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The Journal of Abnormal Psychology
EDITOR
MORTON PRINCE, M.D.. LL.D.
Tufts College Medical School
ASSISTANT EDITOR FOR BRITISH ISLES
ERNEST JONES, M.D., M.R.C.P.
London
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
HUGO MUNSTERBERG, M.D., PH.D.
Harvard University
JAMES J. PUTNAM, M.D.
Harvard Medical School
AUGUST HOCH, M.D.
New York State Hospitals
BORIS SIDIS, M.A., PH.D., M.D.
Brookline
CHARLES L. DANA, M.D.
Cornell University Medical School
ADOLPH MEYER, M.D.
Johns Hopkins University
WILLIAM McDOUGALL, M.B.
Oxford University
VOLUME X
1915-1916
RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS
BOSTON
Reprinted with the permission of The American Psychological
Association, Inc
JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION KRAUS REPRINT CORPORATION
Volumes 1-15 of this title were published as
The Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
Volumes 16-19 of this title were published as
The Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology.
first reprinting, 1964
Printed in the United States of America
ORIGINAL ARTICLES—VOLUME X
Hysteria as a Weapon in Marital Conflicts. By. A. Myerson, M. D.
The Analysis of a Nightmare. By Raymond Bellamy
Analysis of a Single Dream as a Means of Unearthing the
Genesis of Psychopathic Affections. By Meyer Solomon, M. D.
An Act of Everyday Life Treated as a Pretended Dream and Interpreted by
Psychoanalysis. By Raymond Bellamy
Freud and His School (Concluded). By A. W. Van Rentergham, M. D.
Anger as a primary Emotion, and the Application of Freudian Mechanism to its
Phenomena. By G. Stanley Hall
The Necessity of Metaphysics. By James J. Putnam, M. D.
Aspects of Dream Life. The Contribution of a Woman Remarks Upon Dr. Coriat's
Paper, "Stammering as a Psychoneurosis." By Meyer Solomon, M. D.
Constructive Delusions. By John T. MacCurdy, M. D., and Walter L. Treadway,
M. D.
Socrates in the Light of Modern Psychopathology. By Morris J. Karpas, M. D.
Psychoneuroses Among Primitive Tribes. By Isador H. Coriat, M. D.
Two Interesting Cases of Illusion of Perception. By George F. Arps, M. D.
A Psychological Analysis of Stuttering. By Walter B. Swift, M. D.
The Origin of Supernatural Explanations. By Tom A. Williams, M. D.
Data Concerning Delusions of Personality. By E. E. Southard, M. D.
Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association.
Discussion.
The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races. By Sanger Brown II., M. D.
The Psychoanalytic Treatment of Hystero-Epilepsy. By L. E. Emerson, Ph. D.
On the Genesis and Meaning of Tics. By Meyer Solomon, M. D.
Scientific Method in the Interpretation of Dreams. By Lydiard Horton
A Case of Possession. By Donald Fraser
Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races (Concluded) by Sanger Brown
II., M. D.
INDEX TO SUBJECTS
(Figures with asterisks indicate original articles. Figures without asterisks indicate abstracts, reviews, society reports, correspondence and discussions. The names of the authors ar given in parenthesis).
American Psychopathological Association, Sixth Annual Meeting
Anger (Hall)*
Backward Child (Morgan)
Brain, Study of (Fiske)
Character (Shand)
Christianity, (Hannay)
Continuity (Lodge)
Criminal Types (Wetzel & Wilmanns)
Daily Life, Psychology of (Seashore)
Delinquent, (Healy)
Delusions, Constructive (MacCurdy and Treadway)*
Development and Purpose (Hobhouse)
Dream Analysis (Solomon)*
Dream Life (Anon)*
Dreams, Interpretation of (Horton)*
Dreams, Meaning of (Coriat)*
Everyday life, Psycho Analysis of (Bellamy)*
Feeble Mindedness (Goddard)
Freud and his School (Van Renterghem)*
Human Motives (Putnam)
Hysteria as a Weapon (Meyerson)*
Hystero-Epilepsy, Psychoanalytic Treatment of (Emerson)*
Laughter (Bergson)
Mental Disorders (Harrington)
Metaphysics, Necessity of (Putnam)*
Nightmare, Analysis of (Bellamy)*
Perception, Illusions of (Arps)*
Personality, Delusions of (Southard)*
Phipps Psychiatric clinic
Possession (Fraser)
Post-traumatic Nervous and Mental Disorders (Benon)
Primitive Races, Sex Worship and Symbolism in (Brown)*
Primitive Tribes, Psychoneuroses among (Coriat)*
Psychical, Adventurings in (Bruce)
Psychobiology, (Dunlap)
Psychology, Educational (Thorndike)
Psychology, General and Applied (Munsterberg)
Psychoneuroses, Treatment of *
Sexual Tendencies in Monkeys, etc (Hamilton)
Sleep and Sleeplessness (Bruce)
Social Psychology (McDougall)
INDEX TO SUBJECTS
Socrates, Psychopathology of (Karpas)*
Stammering, Remarks upon Dr. Coriat's paper (Solomon)*
Stuttering, Experimental Study of (Fletcher)
Stuttering, Psychological Analysis of (Swift)*
Supernatural Explanations (Williams)*
Tics (Solomon)*
CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUME X
Anon.
Arps, George F.
Bellamy, Raymond
Brown, Sanger
Carrington, H.
Castle, W. E.
Clark, L. Pierce
Coriat, Isador H.
Dearborn, George V. N.
Elliott, R. M.
Emerson, L. E.
Fraser, Donald
Hall, G. Stanley
Harrington, Milton A.
Horton, Lydiard.
Holt, E. B.
Jones, Ernest
Karpas, Morns J.
MacCurdy, John T.
Myerson, A.
Putnam, James J.
Solomon, Meyer
Southard, E. E.
Swift, Walter B.
Taylor, E. W.
Treadway, Walter L.
Troland, Leonard T.
Van Renterghem, A. W.
Van Renterghem, A. W.
Williams, Tom A.
THE JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
HYSTERIA AS A WEAPON IN MARITAL CONFLICTS
BY A. MYERSON, M.D.
Clinical Director and Pathologist, Taunton State Hospital Taunton State
Hospital Papers, 1914-5
THE progress in our understanding of hysteria has come largely through the elaboration of the so-called mechanisms by which the symptoms arise. These mechanisms have been declared to reside or to have their origin in the subconsciousness or coconsciousness. The mechanisms range all the way from the conception of Janet that the personality is disintegrated owing to lowering of the psychical tension to that of Freud, who conceives all hysterical symptoms as a result of dissociation arising through conflicts between repressed sexual desires and experiences and the various censors organized by the social life. Without in any way intending to set up any other general mechanism or to enter into the controversy raging concerning the Freudian mechanism, which at present is the storm center, the writer reports a case in which the origin of the symptoms can be traced to a more simple and fairly familiar mechanism, one which, in its essence, is merely an intensification of a normal reaction of many women to marital difficulties. In other words, women frequently resort to measures which bring about an acute discomfort upon the part of their mate, through his pity, compassion and self-accusation. They resort to tears as their proverbial weapon for gaining their point. In this case the hysterical symptoms seem to have been the substitute for tears in a domestic battle.
