous zone fixations and regressions ex­plain many of the most puzzling cases that come before the neurologist. The explanations are not always of sex origin although frequently such is the case. When they are, an honest recog­nition of the sex basis underlying the disease picture, such as a searching analysis reveals, effects a cure. Certainly such procedure justi­fies itself even if it prove shocking at first. Curiously enough, patients whose obsessions, or whatever their disease may be, undergo a sex interpretation are not commonly shocked. Their diseases are tortures and the analysis brings them no distress of mind comparable to their physical sufferings. Furthermore, patients whose sex life is at fault learn during a psycho­analysis to think of and to discuss sex matters in an impartial and impersonal fashion. The light of science illumines the dark corners, and a direct and candid handling of matters which might ordinarily excite prurience of thought now stimulates only a wholesome and helpful interest.

Since neuroses are often caused by sex re­pressions the clear need arises for as much knowledge as possible on sex development— especially enlightenment on sex matters during childhood.

The ideal source of information on sex matters for the child is the mother. From her lips will come most naturally the story of its prenatal life within her own body. This revelation will carry no slightest shock, if the truth be told simply and directly. The child is sure to re­spond with a fresh access of love and devotion.

A child begins to ask questions on these sub­jects while it is still very young, usually at any time after five years—that is, during the period of over-idealization when the love of the child for its parents is strongly instinctive and is only beginning to be a matter of reasoning. Any new knowledge which tends to strengthen this re­lation, by giving the child fresh grounds for its love, will be absorbed by the child’s mind eagerly, as the earth soaks up the rain. The beautiful story of human reproduction may be unfolded gradually, as the mother deems it wise to add new details from time to time, illustrating by parallels taken from plants and animals.

If, however, the mother or father reproves its first questionings, the child is sure to turn inward to morbid speculation, or aside to other sources of information, often impure. Facts will be ac­quired piecemeal, possibly distorted and vulgar­ized. A spring that should bubble up pure and sparkling, a well of inspiration and ideality for the whole after life, has been choked with dirt and rubbish.

But parents are apt to be remiss in this matter. Mothers are often timid, inclined to shirk their responsibilities, to put them on the shoulders of the teacher. No school courses in physiology or sex hygiene, however admirably conducted and useful for the child as it grows older, can take the place of the close and intimate talks between mother and child in those early years when the child’s whole heart lies open to the mother’s loving eyes. Together with the sex knowledge she is imparting she has the oppor­tunity to establish in her child’s mind a sense of the sacredness of the body, of the value of personal dignity, of the meaning of self-respect. She can do this, if she is the right kind of mother, without in the least brushing off the bloom of child­ish innocence. The sympathetic understanding thus established will be of untold value as a help and protection to the child, especially during the troubled years of adolescence.

Chapter XI Nervous Breakdowns— Definitions — Ordinary Nervousness — Sex Factor in Neuroses—Phobias—Anxiety Neuroses—Compulsion Neuroses — Hysteria — Neurasthenia — Psychas- thenia

There can be little doubt that a majority of the population suffer from “nerves” or are “nervous” at some period of their lives.

The term “nervousness” is an exceedingly loose one and covers a multitude of complaints directly or indirectly traceable to the nervous system. From such symptoms as headaches, vertigo, palpitation, pains in the heart region, laboured breathing or shortness of breath, di­gestive disturbances, and all sorts of aches in various parts of the body, to insomnia, “sleep starts,” excessive dreaming, fears and obsessions of all kinds, anxiety, sense of impending danger, inability to concentrate, loss of ambition, cloudy memory, feelings of unreality and inferiority, general unhappiness—these and a host of others, singly or in combination as the case may be, harass thousands of people.

Nervousness should not be confounded with diseases of the brain or spinal cord, which bear special diagnostic names, and in which organic changes have occurred in the tissues themselves. Again, nervousness should not be confused with insanity—a discussion of which has been re­served for the next chapter.

Nervousness implies a functional disturbance. It signifies an inability of coordination, a dis­harmony of working. It is an abnormal action of the nervous system and not abnormality of the nerves themselves.

If a city’s telephone system were to get out of order the cause might be worn-out equipment (dynamos, receivers, wires) or it might be lack of cooperation between the different switch­boards. The former would be an organic defect; the latter, a functional.

If you take up the receiver, asking for a certain number, and you find yourself connected with a different one, there is nothing wrong with the electrical equipment of the system but there is something decidedly at fault in the transmission of the message. Right wires go to wrong places, as it were. The defect is functional.

General ignorance of the distinction between the functional and organic has been largely responsible, I believe, for the lack of sympathy often accorded nervous people.

“It’s only your imagination,” says one friend. “Just forget it—exercise your will power,” says another. The sufferer receives an abundance of gratuitous advice—sometimes even advice for which he pays, and from physicians—but con­tinues without improvement until, weary and burdened with increasing feelings of self-accu­sation, of being responsible and personally to blame for his condition, he loses all hope and slumps into despair.

If we gave up that vague term “nervousness” altogether we would be making a start in the right direction. To classify a person under an ambiguity leads to indefiniteness, obscurity and, worst of all, lack of understanding. Nervous­ness is a waste-basket term that holds all sorts of diagnostic trash. The substitute word which has received scientific acceptance is Neurosis. A neurosis is a functional nervous, disease. A person who suffers from a neurosis is a Neurotic.

Having studied the hypotheses underlying the science of psychoanalysis—having acquired an insight into the workings of the inner self—we are now in a position to orient ourselves. We shall now be able to gain a fair conception of the myriad results of disharmony within the uncon­scious or of maladjustments between the con­scious and the unconscious. We shall also appreciate why neurotics are so misunderstood and why they receive so little consideration at the hands of their fellows, even their fellow sufferers.

A neurosis is primarily a problem of indi­vidualistic psychology. No two neuroses are alike. Unless a normal individual has an in­sight into the principles of unconscious oper­ations he may be pardoned for impatience with his sick friend. Unless a neurotic has grasped the concept of the unconscious with its protean strivings and thwartings he, too, must be ex­cused for accusing himself of being a weakling and a humbug.

We have learned that the demands of libidi­nous desires are different in different indi­viduals. The chances of their satisfactory ex­pression in the world of reality are also different in each case. Thinking of the entire group of libidinous urges as a single unit, persons with weak desires are less likely to be thwarted than those with strong ones. Again, those with strong libidinous tendencies are likely to escape disappointment, if the circumstances of their station in life and financial status are such as to make their wants readily gratifiable.

This does not mean that the rich are able to find satisfaction and conquer their world more easily than the poor, nor does it mean that the educated and cultured have an appreciable ad­vantage over those less fortunate. In fact, worldly goods and college opportunities often crystallize refinements of unconscious desires that cannot be fulfilled, thus creating new and additional demands which make adjustment still more complicated. To be sure, numerical increase of demands also means in a way in­creased possibilities for enjoyment, hence satis­faction; yet, fundamentally, repressed, uncon­scious desires (complexes) are not conditioned by poverty or riches, material or intellectual.