Case History—Patient is a woman, aged thirty-eight, of American birth and ancestry. Family history is negative so far as mental disease is concerned, but there seems to have been a decadence of stock as manifested in the steady dropping of her family in the social scale. She is one of two children, there being a brother, who, from all accounts, is a fairly industrious, but poverty-stricken farmer. Her early childhood was spent in a small village in Massachusetts. She received but little education, largely because she had no desire to study and no aptitude for learning, although she is by no means feeble-minded. The menstrual periods started at fourteen, and have been without any noteworthy accompanying phenomena ever since. History is negative so far as other diseases are concerned. She worked as a domestic and in factories until she was married for the first time at the age of twenty. She had no children by this marriage. It is stated on good authority that she took preventive measures against conception and if pregnant induced abortion by drugs and mechanical measures. At the end of eight years there was a divorce. Just which one of the partners was at fault is impossible to state, but that there was more than mere incompatibility is evident by the reticence of all concerned. Shortly afterward, she married her present husband with whom she has lived for about nine years. He is a steady drinker, but is a good workman, has never been discharged, and, apparently, his drinking habits do not interfere with the main tenor of his life. He lives with the patient in a small house of which they occupy two garret rooms, meagerly furnished, though without evidence of dire poverty.
From her fifteenth year the patient has been subject to fainting spells. By all accounts they come on usually after quarrels, disagreements or disappointments. They are not accompanied by blanching, by clonic or tonic movements of any kind, they last for uncertain periods ranging from five minutes to an hour or more, and consciousness does not seem to be totally lost. In addition she has vomiting spells, these likewise occurring when balked in her desires. She is subject to headaches, usually on one half of the head, but frequently frontal. There is no regular period of occurrence of these headaches except that there is also some relation to quarrels, etc. On several occasions the patient has lost her voice for short periods ranging from a few minutes to several hours following particularly stormy domestic scenes.
On July 29 of this year she was suddenly paralyzed. That is to say, she was unable to move the right arm, the right leg, the right side of the face, and she lost the power of speech entirely; there was complete aphonia. This "stroke" was not accompanied by unconsciousness, but was preceded by severe headache and much nausea. During the three weeks that followed she remained in bed, recovering only the function of the arm. Her husband fed her by forcing open her mouth with a spoon. She did not lose control of the sphincters. As she manifested no other progress to recovery despite the administration of drugs, numerous-rubbings and liniments, the physician in charge called the writer into consultation.
Physical Examination Aug. 20—A well-developed, fairly well nourished woman, appearing to be about thirty-five years of age. Face wears an anxious expression and she shuns the examiner's direct gaze. Movements of the right hand and arm are now fairly free. There is no appreciable difficulty in any of its functions according to tests made for ataxia, strength, recognition of form, finer movements, etc., in fact, she uses this hand to write with, as she cannot talk at all. Such writing is free, unaccompanied by errors in spelling, there is no elision of syllables and no difficulty in finding the words desired. The face is symmetrical on the two sides. There is no evidence of paralysis of the facial muscles. In fact, the cranial nerves, by detailed examination, are intact, except in so far as respiration and speech are concerned. The right leg is held entirely spastic, the muscles on both sides of the joints, that is, flexors and extensors, being equally contracted. It is impossible to bend this leg at any joint except by the use of very great force. The reflexes everywhere are lively but are equal on the two sides, and none of the abnormal reflexes is present, including in this term Babinski, Gordon and Oppenheim.
Sensation—There is very markedly diminished reaction to pin prick all over the right side, including face, arm, chest, leg and tongue. In some places complete analgesia obtains. Reaction to touch is likewise diminished and recognition of heat and cold is impaired.
Speech—There is complete loss of the ability to make any sound, either voiced or whispered; that is to say, there is complete aphonia,— there is loss of all voice. The patient understands everything, however, and writes her answers to questions rapidly and correctly. She can read whatever is written, there is no difficulty in the recognition of objects, no evidence of any aphasia whatever.
The diagnosis—hysteria—can hardly be doubted. The history of headaches, fainting spells without marked impairment of consciousness, vomiting spells, hemianaesthesia, hemianalgesia, complete aphonia and an exaggerated paralysis, not only of the right leg, but of the ability to thrust out the tongue, while at the same time all other cranial functions were unimpaired together with the apparent health of the individual in every other respect, make up a syndrome hardly to pass unrecognized.
Treatment—The patient was entirely inaccessible to direct suggestion, for no amount of assurance that her leg was all right enabled her to move it. When such suggestions were made, she shook her head firmly and conclusively, and this is true of suggestions concerning speech. This point is of importance in the consideration of the mechanism. Attempts at hypnotism failed ingloriously. Psychoanalysis was deferred for the time, and recourse was had to indirect suggestion and re-education.
The first function to be restored was the power of bending the leg which hitherto had been held entirely spastic. The patient was assured that while she had lost the power of using the limb, a little relaxation of the muscles of the front of the leg would permit it to be bent. Her attention was distracted while at the same time a firm, steady pressure was put upon the leg above and below the knee joint and advantage taken of every change in the tone of the muscles involved in keeping the leg extended. Little by little the leg was bent until finally it was completely flexed, this for the first time in three weeks. Her attention was called to this fact and she was assured that upon the physician's next attempt to bend her leg, resistance would be lessened and she would be able to aid somewhat as well. This proved true. Then the leg was only partly supported by the physician while the patient was assured that with his help she would be able to bend it more freely. From this, she passed on to the ability to move the leg without any assistance on the part of the writer. After having been given exercise in bending the leg for some twenty or thirty times, with complete restoration of this ability, she was induced to get out of bed, and while standing erect she was suddenly released by the physician. She swayed to and fro in a rather perilous manner but did not fall. Finally, by gradation of tasks set, by a judicious combination of encouragement and command, she was enabled to walk. She was then put to bed and assured that upon the physician's next visit she would be taught to walk freely. Meanwhile, the husband was instructed that he must not allow her to stay in bed more than an hour at a time and that she must come to the table for her meals.
On the physician's next visit, two days later, it was found that the husband had not been able to induce his wife to come to the table, and that he had been unable to get her to walk. The physician then commanded her to get out of bed, which she did with great effort. She was then put back to bed and instructed to get up more freely and without such effort, demonstration being a visual one, in that she was shown how best to accomplish the task set. Finally, at the end of the visit, she was walking quite freely and promised in writing, for she had not as yet learned to talk, that she would eat at the table.
The next day instruction was commenced along the lines of speech. Upon being asked to thrust out her tongue, that organ was protruded only a short distance, and she claimed, in writing, to be unable to protrude it further. Thereupon it was taken hold of by a towel and alternately withdrawn from and replaced into the mouth. After a short period of such exercise she was enabled to thrust the tongue in and out. She was then instructed to breathe more freely; that is to say, to take short inspirations and to make long expirations, this in preparation for speech. She was unable to do this, the expiration being short, jerky and interrupted. Thereupon the examiner placed his two hands, one on each side of her chest, instructed her to inspire, and when she was instructed to expire forced his hands against her ribs in order to complete the expiratory act. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of this combination of instruction and help the patient was able to breathe by herself and freely. She was then instructed to make the sound "e" at the end of expiration. This she was unable to do at first, but upon persistence and passive placing of her mouth in the proper position for the sound, she was able to whisper "e." From this she rapidly went on to the other vowel sounds. Then the aspirate "h" was added, later the explosives, "p," etc., until at the end of about two hours she was enabled to whisper anything desired. Her husband was instructed not to allow her to use her pencil any more, and she promised faithfully to enter into whispered conversation with him, although it was evident that she promised this with reluctance.
Upon the next visit, two days later, she was still whispering, and when asked if she could talk aloud, shook her head and whispered "No," that she was sure she could not. Efforts to have her make the sound "a," or any of the vowels in a voiced manner failed completely. She was then instructed to cough. Although it is evident that a cough is a voiced sound, she was able to do this, in a very low and indistinct manner. She was then instructed to add the sound "e" at the end of her cough. This she did, but with difficulty. Finally, after much the same manoeuvering which has been indicated in the account of how she was instructed to whisper, she talked freely and well. When this was accomplished the husband was instructed to have her dress herself and to take her to: some place of amusement, and to keep her out of doors almost continuously.
At all times the patient had complained of a pain in her side which she claimed was the root of all her trouble. It had been "doctored," to use her term, by all the physicians in the city and, it was alleged, came after she had been lifting a paralyzed old lady in the house across the way. Despite all treatment this pain had not disappeared and the various diagnoses made—strain, liver trouble, nervous ache had not sufficed to console the patient or to relieve her. There was no local tenderness, no pain upon movement, but merely a steady ache. No physical basis whatever for this trouble could be found. Her medicine for the relief of it was discontinued, and so, too, were certain medicines she had been obtaining for sleep.
Upon each visit the husband and wife had been informed by the physician that he did not believe the trouble was organic in its nature, that he believed it depended upon some ideas that the patient had, and that, furthermore, it was the result of some mental irritation, compared for the purpose of fixing the point to a festering sore and which, if removed, would permanently eliminate the liability of such seizures. The patient and her husband were informed that the physician intended to delve to the bottom of this trouble and, by deferring investigation as to its exact nature until the symptoms had practically disappeared, a way was cleared to obtain their complete confidence, and at the same time to overcome any unwillingness to accept a psychical explanation for such palpable physical ills. This latter point is of importance in dealing with uneducated persons. For the most part, they are intensely practical and materialistic, and a mere idea does not seem to them to account for paralysis although, of course, such skepticism is usually accompanied by superstitious credulity along other lines. Moreover, by establishing himself as a sort of miracle worker (for so the cure was regarded), it would be understood that curiosity was not the basis for the investigation into the domestic life of the patient and her husband, but that a desire to do more good inspired it.
The physician started his investigation with the statement that he knew from past experience that some conflict was going on between husband and wife; that there was some source of irritation which caused these outbursts of symptoms on the part of the patient, and that unless they told him what was behind the matter his help would be limited to the relief of the present symptoms. It was firmly stated that any denial of such discord would not be believed, and that only a complete confidence would be helpful.
The patient, who had been listening to this statement with lowered eyes and nervously intertwining fingers, then burst out as follows: There WAS trouble between them and there always would be until it was settled right,—this with much emphasis and emotional manifestation. So long as he insisted on living where they did, just so long would she quarrel with him. She did not like the neighbors, especially the woman downstairs, she did not like the room, she did not like anything about the place or the neighborhood, hated the very sight of it and would never cease attempting to move from there. It came out on further questioning that the woman downstairs, whom the patient particularly disliked, was a storm center in that the wife was jealous of her, although she adduced no very good reasons for her attitude. Moreover, the patient stated that she wished to move to a district where she had friends, though other sources of information showed that these friends were of a rather unsavory character. Her husband was absolutely determined not to move from his house. He stated that he would rather have her go away and stay away than move from there; that the rent was too high in the place where she wanted to move, and that the rent was suitable where they were. Moreover, for his part, he hated his wife's desired neighborhood and would never consent to changing his residence from the present place to the other. It came out that her fainting and vomiting spells and headaches usually followed bitter quarrels, and on other matters these symptoms usually placed the victory on her side. On this particular point, however, her husband had remained obdurate. It was shown that the present attack of paralysis and aphonia, symptoms of an unusually severe character, followed an unusually bitter quarrel which had lasted for a whole day and into the night of the attack.
The question arises at this point, "Why did this attack take the form of a paralysis?" At first this seemed unaccountable, but later it was found that the old woman for whom the patient had been caring had a "stroke" with loss of the power to speak, though no aphonia. The patient had gone to work as a sort of nurse for the old woman under protest, for she did not wish to do anything outside of her own light housekeeping, although the added income was sorely needed since work was slack in her husband's place of employment. The pain in her side caused her to quit work as nurse, much to her husband's dissatisfaction until she convinced him that her pain and disability were marked. It was evident that despite the controversies and quarrels that prevailed in the household, her husband sincerely loved her, for he stayed away from his work during the three weeks of her illness to act as her nurse. Moreover, he spent his earnings quite freely in consulting various physicians in order to cure her.
It was shown from what both the patient and her husband said, and from the whole history of their marital life, that she had used as a weapon, though not with definite conscious purpose, for the gaining of her point in whatever quarrel came up, symptoms that are usually called hysterical; that is to say, vomiting, fainting spells and pains without definite physical cause. This method usually assured her victory by playing upon her husband's alarm and concern as well as by causing him intense dissatisfaction. With the advent of a disagreement which could not be settled her way by her usual symptoms, there followed, not by any means through her volition or conscious purpose, more severe symptoms; namely, spastic paralysis and aphonia, which, in a general way, were suggested by her patient. There seems to have been, and there undoubtedly was, a sexual element entering into this last quarrel; namely, that she was jealous of the woman who lived downstairs, though without any proof of her husband's infidelity.
Both patient and her husband finally agreed to the physician's statement that the symptoms were directly referable to the quarrels, although both claimed that it had never occurred to them before, a fact made evident by their questions and objections. No psychoanalysis was possible in this case, for the man and woman belong to that class of people who feel that they are cured when their symptoms are relieved. It may be argued, without any possibility of contradiction, that a psychoanalysis would have revealed a deeper reaching mechanism and that a closer relationship and connection between the paralysis and other symptoms with the past sexual experiences of the patient could have been established. This last claim may be doubted, however, for there is always a gap between the alleged "conversion" of mental states into physical symptoms, and this gap can in no case be bridged over even by Freud's own accounts. The conversion always remains as a mere statement and is a logical connection between the appearance of physical symptoms and the so-called conflicts; in other words, it is an explanation and not a FACT. Compared with the complex Freudian mechanism, with its repressions, compressions, censors, dreams, etc., the conception of hysterical symptoms as a marital weapon as comparable with the tears of more normal women seems very simple and probably too simple. In fact, it does not explain the hysteria, it merely gives a USE for its symptoms, and the writer is driven back to the statement that the neuropathic person is characterized by his or her bizarre and prolonged emotional reactions, which, in turn, brings us back to a defect ab origine. And the Freudians, starting out to prove that the experiences of the individual ALONE cause hysteria, by pushing back the TIME of those experiences to INFANCY (and lately to foetal life), have proved the contrary, that is, the inborn nature of the disease.