Thwarted emotions of a distinctly primitive sort are at the root of neurotic difficulties. Repressed desires, having to do with the libidi­nous strivings of nutrition, sex, self-preservation, and ego, are, in last analysis, the weak links in the chain of development of the average neu­rotic. The struggle waged between various libidinous tendencies is often responsible for a conflict that results in repressions, and these repressions cause a neurosis. One of the commonest of these struggles is between the sex libido and the ego libido.

Here, again, Freud’s own words will serve best to make the matter clear. The passages that follow are taken from his “Introduction

To show you the influence of ego development in the formation of a conflict, and so to give an illustration of the causation of neuroses, I should like to cite an example which, although it is entirely imaginary, is not far removed from probability in any respect. Drawing upon the title of a farce by Nestroy, I shall label this example “On the ground floor and in the first story.” The janitor lives on the ground floor, while the owner of the house, a rich, distinguished man, occupies the first story. Both have children, and we shall assume that the owner permits his little daughter to play unwatched with the child of the people. Then it may easily happen that the games of the children become “naughty,” that is, they assume a sexual character; they play “father and mother,” watch each other in the performance of intimate performances, and mutually stimulate their genitals. The janitor’s daughter, who, in spite of her five or six years of age, has had occasion to make observations on the sexuality of adults, probably played the part of the seducer. These experiences, even though they be of short duration, are sufficient to set in motion certain sexual impulses in both children, which continue in the form of onanism for several years after the common games have ceased. So far the consequences are similar; the final result will be very dif­ferent. The janitor’s daughter will continue onanism possibly to the commencement of her periods, abandon it then without difficulty, not many years later find a lover, perhaps bear a child, choose this or that path of life, which may likely enough make of her a popular artist who ends as an aristocrat. Perhaps the outcome will be less brilliant, but at any rate she will work out her life, free from neurosis, unharmed by her premature sexual activity. Very different is the effect on the other child. Even while she is very young she will realize vaguely that she has done wrong. In a short while, perhaps only after a vio­lent struggle, she will renounce the gratification of onanism, yet still retain an undercurrent of depression in her attitude. If, during her early childhood, she chances to learn something about sexual intercourse, she will turn away in explicable disgust and seek to remain innocent. Probably she is at the time subjected anew to an irresist­ible impulse to onanism, of which she does not dare com­plain. When the time arrives for her to find favour in the eyes of a man, a neurosis will suddenly develop and cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life. When analysis succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will reveal that this well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has completely suppressed her sexual desires but that un­consciously they cling to the meagre experience she had with the friend of her childhood.

The difference of these two destinies, arising from the same experience, is due to the fact that one ego has experienced development while the other has not. The janitor’s daughter in later years looks upon sexual inter­course as the same natural and harmless thing it had seemed in her childhood. The owner’s daughter had experienced the influence of education and had recognized its claims. Thus stimulated, her ego had forged its ideals of womanly purity and lack of desire which, however, could not agree with any sexual activity; her intellectual development had made unworthy her interest in the woman’s part she was to play. This higher moral and intellectual evolution of her ego was in conflict with the claims of her sexuality.

As the illustration quoted brings out, the neurosis in the case of the owner’s daughter is not a question of kind or amount of sexuality displayed but a question of the conflict waged between the sex libido and the ego libido.

As a result of premature sexual experience the owner’s child senses having done wrong, realizing that her acts are at variance with her own knowledge of what is right. She condemns her­self and feels that she has done something she would be ashamed to have her mother know. The child tries to overcome the habit of onanism. Each relapse causes a renewal of remorse and results in a growing conviction of unworthiness. Later there develops a feeling of disgust for all sexual manifestations.

During adolescence this painful emotion of re­morse causes the growing girl to repress her ear­lier sexual experiences, thus producing a complex.

This complex seeping into consciousness produces a reluctant over-interest in sexual things wher­ever they crop up—in the talk of playmates, in books, moving pictures, etc. Such thoughts intrigue and obsess her mind, despite an exhaust­ing struggle which keeps up unremittingly, mov­ed by the feeling that all such things are evil and disgusting. The same feeling makes it im­possible for the young girl to consult her mother, who, we will suppose, is not wise enough to take the first step toward a helpful understanding with her child.

Education and refinements of conduct in­culcated through her social status develop the ego libido of the owner’s daughter. This ego (her personality) suffers a revulsion of feeling against any outgoing emotion toward the oppo­site sex, such as would be natural to her age— innocent flirtation, coquetry, and so on.

Nevertheless, her sex libido, now repressed, still tries to reassert itself. This is attempted through the complex (conflict between childish sensuality and feeling of remorse) which storms consciousness for recognition.

The ego and sex libidoes are therefore in seri­ous antagonism, one trying to conquer the other. Neither succeeds. The final result of this struggle is a neurosis which attacks the girl at the time when normally she would be ready for marriage.

To quote Freud from the same book:

Psychoanalysis never forgot that non-sexual impulses exist. It insisted on the decided distinction between sexual and ego-impulses and maintained in the face of every objection not that neuroses arise from the sexuality, but that they owe their origin to the conflict between sexuality and the ego. Psychoanalysis can have no reasonable motive for denying the existence or significance of ego-impulses, even though it investigates the influence sexual impulses play in illness and in life.

From what I have written thus far the reader may be led to believe that, first, all neuroses have in some way a sex basis, whether other libidinous urges are brought into conflict or not, and secondly, that such symptoms as headache, etc., enumerated previously, being neurotic in character, must needs also have a sex expla­nation.

As to the former, Freud would certainly maintain this to be true, although we must bear in mind his phrase, “not that neuroses arise from sexuality, but that they owe their origin to the conflict between sexuality and the ego.” Is this merely a distinction without a difference?

Perhaps it would appear so on the surface. However, this distinction makes all the difference in the world. It lifts the neuroses out of sensuality, and raises them up. It proves that neurotics are not only not over-sexed or steeped in sex but that, in truth, their very disease proves that they have fought a long-drawn battle against sex, against animal cravings. In short, the neurosis is a compliment to the intellectual, refined, conscious non-sexuality of the patient.

Certainly one need not blush to recognize in oneself sex impulses, for they are common to us all and we must accept them as part of our racial inheritance. But, because we have moral stand­ards which have been found after long experience to be the best laws, after all, under which people can live together, we can and should censure sex license and sex depravity. These latter, though, are foreign to neurotics. Their sex impulses have been restrained, denied their natural and health/ outlet, repressed. There has been a conflict. ‘• The neurosis is the result of that conflict.