THE ANALYSIS OF A NIGHTMARE
BY RAYMOND BELLAMY
Professor of Education, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va.
A FEW nights ago I experienced a very interesting nightmare, and, immediately on awakening, I got up and recorded it, analyzing it as fully as I was able. This is the first nightmare I have had for several years, and I never was especially addicted to them. Two years ago I made an introductory study of dreams,[1] and at that time dreamed profusely, but recently I have been dreaming very rarely, and when I do dream the experiences are not at all vivid. I use the term "nightmare" in a somewhat popular sense to mean a painful or frightful dream accompanied by physical disturbances, such as heart flutter and disturbances of breathing, and followed on awakening by a certain amount of the painful emotion which was a part of the dream. Accepting this definition, the experience which I have to relate was a typical nightmare. A few words of explanation are necessary to give the proper setting for the experience. At present I am teaching in the summer school at this place and my wife is visiting her folks; during her absence, in order to keep from getting too lonesome, I invited one of the young men in the summer school to come and room with me and keep me company. With this as an explanation, I shall copy the original account of the dream as nearly as possible, making a few corrections of the barbarous language I used in the half-asleep state.
[1] At Clark University, 1912-1913.
On the night of August 9, 1914, I went to bed at 11.40 o'clock and was soon asleep. About 3.40 in the morning, the young man, F. K. S., roused me and I awoke weak, scared, and with a fluttering heart; he said I had been making a distressing sort of noise, but he could not distinguish any words. Immediately, I judged that the dream was caused by my lying on my back, and in an uncomfortable position. As a rule I do not sleep on my back, but for some reason I had gone to sleep that way this time. Also, it had been raining when I went to bed, and I had put the windows down, and the ventilation was bad.
The dream, as nearly as it was remembered, was as follows: I was with somebody in a buggy and we drove down a hill, across a little stream, and up the other hill, where we arrived at our destination. I seemed to find trouble in getting a place to hitch, and I had to take the horse out of the buggy and I think take the harness off. I distinctly remember that in the dream this was a hardship to me, as it would have been in waking life, for I am not a good hand with horses, and do not like to work with them. All this is very hazy to me, and I do not know with whom I was driving, but think it was a lady, possibly my wife. There were other people at this place and other horses and buggies. (Could it be called a case of reversion to childhood, in that there were only horses and buggies and no automobiles?) There is a break in the dream here, and we were within some kind of a building where there was a crowd of people. As it seems now, we were around some kind of a rotunda, but this is very vague. The important part seems to be that there were two people, a man and a woman, who were talking very stealthily and earnestly to each other, and they soon drew me into the conversation. It runs in my head now that the man was my father (who has been dead for some years), though I am not sure about this, while there is no recollection of who the woman was. Now it appeared that there was some woman in the crowd who had some peculiar evil influence over every one and whom everybody feared. This man and woman were planning to slip off from this wicked woman and meet me and the one with me on the road, and in some way, which is not now clear, we were to circumvent this bad woman and break her power. The man explained and explained to me that we were to meet at certain springs which were at the side of the road, but it seemed that I could not get it into my head where they were, and I was afraid I would not stop at the right place. At last I thought I knew where he meant, and told him that I would stop there and wait until he came up, but then I happened to think that he might be ahead of me anyhow, and could stop and wait for me; then I was sure he would be ahead, for I remembered that I had to harness and hitch up the horse and his was all ready. And now we seemed to be getting our horses, and I remarked to him that I was not a bit good hand at working with horses, and he expressed his sympathy that I had this work to do.
Here was a second break in the dream, and I was standing in a hallway, looking through a window into a room. In this room sat my wife and the evil woman whom everybody feared. She had learned our play (I was conscious of this in the dream), and was determined to have her revenge, and prevent us carrying out our plan. She had hypnotized my wife, and had her scared so that she was in great mental agony. I heard her saying, "Now you are a big black cat," or something much like this, at any rate making her think she was a cat and at the same time leaving her partly conscious of who she was. This woman looked exactly like a woman who lives in the neighborhood where my wife is now visiting and of whom she has always been somewhat afraid because of her sharp tongue and unpleasant ways. Immediately, I was filled with a great fear for my wife and with a raging anger against the woman. I broke out into calling her all kinds of names, especially saying, "You devil, you devil," and trying to get through the window to her. I tore out the screen, but had a great deal of difficulty in doing so. When I had finally succeeded in tearing the screen out, I threw it at her head, but she did not dodge, but sat boldly upright and seemed to defy me. Then I tried to jump through the window to get to her, but was so weak that I could not do so; this seems strange since the window was not more than three feet from the floor. I was making unsuccessful attempts to get through, and was railing at the woman when S. awoke me. I awoke weak, and for some time continued to feel frightened, though not enough so to keep me from talking and writing out the dream. I got up and put up the windows (since the rain had stopped), and about this time a very fair explanation of parts of the dream came to me. I immediately told it to S., in order to keep from forgetting it, and then decided to write it down, which I proceeded to do.
Parts of the dream seem to analyze very nicely, but there are parts which seem to resist analysis; I did not try to force the analysis but gave only the part which came spontaneously. In the first part of the dream I was driving in a buggy, I crossed a creek and had trouble with unharnessing a horse. Several times recently, I have mentioned the fact that I never liked to work with horses, even when on the farm at home. I do not remember of having mentioned this fact on the day of the dream, but Mr. C. had stopped in to call on me that evening and had mentioned that he drove in in a buggy. I had not seen the buggy and had wondered what he did with it, and had not remembered to ask him. He had also told me that he was going to a place called Yellow Springs; I knew about where Yellow Springs are, but could not quite place them and had tried to figure out what direction he would go. This seemed to come out very clearly in the dream, when I was trying to find out where these unknown springs by the side of the road were. I had related during the evening how I recently fell into a creek with my clothes on and this probably accounted for the creek over which I drove in the dream. In the dim second part of the dream, the rotunda seems to have resembled the chapel of the new college building which is being builded, and about which I was talking that afternoon.
The last part of the dream seems to have been the important part, and in it several of the Freudian mechanisms show up very plainly. Just before going to bed, I had read an article about Vera Cheberiak, the Russian murderess of the Mendel Beilis case, and how she is now engaged in suing different people for slander. The article had described her as coolly and impudently sitting up in court and seeming to realize her power over her enemies, and it had also made a point of the great fear in which she is held. I had read another article about the city of Salem, which has recently burned, and I had remembered that it was the "witch" town of colonial days where people were supposed to be turned into black cats. I had read still another article, descriptive of country life, which described how a man had climbed a tree after a cat which was eating young robins. I had just a day or two before received a letter from my wife, which contained the news that she was going to visit this woman whom she fears, but whom she must visit because of their social relation As already mentioned, the woman in the dream looked just like this one, and it will readily be recognized that the dream woman was a condensation of Vera Cheberiak, a Salem "witch," and the woman whom my wife fears. The fact that she was hypnotized into thinking she was a cat would naturally accompany the Salem witch, and the cat in the apple tree, concerning which I had read, might also have entered the dream. Aside from these, there is another element which may have been instrumental in causing my wife to be punished by thinking she was a cat. I once saw a woman who was suffering from melancholia who thought she was a cat, and her mental suffering seemed to me to be about the keenest of any that I have ever observed, this possibly caused the dream-making factor to represent her as thinking she was a cat. The hall, window and screen are also easy of explanation. That evening I had examined a window which opens from our bedroom into a hall, and had wondered whether we would continue to keep it curtained this year or take the curtains away. When I put down the windows to keep out the driving rain, I had had trouble with a screen much as I did in the dream.
The heart of the dream seems to be in this last scene. That morning (it was Sunday) I had very unwillingly, and from a sense of duty, gone to a tiresome and long-drawn-out church service. I had become so fatigued during the service, and so disagreed with some of the things the preacher said, that I was conscious of a mild desire to swear and throw something. I had humorously mentioned this fact after the service, but there was quite an element of truth in the jest. The dream gave me the chance of my life to fulfil this desire, and I seized the opportunity by breaking into a stream of profanity (not very successful profanity, I fear, as I never use it when awake and therefore was not in good practice) and throwing the screen at the woman. But was there not a deeper meaning than this in the dream? I think so decidedly; it seems that it would be a lot of trouble to construct such a tremendous nightmare just to give me an opportunity to swear and throw something, because a preacher had been somewhat tiresome. There was evidently a deeper and more subtle wish which was also fulfilled. That evening I had walked up the railroad track with a crowd of young people and where the paths crossed we had all split up and gone different directions. Two young ladies had gone back to their boarding places across the campus, and I had suggested to the young fellow with me that we go along with them. However, he objected, and we walked back down the railroad track. Now, it had occurred to me that he probably thought I was not within my bounds as a married man when I wanted to walk back with these young ladies; something of the same idea had come to me that day when some one had said in a conversation, "Professor B. is the most satisfied man on the campus whose wife is away." I had wondered if they thought I did not care for my wife and vaguely wished I had some way of showing my love for her, and, more than that, these suggestions had very naturally made me wonder if I really care for her as much as I should. I could not have asked for a better opportunity to serve and show my love for my wife than the dream gave me, and at the same time it assured me of my affection for her. There is still another element of repression in this and that is that I have for some time been wanting to forcibly express myself against the unpleasant ways of this lady whom my wife so fears. In the dream, I very freely and fully followed this desire.
This far I can go in the analysis and feel sure of my ground. It will be noticed that I have not resorted to symbolism, and have made very little technical use even of the Freudian mechanisms. I could very easily plunge into symbolism and more elaborate analysis, but should I do so I fear I would be in the same condition as a bright young scholar who made an elaborate study of Freudian theories. He expressed himself by saying that it was a "chaotic inferno." This analysis will seem very unfinished to many of the well-trained readers of the JOURNAL, and so, in a way, it does to me, but it may be interesting as the work of a layman rather than a trained physician. I have not used the word "sexual" in this paper, but the reader can judge for himself if the impulses would come under this heading, either in the more narrow use of the term or in the broader meaning which Freud has given it. For myself, I see no possible objection in employing the word "sexual" in this connection.
The uncertain parts of the dream are as interesting in a way as the others. Why did I not know with whom I was riding, and why were the persons with whom I talked more certain in their identity? Here, of course, is the place where it would be easy to find a repression if such existed and—I believe—if it did not exist. Whether there is such a repression there or not I do not know, but I see no necessity for considering that there is one there just because there is a dim place in the dream. In the study which I made of dreams a year or so ago, I became convinced that there is a principle of dream-making which has not been noticed. I will throw out a suggestion here in the hope that some one will study it further, but will give no elaborate discussion in this paper. Briefly, it is that only those things appear in a dream which are necessary to express the meaning of the dream. A few illustrations may make this clear. Every one has noticed the rarity with which colors and sunshine appear in dreams; I have found, however, that colors and sunshine always appear if there is any necessity for their doing so. Some one dreams of a melon and looks to see if it is ripe; he sees the red color; he dreams of a stream which he thinks is a sewer and smells it to see if it gives off an odor and finds that it does; he dreams of pulling his fishing line to see if there is a fish on it and senses the pull of the fish; I have examples in abundance which go to indicate that taste, smell, tactual, kinaesthetic, color sensation or any other kind will appear in a dream when they are called for to complete the meaning of the dream, but they are not common because they are very rarely needed. Even in waking life we rarely think in these terms. If this little principle prove true, it would be easy to understand why certain parts of a dream are dim without going to the doubtful process of positing a repression. The persons in the dream were not recognized simply because there was no need for them to be; the dream expressed the pertinent meaning just as well without them as with them. They were observed just as many of us would observe the occupants of a street car in waking life; we could possibly not describe, even partly, any one of the occupants of the car which we used on our way to the office or home.
Before leaving this nightmare, I want to call attention again to the somatic elements. I was lying on my back and in a cramped position, the air was closer than usual, and my circulation was naturally deranged. When I awoke I was strongly inclined to give the physical elements a large amount of the responsibility for the dream, and I have not found occasion to change my mind in this matter. I think that even the inability to jump through the window in the dream was caused by the weak and exhausted state of my body, due to the poor circulation and cramped position.
ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE DREAM AS A MEANS OF UNEARTHING THE GENESIS OF PSYCHOPATHIC AFFECTIONS
BY MEYER SOLOMON, MD., CHICAGO
THOSE; of us who have devoted a certain amount of our time and energy to the study of dreams have early come to realize the value of a dream as a starting-point in the analysis of certain mental states, particularly those of an abnormal character.