Furthermore, we must recall what has been touched upon in previous pages. Not all psycho­analysts place the emphasis upon sex libido— even as just outlined—that Freud does. Adler’s theories of organ inferiority have been men­tioned. There are others.

Regarding single symptoms such as headache, or palpitation, or loss of ambition, it is necessary to add that one or two symptoms do not consti­tute a neurosis any more than one swallow makes a summer. Well-defined neuroses often do ex­hibit such symptoms, but such symptoms do not necessarily signify the existence of a neurosis.

Manifestations like these are best termed neurotic, meaning like a neurosis. Sometimes they are the forerunners of an ultimate neurosis. Often they progress no further.

Even if we are willing to agree with Freud that a sex conflict exists somehow in all well- defined neuroses, we need not assume that all symptoms that suggest actual neuroses have a sex significance. In my own experience as an analyst I have treated many cases of that nature. They often disappeared after little more than a superficial analysis had been made, no reference whatever to the sex life of the subject having been necessary.

A woman of fifty had a haunting fear of revol­vers. She would avoid shops that might dis­play firearms in the windows. Analysis un­covered an emotional shock during girlhood when a neighbour went into the woods and shot himself. The patient had repressed and for­gotten the incident and the remembrance of seeing the revolver that the suicide had used. Its reappearance in consciousness removed the fear symptom. There was no mention of the patient’s sex life, although dread of firearms of all kinds is supposed to have some sex signifi­cance.

Another case was that of a man of middle age who complained of a sense of dizziness and confusion, sometimes described as a feeling of being lifted up in the air. Sensations of being carried through the air are supposed to be rather characteristically sex symbols. In this case the analysis brought to light that the patient and his father were at odds over the management of a wholesale business. Being lifted up meant his own removal from the Jbusiness. His uncon­scious wish was to quit, while his conscious self was preaching the duty of sticking to a business that had been in the family for years. Here, again, the symptoms were removed without sex being brought into question.

Out of justice to Freud it must be added that in the last case one might presuppose an CEdipus complex as the root cause of the patient’s busi­ness conflict, perhaps dating back to a natural rivalry between son and father for the mother’s affection. However, the point is that it proved unnecessary to go as deeply as that. The patient was cured without reference to sex.

The various abnormal fears or Phobias which appear in certain neuroses are a source of the greatest annoyance, if not torment, to the patient. Claustrophobia (fear of closed places) has already been mentioned. Others are Agora­phobia (fear of open places), Misophobia (fear of dirt, uncleanliness, or of germs), Aerophobia (fear of high places), and so on. Phobias and all kinds of anxiety states (including the phobia of stammering) are often grouped under the name of Anxiety Neurosis or Anxiety Hysteria.

Abnormal fears such as these fill every hour of the patient’s life with acute suffering. After a time there is no escape from them. A case in point is the following, taken from Pfister, and quoted by Wilfred Lay in his “Man’s Uncon­scious Conflict. ”

A bachelor forty-seven years old carried on a war from his twelfth year with the number 13. His sufferings forced him to leave school and spoiled his whole life for him. He was constrained to pay attention to the number constantly. Thirteen minutes before and after each hour was a moment of anxiety for him, as well as every position of the hands of the clock which added up to 13, e.g. 8:23. Other situations which produced the anxiety were, to mention only a few out of hundreds: if it struck eleven when two persons were in the room, or if five persons were at table at eight o’clock. He could not stay away from home thirteen hours. The whole of March (3rd month), 1910, was an unlucky month, in which he did not dare to undertake anything important, as well as February, 1911, etc. The hours from five to eight were sinister because five, six, seven, and eight add up to 26, which is twice 13. Every thirteenth line of a letter, every set of numbers which summed up 13 brought misery. He had to shun not only every house numbered 13, but all the residents of such a house. .    .               . The most remarkable was the inability to go to bed at ten o’clock because he always said three prayers.

The so-called Compulsion Neuroses are an interesting group from a scientific viewpoint, but the patients themselves suffer tortures.

Such unfortunates are harassed with all sorts of doubts, uncertainties, and often obsessions (acts that they must give way to and perform again and again although they realize their uselessness and absurdity) that render their lives a misery. One patient has to dress and undress three times before she feels satisfied to leave her clothes on; another must give way to the irre­sistible compulsion to add together the numbers on all the automobile licenses that pass him in the street; a third is obsessed with the idea that some indefinite fatality will befall him should he step on a crack in a street pavement. Klep­tomania may be caused by a compulsion neuro­sis. Continual doubting {folie de doute) and all kinds of purposeless muscle spasms (“tics”) belong to this category.

All phobias, anxiety states, obsessions, morbid impulses, and compulsions are the result of deep-seated complex disturbances in the un­conscious. They have originally been caused by repression. Fixations, regressions, and other mental mechanisms may be the causative fac­tors.

In Hysteria similar causes are demonstrable. Repression in these cases is very strong, so strong that the only safety valve is a conversion of the repressed material into such dramatic physical symptoms as blindness, paralyses, immobility of joints, convulsions, persistent tremor of limbs or body, complete loss of powers of sensation or speech, complete loss of memory for certain events, etc.

The familiar “shell shock” cases resulting from the war are neuroses (“concussion neu­roses”). Some of these men never were at the battle front. The war simply acted as a pre­cipitating cause to an underlying, potentially developing neurosis.

Neurasthenia and Psychasthenia are terms commonly but incorrectly applied to a so-called nervous breakdown. Neurasthenia, means an asthenia or exhaustion of nerves (neurons), and psychasthenia an exhaustion of the mind (psyche). For general use these terms are preferable to nervousness. However, they have special meanings to neurologists, depending largely upon the classification of neuroses that is adopted as a working basis. It really matters little which of the many classifications is used. The diagnostic name is not so important if the symptoms and their causes are recognized. In the end it is the individualistic psychology, the analysis of the patient himself, that counts.

If one is to avoid a complete breakdown— avoid a neurosis—one must needs explore the inner self at the very first suggestions of collapse. Cessation from work, a rest or change of scene, help to a degree. But the essential thing is complete and fearless exploration of the un­conscious—a thorough and competent psycho­analysis.

Chapter XII WHAT IS INSANITY? Definitions — Differentials Between Neuroses and Psychoses—Dementia Prae- cox—Mental Hygiene

With but few exceptions, persons who are neurotic or who suffer actual neuroses harbour a haunting dread that they are going insane. If , they do not attempt to satisfy their own minds by asking the question themselves, in all likeli­hood they will respond in the affirmative if the question is put to them.

To the layman insanity appears a mysterious disease that may pounce upon one unawares before one has had a chance to combat it. To the majority insanity connotes the idea of life incarceration in an asylum.