Frequently, in the hopeless tangle of symptoms, complaints and disconnected facts in the history as originally obtained, especially in old-standing cases, one does not really know just where to begin, what to start with in the first efforts to struggle with the problem of the ultimate genesis and evolution of the condition which is presented to him at the particular moment. Of course, by a careful review of the patient's past life history, gone over by persistent questioning and cross-examination, one can begin with the family history and step by step trace the history of the patient from earliest childhood or infancy through the various stages and phases of activity and development up to the very moment of examination. This may at times appear quite dull, quite uninteresting and entirely unnecessary to certain patients. For this reason and also for many other reasons, which I shall not enumerate at this point it is at times well to resort to dream analysis. And in analyzing dreams it is well to remember a fact, with which I believe all psychoanalysts will agree, namely, that by a most thorough and far-reaching analysis of a SINGLE DREAM, we can, by following out to the ultimate ends the various clues which are given us and the various by-paths which offer themselves to us in the course of the analysis—we can, I repeat, should we be so inclined, root up the entire life history of the dreamer. This may not be necessary in all cases. But, at any rate, if we desired so to do for scientific purposes, we could arrive at such results. In such an analysis we would, of course, first take up, individually, every portion and every element of every portion of the dream, and by means of each such lesser or greater element of the dream, we could arrive at a mass of material, a wealth of information concerning the past experiential, emotional, mental and moral life of the individual whose dream we were at the moment analyzing. In fact, one could ferret out the full life history in great detail, thus obtaining a complete autobiography leading far down into the depths of the dreamer's mental life and into the inner world of his own. With the material so obtained one could truly reconstruct the complete life history, piecemeal, until the wonderful and inspiring structure of the mental world of the dreamer would be reared, reaching far back to early childhood and perhaps even to infancy, extending so far forward as to give us a prophecy, based on the dreamer's dynamic trends and emotional trends and leanings, of the probable future, stretching forth its tentacles in all directions, and, uncovering the psychic underworld in its every part, holding up before our eyes the naked mind, in its length, its breadth and its thickness.
I am not referring here particularly to the employment of the method of hypnosis, especially as practiced by Prince, or to Freud's so-called free association (which is frequently really forced association) or Jung's word association methods. I am speaking only of analysis of the dream by ordinary conversation and introspection, in the normal waking state. Of course, were the latter method supplemented by these other methods, the results would be so much the more complete and far-reaching. I may mention, specifically, that the employment of Freud's free association method would be helpful here in gathering information because, when employing this method, one practically forces the one being analyzed to think by analogy and by comparison, insisting that he tell you what a certain word or name or scene or experience or what not reminds him of, what it resembles, what he can compare it to, no matter how remote its connection, no matter how unrelated, how far-fetched or how silly the association may appear in his own eyes—in other words, we demand that he co-operate by suspending critical selection and judgment. Although, as I say, Freud's, Jung's, Prince's and other methods may be advantageously employed, still, it seems to me, although I cannot yet state this in final or positive terms, that, at least in most cases, such an unravelment and resurrection of the past life history can be obtained by an analysis of the dream conducted in the ordinary, waking state, and the usual conversational mode of history-taking and daily oral intercourse.
It needs no repetition or elaboration to convince psychoanalysts (I use the term "psychoanalyst" in the broad, unrestricted sense of the word, including the supporters of all possible schools or standpoints or methods in psychoanalysis or mental analysis, and not limiting it to Freud's psychoanalysis) of the essential and fundamental truth of this statement. I shall, therefore, not unnecessarily lengthen this paper by endeavoring to bring forth complete evidence of the truth of this assertion.
As a matter of fact, this conclusion or generalization applies not alone to dreams but to any single element in the objective or subjective world which may be seized upon as the initial stimulus and from which, as a starting-point, association of ideas, in ordinary conversation or aided by any of the more or less experimental or artificial but valuable methods heretofore mentioned, may be begun and continued ad libitum or even ad infinitum, under the tactful guidance and judgment of the investigator. For example, if I may be permitted to tread upon the dangerous path of near-sensationalism or extremism, I may mention that were I to take even so common, so widely used, and so relatively insignificant a word as the definite article "the" as the initial stimulus, and have one of my fellowmen or fellow-women (whose full co-operation, it is assumed, I have previously obtained) give me one or more free or random word associations, and thereafter, with these newly acquired elements, continued to forge my way into the thickly wooded and unexplored recesses of the unknown and mysterious forest of the mind, I doubt not but that I should achieve the same results as if I had started upon my journey with a dream. If this be true, and I firmly believe that it is, in the case of that universally used and apparently inconsequential word "the," to which the normal person can be expected to have such a large number of associations, of varying degrees of intimacy or remoteness, how much truer is it when we have such a definite mental fact or mental state as a dream as the starting-point of our hunting expedition?
The dream gives us something tangible to start with, something near at home to the dreamer or patient, something interesting and amusing to him, something baffling and so frequently unintelligible to him, and, as a consequence, a more conscientious, earnest and wholehearted co-operation can be obtained from the person whose mental life is being investigated. Here is something vivid to him, something of personal interest to him. And so we can look to him to lend us his aid in better spirit and in fuller measure than might otherwise be obtainable.
I have been referring in my previous remarks, for the most part, to unravelment of the normal individual's life history. But my remarks are equally applicable to a mentally disturbed individual's life history and to the genesis of abnormal psychic states, particularly those to be met with in the neuroses and psychoneuroses.
So true is the generalization, indeed the truism or dictum here laid down, that, in only the psychoanalyst knows how many instances, by the analysis of a single, even the very first dream, one can arrive at the rock-bottom depth of the trouble at hand—yes, at the very genesis of the condition. It is not my intention in this paper to report such cases in full detail, since the presentation of even a single such case would be too lengthy for publication in an ordinary medical or other journal, and in many instances might well go to make a good-sized book, a real autobiography of more or less interest, if not to the average reader, at least to the psychoanalyst and to the person who has undergone the psychoanalysis. Without attempting to present an elaborate history or complete analysis, but rather merely to call attention to the truth of the general problem which is being discussed in this paper, I shall, however, mention a few definite illustrations of this sort.
A man of sixty was brought to my dispensary clinic by his wife (I say "brought" and not "accompanied" by his wife, advisedly). She accompanied him into my examining room. He had an almost complete aphonia, spoke hoarsely and in a whisper and presented all the signs of abductor laryngeal paralysis; added to which there was a partial hemiplegia of the right side involving the upper and lower extremities, but not the face or any of the cranial nerves other than that supplying the right laryngeal abductor. I shall not give any other points in the history except that this paralysis was of four months' duration, there was some resistance to movements at the elbow and knee, but Babinski and other indications of a central organic lesion were absent. The results of the rest of the physical examination need not be mentioned except that the patient presented evidences of arteriosclerosis. The patient was of dull mentality, meek humble and subservient; he was much below par mentally (I did not put him through any special intelligence tests), had little information to offer, constantly resorted to "I don't know" as a reply, and could co-operate but little. I did, however, obtain the important bit of information that seventeen years ago he had had an almost complete aphonia of several weeks' duration and that one day, while on board ship, he became seasick, vomited, became frightened, went to his room, and suddenly his voice returned to him. So sudden was the transformation that many of his fellow-passengers insisted that he had been deceiving them and had purposely simulated the condition he had previously presented. The case was one of hysteria, the patient presenting at the time of my examination signs of abductor laryngeal paralysis (laryngological examination disclosed a right-sided abductor palsy) and right-sided partial hemiplegia.
For the next two visits the wife accompanied, or rather, brought the patient to the clinic and I could get but little information and consequently progressed but little. I asked him, in her presence, to come alone the next time—which he did. The description of the onset of the attack, which was furnished me on his previous visits, proved the hysterical nature of the condition: he had suddenly been attacked by nausea and vomiting, fell to the floor, lay there, more or less unconscious (as he described it) for five or ten or more minutes, was assisted to his feet, went to his bed with practically no assistance, a few hours later found that he could speak little more than above a whisper, and in another few hours or more his right side became weak and failed him. He had insisted that the onset came on suddenly. He had denied any quarrels or trouble at home. Nothing could be obtained from him as to his thoughts just prior to the attack or as to any special emotional shocks.
On his fourth visit I asked him to tell me any dream he had had recently and which had made an impression upon him. He could give me no aid. Nothing came to mind. I asked him if he had dreamed the night before, and he told me he had had a dream the afternoon of the preceding day, during an afternoon nap. Here is the dream: He found himself struggling with a tremendous snake, the upper part of which was in human form, the features being very hazy and not at all recalled. The snake was vigorously endeavoring to enwrap itself about him and to strangle him, and he was desperately and fiercely struggling to defend himself against it and to free himself from it—and yet he could not fight it off. In desperation and in fear he cried aloud for help. This was the end of the dream, for, at this point, members of his family came rushing toward him to inquire what was wrong with him, and due partly to shock and his own activity in the dream, and partly perhaps to the noise of the footsteps and of the conversation of those who came running toward him to inquire into the cause of his distressful cries, he awoke.
The thoughts and reveries just preceding the dream and the thoughts and experiences during the morning preceding the dream, although the true inciters of the dream, and although concerned with the central figure (his wife) in this little drama, need not be detailed since the dream has a wider and more deeply arising significance.
I could not learn definitely from him whether the series of associated thoughts turned first from his wife to his troubles with her, to her attitude toward him, and then to her resemblance in this respect (her nagging, pestering persistence and actual persecution of him) to a snake which is endeavoring to enwrap itself about him, to strangle him, to withdraw from him his very life's blood, etc. This may or may not have been the line of associations just preceding the dream.
He had no idea as to what the dream meant. Using free association, in ordinary face-to-face conversation, I asked him what "snake" reminded him of. The association came in a moment. He smiled, became embarrassed, said it was foolish of him to tell me this, but it reminded him of his wife. He had always looked upon his wife as a snake in human form. He had frequently called her "snake" because of her conduct toward him. She had wound herself about his life in snake-like fashion.
And then came the story of their troubles. This was his second wife. She was fifteen years his junior. He was meek, feeble, of weak will-power, without initiative. She was domineering. Although his wife never told him so openly and in so many words, he felt convinced that the trouble had begun more or less because his wife's sexual libido was not satisfied in her sexual relations with him. He admits that she is a passionate woman, her sexual libido was of such strength that he, much older than she, and not too strong physically, could but little gratify her. The first complaints and the sole trouble which appeared on the surface were financial—he barely made a living and she complained thereat continually, bitterly and tyrannically. It seems that her complaint in this direction was justified. It is difficult to determine just what role her lack of sexual gratification played— whether it only acted as stirring up the embers of dissatisfaction (with his weekly earnings) which already existed, or whether it was the basic factor, led to her dissatisfaction with her matrimonial choice, and caused her to seek some more or less valid cause for complaint, in that way permitting her, more or less consciously, to transfer her dissatisfaction and discontent from the lack of sexual gratification to the hard pressed financial condition (which perhaps she might, for that matter, have been willing to endure, did she but obtain the full gratification of her sexual craving). At any rate, both of these factors played their role in causing domestic disagreement, one factor being openly acknowledged as the cause by his wife, the other factor never mentioned by her, but believed by him to be an important accessory, if not the main, fundamental and primary source of the trouble. His wife, using his poor earning capacity as a weapon, and with the demand for "more money" as her battle-cry, carried on a campaign of complaint, grumbling, nagging, fault-finding, insult and abuse, but little short of persecution, making conditions wretched and miserable at home. Things at length became quite unbearable to him—so much so that, feeble in willpower and lacking in initiative as he was and is, he was compelled to leave home and live with his aunt, since his wife had practically deserted him. Although she had sold out the furniture and the rest of the furnishings of the home, and had pocketed the money thus received, she repeatedly called at his aunt's home for no other purpose than to force him to pay her sums of money for her weekly maintenance. On each such visit she would act the tyrant, would storm and rage furiously, would subject him to stinging rebukes and deliver biting tongue-lashings, causing him in consequence to be much upset and nervous the rest of the day. The very morning on which he had had the attack, which was followed by his present trouble (partial aphonia and partial hemiplegia) his wife had paid him one of these unusually stormy and noisy, and, to say the least, unwelcome visits. She had carried the attack to such a point that our patient became so emotionally upset (he is a harmless, emotional, kindly, unassuming and indifferent sort of old fellow) that he suddenly was attacked with nausea and vomiting, and, frightened, fell to the floor, with the consequences above detailed. I need not go further into the history and analysis of this case, but the story thus far elicited is more than sufficient to show that here we have a specific instance in which, by the analysis of a single dream, we have arrived at the genesis of an hysterical paralytic syndrome of four months' duration. The analysis took but a few minutes. It may be mentioned, in parentheses, that a full knowledge of the cause of the condition did not lead to a disappearance of the palsy. In other words, as we all know, knowledge per se does not lead to action or to the assertion or development of the will-power. I may say, also, that the events here related were not suppressed or repressed, for, as soon as the question of his wife was taken up, the patient admitted that it was she who was the real cause of his present conditions, and he thereupon detailed the story above related. He assured me that he had always been fully aware that it was she who had brought about his present condition, although, of course, he did not know whether he had had an hysterical, apoplectic or other sort of attack. In fact he believed his condition was permanent and incurable— especially since he had been treated at various neurological clinics for many weeks past without the slightest improvement or progress.
Were we to follow up this history we could unearth the full life history of this patient, including the genesis of his early attack of aphonia. But I deem this unnecessary and inadvisable in this paper, as mentioned previously.
Here, then, we have a definite case in which by the analysis of a single and incidentally the first dream we have arrived at the genesis of the psychoneurotic disorder.
From this same standpoint I have studied another case, a married woman of twenty-nine, with marked neurasthenic and hysterical symptoms (including astasia-abasia, anesthesias, palpitation of the heart, throbbing sensations in the stomach and a great many other symptoms). This case I studied for upwards of four months, with almost daily visits to the hospital where she was being cared for. I made quite an intensive study of her dream life and of her past life history, and I find that had I taken the very first dream which I obtained from her and conducted a thorough analysis with this dream as my first mile-post, I would have arrived at a full genesis of the condition, which was of ten years' duration. In this case, also, I must repeat, there was no indication of repression, the patient having always understood very well the origin and cause of her condition. Here, too, we find that the knowledge alone did not lead to her recovery. This case I shall report in detail at a later date.