It is not my intention to brush such fears aside as being nonsensical. But earnestly do I wish to be reassuring. First, insanity is not a baffling condition which creeps on insidiously without cause or warning; secondly, most cases are either curable or improvable; lastly, insanity is largely preventable.

Here certain statistics furnished by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene are interesting. With a population of a hundred millions, the United States has a total estimated insane population of only about three hundred thousand. To be sure this means an enormous economic loss to the country, estimated at two hundred million dollars a year, yet the prob­ability of any one going insane is small. Besides, of the patients discharged from sixty-nine state hospitals during 1920, a third left the asylums recovered, about one half were sent home as improved, 15 per cent, remained unimproved, and about 5 per cent, were diagnosed as not insane.

Psychosis and its plural Psychoses are terms that should be used instead of insanity. “In­sanity” is not a medical classification but a legal one, and it is about as inaccurate to use it for “psychosis” as it is to employ “nervousness” to mean “ neurosis.” To be insane means simply to be suffering from some form of mental dis­turbance that renders one committable to an asylum—and nothing worse. The word is purely sociological and gives no clue whatever to the nature of the mental disorder.

We speak of various psychoses as we do of different kinds of neuroses.

The question whether a neurosis is a mild form of psychosis or eventually leads to it is best answered by comparing the two conditions. Neuroses and psychoses have characteristics in common; they also have decidedly dissimilar attributes.

In discussing the neuroses the individual’s powers of adaptability to the world about him was stressed. If he was able to harmonize with the world of reality, no matter what the kind or force of his inner libidinous strivings might be, no neurosis could develop. If he remained out of harmony with his surroundings, a neurosis might result. The crux of the whole problem of both neuroses and psychoses is the individual’s behaviour in the community in which he lives.

It doesn’t make a particle of difference what an individual thinks, experiences, or feels provided he keeps his sensations to himself or does not annoy others with them. He may have head­aches and dizziness; his eyes may behold wonder­ful and strange sights, and his ears be regaled by the most exquisite melodies; he may feel strange, queer sensations within his own body and be obsessed with all sorts of fads and fancies. So long, I repeat, as he keeps these things to him­self all goes well so far as the community is con­cerned.

Both the neurotic and the psychotic may experience such sensations as these, and the causes in both cases take their rise in conflicts and repressions. But here the similarity be­tween them ceases. While the neurotic realizes his peculiarities and tries to harmonize them at any cost with his environment, the psychotic, on the other hand, does not realize his differences from the average member of society. The psychotic has no “insight.” Furthermore, he not only does not try to harmonize his peculiari­ties with the world but he sets out on a course that, figuratively, is one of running away from reality.

A neurosis and a psychosis are both com­promises between the strivings of the inner self and the world outside.

The neurotic has made a compromise (an adjustment) and found shelter in the resultant symptoms. These symptoms he tries to live with and make consonant with the standards of society. Thus he never becomes anti-social in the sense of “taking the law into his own hands” and injuring anybody or anything.

The psychotic, too, has made a compromise (an adjustment) and found shelter in his symp­toms. But his adjustment develops to such success and completeness that he runs away from the world of reality and in its stead builds up a world of imagination all his own and suited to his make-up. Thus the natural tendency of a psychotic is to become anti-social, to rebel against existing laws, customs, and the people with whom he is surrounded. Thus, also, he ends as a sociological problem. He becomes a person against whom society, for its own self­preservation, must protect itself. Sooner or later, therefore, he drifts into the hands of the law. Hence the legal term “insanity,” hence the patient’s commitment to an asylum for the mentally deranged.

A man suffers from numbness in his limbs and occasional sensations like “pins and needles.” He consults a physician. He tells him that he cannot understand these strange feelings, that they came on without apparent cause.

The physician makes a thorough physical examination and tells the patient that, being unable to discover anything wrong with his organic nervous system or with any other organ of his body, he regards him as suffering from a functional trouble, a neurosis. The patient accepts this explanation and probably decides to follow the advice given by his doctor.

Another man with the same complaint, the same physician, and the identical advice, leaves the doctor’s office in an entirely different state of mind. He may believe that the diagnosis of his symptoms as functional in character is cor­rect. But why? he still asks. Why should I have such sensations?

“I know hundreds of people who are nervous who don’t feel the way I do,” he muses. “The doctor is right about my being nervous but he doesn’t know it all. He doesn’t know that somebody is working on my nerves to put them in such a fix. He doesn’t know that I’ve lost my job because the foreman is jealous of me; he doesn’t know about the queer way people look at me in the street. That doctor doesn’t realize how really different I am. It’s the trades union that’s at the bottom of the whole thing. I’m too expert in my line, that’s what’s the matter. They’re jealous. They got me fired. They’ve tipped other people off—that’s why they look at me so funny! They’re afraid to face me and they use underhand methods to get even. I haven’t got these queer feelings for nothing. They’re working wireless on me—that’s what they’re doing! No use telling that M.D.—he wouldn’t understand. Probably say I was crazy. But I know—I know the whole thing from A to Z. It’s wireless—that’s what it is. The unions are working wireless on me!”

Here we have a sick brain reasoning from one thing to another by fairly plausible steps— logical enough if the premises are accepted—and leading inevitably to ideas of grandeur and persecution. The patient’s premises are faulty; appeal to his reason and positive proof of his suspicions being wrong would not shake his convictions one jot. He is absolutely convinced; his compromise (explanation) with the world of reality (fellow workers and trades union) is perfect for he has given it substance in a world of fancy of his own making, a psychic world that offers a ready explanation for every difficulty. His ego libido has triumphed. He has run away from reality. He has substituted imagination for fact. He has developed a psychosis. He has become a confirmed Paranoiac.

To be sure this is a hypothetical case and the patient’s reasoning is hypothetical also. Yet it illustrates the inevitable end-result of psychotic reasoning, faulty insight, and an asocial or anti­social attitude toward the world outside.

The patient’s original symptoms were ex­plained by conflicts in the inner self. In the case of the neurotic the adjustment or compro­mise stopped with the symptoms. In the case of the psychotic the adjustment did not stop with the symptoms. It would be misleading to say that he developed like a neurotic but went further, for this would imply that all neurotics may eventually become psychotics. In the last case the inherent adjustment itself was different. It embraced his discharge from the factory and the supposed attitude of the people on the street. He has been heading for a different direction long since. His adjustment was psychotic in character from the very beginning—probably from childhood.

Along the road of repression both the embryo neurotic and the potential psychotic travel. Then there comes a fork, one road leading to the left and another to the right. The neurotic turns one way and the psychotic the other. The neurotic does not retrace his steps and follow the other road. So also does the psychotic travel his own course. That is why a neurotic need ot fear a psychosis. His road, his adjustment, uring the slow evolution of years has been efinitely charted and fixed.

About a quarter of all the patients admitted to ospitals for the insane are diagnosed Dementia ¹rcecox. It is a malady that has no rival in the estructive progressiveness and sureness with rhich it takes hold of the adolescent mind, nally rendering its victim hopeless, helpless, nd deteriorated to a purely animal existence, ts first signs are revealed early in life—about the ime of puberty—and it is doubtful whether it ver develops after thirty or thirty-five.

Dementia Praecox is the quintessence of intro- ersion. The patients have completely severed ormal relationship with the world about them, in impassable gulf separates them from every­body and everything. All libidinous urges are urned inwards: fixations, repressions, and re- ressions can be analyzed, although this may equire unusual expertness on the part of an xaminer. The patients live within themselves nd their interest in outside affairs cannot be roused. We say they have an “inadequate ersonality” for the ways of life. Their adjust- lent within themselves is so perfect that, once stablished, it cannot be broken up.

Despite the frequency of this dread psychosis one must admit that comparatively little is known about its causation. Some believe that the psychic manifestations are only secondary to, and follow, organic changes of a chemical nature in the bodily organs. Yet we do know that a mental side exists and that in the majority of cases seclusiveness, moodiness, a “shut-in type” of personality, and a general faulty emotional make-up in meeting the realities of life were al­ready noted in childhood.

Psychoanalysis has thrown new light on these early maladjustments just as it has on the interpretation of all psychoses. A healthy, normal, robust attitude toward life should be the goal sought by every parent and teacher who is responsible for childhood training. A pleasur­able zest and will to overcome the conflicts of life should be the keynote of all education. Abstract, speculative thinking has its place, and a very valuable one at that, yet we must see to it that if our children are to raise their heads above the clouds to view the splendours of Olympus their feet must first be planted solidly upon the realities of mother earth.

Mental Hygiene is a phrase we often hear nowadays. It signifies the prevention of mental

disease through knowledge of the ways it may be produced, hence overcome. It is a broadened application of the old adage, “A stitch in time saves nine.”

Although not every case of Dementia Prsecox is preventable, certainly a considerable number are. This is true also of every other psychosis, and particularly is it true of the neuroses.

Socrates said, “Know Thyself.” Study the inner self, become acquainted with it. There is no better mental hygiene recipe.

Chapter XIII CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE Losing Things—Forgetting of Names and Duties—Slips of the Tongue—Mis­takes in Reading and Writing—Uninten­tional Actions—Mental Telepathy—Super­stitions—Wit and Humour—Method of Investigation

No doubt every one of us, at some time or other, has lost a treasured object, forgotten the name of a friend, spoken words that were not intended, or perhaps committed a social error that was obviously a mistake and caused embarrassment.

One is likely to pass such faux pas by without further thought unless one has studied psycho­analytic principles and has become convinced that every effect must have a cause. One might won­der, though,whether such “slips” indicate mental unbalance or, perhaps, premature senility.

There should be no misgivings on that score because the course of everyday life is replete with examples which prove that repressions of minor significance are common to us all. For- gettings and errors of all kinds are perfectly average mental curiosities. One might speak of them as normal deviations within the normal.

A very quiet, dignified lady came to my office for her regular analytic consultation, visibly perturbed. She was reluctant to tell what the trouble was. Later she interrupted the treat­ment by announcing she could not put her mind on the subject under discussion. She said she kept thinking of her wedding ring which she had missed from her finger. “I have never once taken that ring off since the minister put it on nineteen years ago,” she explained. “I can’t imagine how I could have lost it or even misplaced it.”

This incident gave the first hint that marital difficulties existed, subsequent eventssubstantiat- ing the premise.

Deductions such as these are not wizardry. They are not even scientific guesses. With practice one can readily interpret unusual be­haviour of this kind.

We must realize that no thoughts, feelings, or actions, no matter what their content, are ever accidental. Everything has a meaning. Nothing is too trivial for consideration. When it concerns striking variations in the routine of our daily habits, we may be sure that there is an unconscious purpose responsible.

The wedding ring is, of course, the symbol of unbroken union between man and wife. The patient’s boasting that she had never taken the ring off her finger suggested that the bonds of love had never been strained. But her husband had recently acted in a way that justified feelings of jealousy. She had no intention of leaving him, nor even of announcing her change of heart. She tried her best to forget the disagreeable incident which aroused her suspicions. Ap­parently she succeeded. Consciousness, to all intents and purposes, declared that jealousy did not exist. On the other hand, the unconscious was not to be misled. Libidinous strivings would have their way. Automatically the ring was left behind on the washstand. The uncon­scious thought which this act symbolized meant something like this: “I might as well lose the ring since it no longer stands for what it was intended to stand.”

Forgetting the names of persons whom we know well is not unusual.

A woman who brought one of her children for examination, for a moment could not remember the little one’s name when I asked for it in taking the history of the case. The reason was obvious when later I learned that the mother had already been told by another physician that this, her third child, was an imbecile. The mother’s consciousness had found the thought of a feeble-minded son unbearable. The forgetting of the name showed the wish not to have such a child.

A physician admitted to me having made it a custom to require his secretary to write on a card the name of the next patient waiting for him, which card would be handed to him before the interview. He practised this for two years and then gave up medicine to enter the real-estate business. The man should never have been a doctor. His unconscious mind had been trying to tell him so for months.

I know of a man forgetting even his own name. He was sending a check for a long-standing debt. When he came to the signature he hesitated so long because his surname had escaped him that he threw down the pen in disgust.

Once I received a check from a patient which was unsigned. The implication was not at all flattering.

Doctor Tridon relates in his book an experi­ence of his own while in Mexico City. He had become acquainted with a man bearing the same family name. He states that he made several appointments with the gentleman which he for­got to keep and finally mislaid his address. For a long time afterward he could not recall the man’s name even if he tried. He could not picture his face and, although he could remember his first name, he never got any further than the letter T. of the last. As Doctor Tridon ex­plains, his own unconscious permitted him to enjoy the first name and the letter T because it did not interfere with the strivings of his own ego. Many people have surnames beginning with T, but few are named Tridon.

The same author mentions Darwin as advising “scientific workers to note carefully all the facts which contradict their pet theory.” He adds: “They can easily remember all the positive evidence in favour of it, but will as easily forget whatever is opposed to it.”

When we forget a telephone number or the house keys or the combination of the safe it means that there is an unconscious complex responsible. For some reason or other we don’t want to remember. The same is true if we over­look mailing a letter or forget any one of a num­ber of tasks which we had assigned ourselves.

A patient informed me that she could never remember the name of the trained nurse who attended her brother during an acute illness. Also, that it is only with great difficulty that she can voluntarily recall the date that he was re­moved to the hospital. Both the patient and the brother are unmarried and a strong attach­ment exists between them.

Explaining such phenomena as due to absent­mindedness or a “trick of the mind” merely begs the question and does not bring us one whit nearer to an understanding of the problem. The real, underneath reason, imbedded in the inner self, may itself be trivial, yet it stands for re­pression just the same.

Slips of the tongue (lapsus lingua) also belong to this category.

In his “Psychopathology of Everyday Life” Freud cites numerous examples of this and other blunders unintentionally made.

Speaking of Miss Z.,Miss W. depicted her to Miss X. as a very “strait-laced” person who was not given to levities, etc. Miss X. thereupon remarked “Yes, that is a very char­acteristic description, she always appealed to me as very straicet-brazed.” Here the mistake resolved itself into strait-laced and brazen-faced, which corresponded to Miss X.’s opinion of Miss Z.

Quoting Otto Rank, Freud gives the following example:

A father who was devoid of all patriotic feeling re­proached his sons for participating in a patriotic demon­stration, and rejected their reference to a similar be­haviour of their uncle with these words: “You are not obliged to imitate him; why, he is an idiot” The as­tonished features of the children at their father’s unusual tone aroused him to the fact that he had made a mistake, and he remarked apologetically, “Of course, I wished to say patriot

In the chapter on “Mistakes in Reading and Writing,” we find:

Both irritating and laughable is a lapse in reading to which I am frequently subject when I walk through the streets of a strange city during my vacation. I then read antiquities on every shop sign that shows the slightest resemblance to the word; this displays the questing spirit of the collector.

I received the proof sheets of my contribution to the annual report on neurology and psychiatry, and I was naturally obliged to review with special care the names of authors, which, because of the many different nationalities represented, offer the greatest difficulties to the composi­tor. As a matter of fact, I found some strange-sounding names still in need of correction; but, oddly enough, the compositor had corrected one single name in my manu­script, and with a very good reason. I had written Buckhardy which the compositor guessed to be Burkhard. I had praised the treatise of this obstetrician entitled The Influence of Birth on the Origin of Infantile Paralysis, and I was not conscious of the least enmity toward him. But an author in Vienna, who had angered me by an ad­verse criticism of my Traumdeutung> bears the same name. It was as if in writing the name Burkhard, meaning the obstetrician, a wicked thought concerning the other B. had obtruded itself. The twisting of the name, as I have already stated in regard to lapses in speech, often signifies a depreciation.

Under “Erroneously Carried-Out Actions,” Freud cites an illustration given by Dr. Ernest Jones and another by Dr. Hans Sachs. They follow in order:

Some years ago I was acting in a subordinate position at a certain institution, the front door of which was kept locked, so that it was necessary to ring for admission. On several occasions I found myself making serious attempts to open the door with my house key. Each one of the permanent visiting staff, of which I aspired to be a mem­ber, was provided with a key to avoid the trouble of having to wait at the door. My mistake thus expressed the desire to be on a similar footing and to be quite “at home” there.

At a certain time twice a day for six days I was accus­tomed to wait for admission before a door in the second story of the same house, and during this long period of time it happened twice (within a short interval) that I

climbed a story higher. On the first of these occasions I was in an ambitious day-dream, which allowed me to “mount always higher and higher.” In fact, at that time I heard the door in question open as I put my foot on the first step of the third flight. On the other occasion I again went too far “engrossed in thought.” As soon as I became aware of it, I turned back and sought to snatch the dominating fantasy. I found that I was irritated over a criticism of my works, in which the reproach was that I “always went too far,” which I replaced by the less respectful expression “climbed too high.”

Many other examples of such unintentional actions could be given. In dressing for dinner a man put on his sack coat instead of his dinner coat. His enthusiasm for the occasion was self- evident.

Instead of sending an historical work which he had promised to a lady, a gentleman, by mistake, sent a very romantic novel. In this instance the psychic censor was not as vigilant as he should have been.                                                                            ¹

Patients sometimes leave articles behind in a physician’s office such as veils, books, and trifles which they are likely to claim by a return visit before the next appointment, thus unconsciously exhibiting satisfaction with the treatment and a wish to repeat the visits.           ‘

An elderly lady has a habit—very annoying to her immediate family—of dropping handker­chiefs about the house. She admits liking to be waited upon but does not realize that her unconscious striving to remain young is being symbolized by such repeated demands for personal attention.

In the work already mentioned Freud quotes Dr. A. A. Brill concerning an experience which the latter had and interpreted and which throws interesting light on the nature of mental tele­pathy:

While engrossed in conversation during our customary Sunday evening dinner at one of the large New York restaurants, I suddenly stopped and irrelevantly remarked to my wife, “I wonder how Dr. R. is doing in Pittsburgh.” She looked at me much astonished and said: “Why, that is exactly what I have been thinking for the last few sec­onds! Either you have transferred this thought to me or I have transferred it to you. How can you otherwise ex­plain this strange phenomenon?” I had to admit that I could offer no solution. Our conversation throughout the dinner showed not the remotest association to Dr. R., nor, so far as our memories went, had we heard or spoken of him for some time. Being a sceptic, I refused to admit that there was anything mysterious about it, although inwardly I felt quite uncertain. To be frank, I was some­what mystified.

But we did not remain very long in this state of mind, for on looking toward the cloak-room we were surprised to see Dr. R. Though closer inspection showed our mis­take, we were both struck by the remarkable resemblance of this stranger to Dr. R. From the position of the cloak­room we were forced to conclude that this stranger had passed our table. Absorbed in our conversation, we had not noticed him consciously, but the visual image had stirred up the association of his double, Dr. R. That we should both have experienced the same thought is also quite natural. The last word from our friend was to the effect that he had taken up private practice in Pittsburgh, and, being aware of the vicissitudes that beset the beginner, it was quite natural to wonder how fortune had smiled upon him.

What promised to be a supernatural manifestation was thus easily explained on a normal basis; but had we not noticed the stranger before he left the restaurant, it would have been impossible to exclude the mysterious. I ven­ture to say that such simple mechanisms are at the bottom of the most complicated telepathic manifestations; at least, such has been my experience in all cases accessible to investigation.

Superstitions also have a psychological struc­ture which is capable of analytical interpretation. A superstitious belief is really a form of ob­session, of compulsive thinking, in which a fear element plays the dominant part. This fear is of some evil that one must not court. The cause behind it is a repressed desire of a primitive kind to destroy ruthlessly or do evil to someone else. The repression is brought about through the refinements of conscious thinking which demand the abolition of such anti-social mo­tives. The superstitious fear then becomes a compensation which, in a symbolized form, the subject himself originally would have liked to inflict upon others. By shifting the burden of administering punishment to some vague, unknown source, he disclaims responsibility for whatever may befall if certain prescribed, ritual­istic modes of behaviour are not carried out. He also includes himself as a possible offender and thus squares his conscience. The superstitious person really fears the punishment that he should expect from the evil desires which he has re­pressed.

“Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious” is another book by Sigmund Freud in which he demonstrates that the structure of a joke in­volves the identical mechanisms to be found in dreams and the whole range of neuroses and psychoses. Wit is a pleasure-seeking device on the part of the unconscious at the expense of someone else.

The methods by which one may investigate the causes of the manifold curiosities of everyday life—including such phenomena as mental tele­pathy, superstitions, and the technique of wit— are identical with the psychoanalytic principles set forth in the foregoing pages. In this, the method of free word association is important (v p. 99). The results of such research, especially if conducted upon the curious thoughts and actions of oneself, are most gratifying and illuminating and amply repay one for the trouble of mastering the technique.

Chapter XIV The Inner Self And The Arts — Ancient Folk-Lore — Primitive Religions — Imitative and Creative Art — Art as a Normal Compensation — Sublimation — Genius

Throughout this small volume the keynote of our discourse has been an exposition of funda­mental inner strivings, their repression when thwarted, and the compensatory ways into which these urges may be transformed. Thus far our attention has been centred particularly upon the mental mechanisms which harass the person and often render him a burden unto himself. We have now to learn that the identical factors which may cause so much mischief are also responsible for all the beauty, comfort, and joy that are to be found in religion and the creative arts.

Away back in antiquity the fairy tales and folk-lore of primitive peoples constituted what Tridon aptly terms “The Dreams of the Human Race.” No matter in which country they originated a striking similarity pervades them all.

As this writer expresses it in his “Psycho­analysis” already mentioned:

The hero of tales and legends has the same origin and the same biography the world over. He is invariably the child of distinguished parents, preferably of a king or a god. His birth is preceded by romantic obstacles to his parents’ love, continence, barrenness, secret intercourse, a great deal of mystery. He is either unwelcome or illegitimate or there is a prophecy announc­ing how powerful and dangerous he is to become; and his father generally wishes to get rid of him. He is generally exposed immediately after birth on the water in “a basket made of reeds.” In inland and mountain regions he is exposed on barren cliffs. He is saved either by lowly people or helpful animals and suckled either by a humble woman or a she-wolf or goat. Afterwards he grows up, finds his real parents, often takes revenge on his father and not infrequently marries his mother.

Again quoting Doctor Tridon:

The oldest of those stories is that of King Sargon of Babylon, dating to 2800 B. C. An inscription on Sargon’s tomb reads: “Sargon, the mighty king of Agade, am I. My mother was a vestal; my father I knew not. In a hidden place my mother bore me. She laid me in a vessel made of reeds, closed the door with pitch and dropped me into the river which did not drown me. Akki, the water carrier, lifted me up, raised me as his own son and made me his gardener. In my work I was beloved by Istar, became king and for 45 years held kingly sway. .               .               .”

We have here the first version on record of the virgin birth, which was destined to have a very successful career.

It is interesting to note in passing that the apparently common genesis of the heroic myths of all times has been used by the atheist to dis­credit the doctrine of the divine conception of Christ, likewise by the Christian apologist, as the strongest argument for its truth on the ground that all myths from the beginning of time have been foreshadowing that “one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.”

Had human beings not felt their own limi­tations and that the obstacles in the world about them were insurmountable, imagination would never have been born. Imagining these super­human creatures with limitless powers con­stituted compensations for their own inferiority. It was a projection of the ego libido, often coupled with reproductive and other strivings as well. What these early peoples wished for ‘themselves, what they desired to be able to ac­complish themselves, what they dreamed about, brought into being the gods, the heroes, and the fairies.

What man had learned to worship he next tried to perpetuate in some permanent form that would outlive himself and his own earthly resi­dence. Hence he carved the stone with legendary figures and chiselled hieroglyphics to express for all time the relationship between himself and these super-heroes. To link himself with gods and god­desses satisfied his soaring ambitions. Even to be remotely connected with them offered some compensatory consolation. The conception of a hereafter as a place where all unfulfilled desires would be gratified offered the final and supreme compensation for earthly thwartings, especially the most fearsome of all—death. Thus Primi­tive Religions came into being.

The next steps toward the Creative Arts were easily taken.

Not satisfied with the comforting future that early religious concepts promised after death, man’s inner urges, restlessly craving for more tangible and more quickly realized satisfactions in this world, supplanted the imitative desires by a visible, creative form of expression—a compensatory satisfaction—that to-day we recognize in all forms of art whether it be music, sculpture, painting, or writing. Rodin’s figures afford excellent examples of the commonly recognized and universally felt strivings. In his “Eternal Spring,” the strength and purity of heterosexual passion, proud of its upspringing spontaneity, is unmistakably portrayed.

As the libidinous yearnings are not alike in all of us, and as a division of labour and pursuits developed alongside of artistic creation, those whose urges were the most insistent, those who felt most thwarted and repressed, naturally took to centring their attention particularly upon self-expression. The result was the musician, the sculptor, the painter, and the writer. Each responded to unconscious cravings, and in the works of each lay fashioned in imagery the forms of compensation best adapted to his own person­ality.

It may occur to the reader that since all art springs from repression all artists must be neurotic. Neurotic they undoubtedly are, but since their art acts as a safety valve, in that through it they can project and substitute their complexes, we do not find more artists suffering from neuroses than we do artisans, merchants, or professional men. By the same token, as Jung has stated, every person with a neurosis has within him potential, but unconscious, artistic ability.

Art is a form of Normal Compensation. The psychoanalytic term for such objectifying, such translation of thwarted libidinous strivings into satisfying pursuits is Sublimation.

Sublimation is not exactly substitution. Sub­stitution may prove a temporarily satisfying measure, while sublimation is lasting. The woman who, because of thwarted reproductive libido, takes up teaching of children may only be substituting her inner strivings. Yet, on the other hand, such work may really constitute the highest form of compensatory activity of which she is capable. This, then, would be for her sub­limation. The higher the plane of life upon which we build, the more spiritualized and soulful in their attributes are the results. Sublimation is a satisfying of baser, animal cravings by a sort of sublime substitution.

The neurotic, the psychotic, and the artist all start with repression of libidinous urges. All three also fashion a symbolic world of fancy all their own. But here their similarity ceases. From this point onward their ways diverge. The neurotic seeks shelter in imagery of his own devising which he tries to harmonize with the world about him, but fails to do. He thus re­mains asocial and self-centred. The psychotic takes refuge in a world peculiar to himself which gives comfort and in which he succeeds. But this psychotic world is so different and divorced from the actual world of reality as to render its citizen antisocial. The artist in his imaginings may also soar high and create all sorts of fan­tastic ideas and visions. Yet never for an instant need he lose his hold on reality. He may find both shelter and comfort in the products of his own imagination, but these are based upon strong human contacts.

The Genius is an artist of the highest type. He reaches out and projects in a daring way that which has never been done before. His sublimation is particularly original and dis­tinctive.

All art then embodies the dreams of the human race. It represents the unfulfilled wishes common to us all.

The art-work which the creative artist employs in developing his conception differs in structure in no important way from the dream-work which we study in our individual psychology. On this basis Freud has analyzed the inscrutable smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”.

Others have interpreted statuary and books, set­ting forth the repressions which their authors sub­limated in their works. Dr. Smith Ely JellifFe has published most illuminating articles on the psychoanalytic explanation of several modern dramas.

On Adler’s side-hypothesis of organ inferiority we might expect that chronic invalids, because of the handicaps they suffer, would be productive in art as well as in any occupation calling for creative talent. Such, indeed, is often the case.

In a most interesting little volume, “The Privilege of Pain,” Mrs. Leo Everett has recently compiled a few hundred examples. They range from soldiers and sailors, through poets, novel­ists, philosophers, mathematicians, statesmen, painters and musicians, physicians, inventors, historians and men of letters, to Protestant reformers and the saints. This author does not support her thesis by psychoanalytic doc­trines. Nevertheless, I shall quote at random several illustrations which it is plain to see harmonize with the analytic point of view:

Alexander thejjreat, singular even among men of action forthe splendour of his imagination, was an epileptic. So also was Julius Caesar. The latter was often attacked by his malady on the very field of battle.       ¹

Keats suffered from consumption and it is interesting to note that the progress oT^HTs disease coincided with the expansion of his genius.

Heinrich Heine, another immortal, spent eight years of his agitated, struggling life on what he called “a mattress- grave.”

Comte, the French Positive philosopher, accomplished the bulk of his work after recovering from an attack of insanity during which he threw himself into the Seine.

The case of Robert Schumann is very curious. He was studying to be a pianist, when, in attempting to strengthen his fingers, he accidentally paralyzed his right hand. To this apparent misfortune we owe one of the greatest com­posers.

Doctor Trudeau, who worked such miracles for the cure of consumption, was himself consumptive.

Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” is so universally familiar that I need only remind you that Doctor Johnson was scrofulous and half-blind.

In these striking personalities we find ego libidoes overcoming all obstacles with such suc­cess as to leave the marks of their sublimation forever engraved in the hearts of men. So strong were their urges and so powerful their handicaps of disease and infirmity that subli­mation really became over-compensation—deeds and works forever to be revered.

Chapter XV CONCLUSION

Psychoanalysis first concerned itself with the study of mental disturbances, but we have seen in the last chapter as well as in the others dealing with matters not strictly pathological how this science ramifies. Neuroses, psychoses, and all kinds of human behaviour that have anything un­usual about them whatever—even the epilepsies and criminality—come properly within its pur­view; so also do we find this system interpreting art and even religious concepts.

Nor should this comprehensiveness be aston­ishing. Psychoanalysis is a reduction to first principles of mental functioning; and every con­ceivable law, habit, custom, belief, or endeav­our that is characteristic of man is the result of such brain activity.

We have also learned that although psycho­analysis is a method of treatment for the so- called functional nervous disorders, many cases which at first would seem to be organic”disease, pure and simple, later turn out to be psychic con­versions—i.e.y mental transmutations into physi­cal ailments—the cure lying in psychotherapy.

I shall quote here from Doctor White’s “Prin­ciples of Mental Hygiene”:

To show the immense practical importance of the psychoanalytic point of view I here relist disorders taken from the recent literature, which were found to be mental in origin although for the most part they were apparently physical disorders. I think it will be admitted that many or most of these ailments would be apt at least to be treated by other than psychological methods. This list includes many forms of asthma, sore throat, difficult nasal breathing, stammering, headache, neurasthenia, backache, tender spine, “weak heart,” fainting attacks, exophthal­mic goitre, aphonia, spasmodic sneezing, hiccough, rapid respiration, hay-fever, gastro-intestinal disturbances (con­stipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, colitis, gastric ulcer), ptosis of kidney, diabetes, disturbances of urination (polyuria, incontinence, precipitancy), menstrual dis­orders, auto-intoxication (from long-continued digestive disturbances), nutritional disorders of skin, teeth, hair, etc., etc. The list might be indefinitely prolonged.

But never, under any circumstances, should an analyst assume that such organic-type cases are mental in origin (psychogenic) without first using every available means to rule out possible physical causes for the disease in question.

Psychoanalysis has nothing whatever to do with thought transference, hypnotism, Christian Science, New Thought movements, osteopathy, chiropractic, or the dozens of other “isms” and cults that flourish these days. Psychoanalysis does not deny the benefits to be derived from medicine and surgery, nor does it attempt to commit such an absurdity as treating pneu­monia, or typhoid, or any other germ or sus­pected germ disease. Psychoanalysis is a branch of medical science and works in harmony with its precepts. It is not at variance with accepted medical doctrine. What makes it seem so different from ordinary treatment is primarily because it concerns itself largely with neurotic manifestations which, up to a comparatively few years ago, were improperly understood and did not receive the attention from medical practitioners that their importance and severity demanded.

The psychoanalyst should, by preference, be a physician and, at that, a physician who has specialized in nervous and mental diseases (neuropsychiatrist), who is versed in normal psychology, and who keeps in touch with the advances made in general medicine. There are psychologists who are not graduates in medicine who practise psychoanalysis. In my opinion, such procedure is to be deprecated unless the analysis is carried out under the supervision of a neurologist-in-charge, the psychologist acting as assistant. To be sure, not all physicians, nor neurologists even, are by temperament fitted for this type of psychotherapy. Above all, human insight is a prerequisite. A personal detach­ment, a philosophic bent, a moral character, and infinite patience are equally important. Lastly, the most efficient analysts are those who have themselves been analyzed.

When a patient is cured by psychoanalysis not only are his symptoms removed but he has been educated in a way that no other method ap­proaches. The landmarks of his life are brought forth for consideration and a complete confession of the inner self follows. Not only does he realize wherein he has erred, what faulty ways of thinking and behaviour he has unknowingly committed, but he learns as well his strength and power, his possibilities for control and for achievement.

One does not have to be neurotic even to profit by analysis. Persons have themselves analyzed for the self-help it gives them. Busi­ness men find that it increases their efficiency. Many persons study analysis and read the literature, which is increasing with unusual rapidity, just as they would any other timely subject.

Perhaps the reader will find his greater interest in applying the principles of psychoanalysis to problems other than those properly belonging within the limits of abnormal psychology. Per­haps a better understanding of himself will be sufficient reward for the perusal of these pages.

[1]The term, foreconscious is used by Dr. William A. White and others to indicate that part of the unconscious which is just outside the focus of attention* Things there, which later may for one reason or another be more deeply sub­merged, are for a time readily recallable.

 

The End