In this connection, I cannot keep from reciting the dream of a young girl of twelve which I had the good fortune to study. She came to me complaining about her throat. There was something dry, "a sticking" in her throat. She did not know what it was. Would I look at her throat? I found nothing abnormal, and was about to dismiss her when I observed that her hands were bluish. I felt them. They were cold. I thought at once of probable heart disease. I was soon informed that she had heart disease. She had been told so by other doctors. This proved to be the case, as I learned on examining her.
Being keenly interested in this subject of dreams, I wondered whether, if she were subject to periods of cardiac decompensation of varying degree, she did not have dreams of a terrifying nature (about burglars, robbery and the like), because of embarrassment of breathing during sleep, resulting from her cardiac insufficiency and consequent circulatory and respiratory disturbance. I asked her whether she had been dreaming much of late. She told me she had had a dream the preceding night. What was it? I inquired.
She had dreamed that she had died. Her mother had put her in a coffin, carried her to the cemetery and then proceeded to bury her. Her mother had first forced something into her mouth (it seemed to be a whitish powder), and then lowered her into the grave and filled the grave with dirt. That is all that she could remember.
I shall not enter into a complete analysis or interpretation of this dream. There is no doubt, however, to every psychoanalyst who has devoted his attention to dreams, that the analysis of such a dream should prove most interesting. It is also apparent that by taking up the various elements of the dream and following them untiringly along the various trails and ramifications which lead on in various directions, one could unmask the entire life history of this twelve-year-old girl.
I wish, however, to direct the reader's attention to only one aspect of this dream—the death of the dreamer. She denied that she feared death or that she thought of death because of her heart disease or from any other cause. I next inquired: "Do you wish or have you ever wished you were dead?" The reaction of the girl was immediate and intense. She stood frightened, embarrassed; her eyelids twitched convulsively in rapid succession, her face gradually assumed a suppressed crying expression, tears came to her eyes, they soon flowed freely and rolled down her cheeks; she sobbed, and, through her tears, she uttered, almost inarticulately, the one word, "Yes." A convulsive, inspiratory grunt, a bashful, receding, turning away of the head and body, a raising of the hands to cover her face and hide her tears, and hasty, running steps to get away, while murmuring audibly "Let me go away," followed rapidly one upon the other. I gently seized her hand, calmed and reassured her. And, through sobs and tears, in almost inaudible tones, in starts and spurts, and reluctantly replying to questions which were forced upon her, producing replies which were literally drawn from her against her will, she told me this little story: A little boy cousin of hers, three years her junior, had begun school two years or so later than she, and yet, in spite of this handicap, this little relative had outstripped her in school, he being now in a higher grade than she herself was. She would not be so much concerned or worried about this not-to-be-proud-of performance, had not the boy's mother that week visited her home and there, in the presence of other people, talked considerably about her boy's progress in school, his rapid advance as compared with that of our little dreamer, her relative stupidity and backwardness. And so this boy's mother had continued for some time in the same strain. This caused our little girl to feel much embarrassed—in fact, ashamed and mortified. She had felt that way for several days past, it had made her cry, had made her feel miserable and unhappy; so much so that she had wished she were dead. I shall not continue this analysis further. But it is plainly seen that here too, by a single dream, we have come upon life-experiences, viewpoints and mental material which affords us efficient and sufficient weapons to boldly attack the fortress of her full life history, her mental qualities, her trends, her psychic depth, her mental makeup in its entirety, in its every dimension.
It is interesting to note that on the morning following the experience which I had with this child, she came to see me a second time, and, on my examining her throat, it presented the typical picture of bilateral tonsillitis, the final result of the initial sticking sensation in her throat, which she had experienced the day before. After taking a culture from her throat as a matter of routine to exclude a possible diphtheria, the patient, greatly disturbed because of her newly-discovered trouble, burst forth into bitter tears, and, still sobbing, rushed abruptly from the room.
A week later, when I saw her again, she had regained her emotional equilibrium and we reviewed her dream and its analysis without any special signs of emotional disturbance.
Very interesting, also, was my experience about a week following this when, casually reciting this little girl's dream, its significance and her conduct, to an old lady whom I know very well, I found that she too was presenting all the signs of emotional upset, for, as I proceeded with my recital, tears gradually came to her eyes, her face assumed a suppressed crying expression, she tried to smile through her tears, and finally, unable to control her emotions, she broke out into a free and unrestrained weeping spell, following which I learned from her that the recital of this girl's condition, her dream and its meaning, recalled to her mind her darling daughter, a noble girl of sixteen years of age, who had died some fifteen years ago, after a long period of incapacitation and a miserable existence brought on by tonsillitis, chorea, rheumatism and, finally, heart disease, with all the extreme signs and symptoms of broken cardiac and renal compensation. Here, then, I had touched another complex, which, if followed up, would lead me into the innermost depths and recesses of this old lady's soul-life, into the holiest of holies of her mental life.
The writer will be pardoned for not here giving fuller histories, or for not carrying out the analyses to their ultimate goals, or for not giving the interpretations of the two dreams presented. That was not the primary object of this communication.
I wish, in conclusion, to repeat that through the conscientious and most far-reaching analysis of a single dream, or, in fact, of a single element of a dream or a single element or stimulus in the objective or subjective world, one may, at least not infrequently, unearth the full life history of normal or abnormal individuals, and the genesis and evolution of psychopathic affections.
The reader may justly inquire why the analyst should resort to dream analysis instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way. This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and success in the analysis, one may resort to dream analysis, not so much for the purpose of following the royal road to what the Freudian school calls "the unconscious," but rather with the object of obtaining the confidence of the patient and of having something definite to start with.
AN ACT OF EVERYDAY LIFE TREATED AS A PRETENDED DREAM AND INTERPRETED BY PSYCHOANALYSIS
BY RAYMOND BELLAMY
Professor of Education, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va.
A RECENT article by Brill, entitled "Artificial Dreams and Lying,"[1] recalled to me a little work I did two years ago while engaged in making an introductory study of dreams as a thesis at Clark University. The part which is hereby submitted is a fragment of a larger work and, being only a sort of side issue, was never included in the thesis proper. I have made only such changes as were made necessary by the fact that this is a fragment and needed one or two minor changes to make it complete.
[1] Journal Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 5.
Let me say at the beginning that I have the greatest and most profound respect for Freudian theories as interpreted by G. Stanley Hall and other men of like scholarly ability, but I have never been able to accept the more extreme form of Freudianism as interpreted by some of the most prolific writers in this field. I have found that the charges made by Habermann[2] are substantially true. I find it very helpful indeed, to try to interpret my own dreams and to assist some of my students to do so according to the Freudian formula, and to a certain point I believe these interpretations are undoubtedly true. The question is to find the point beyond which the interpretation becomes artificial. Personally, I believe that this will always have to be decided finally by the individual himself rather than by some outsider who insists on reading in a certain interpretation. I have come to believe that it is possible for one to become trained to the point at which he is able to decide just how far the interpretation goes, or, at least, to approximate it.
[2] Journal Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 4.
With these few introductory remarks I shall submit the paper, which was written in 1912. I have not appended the rather long and cumbersome bibliography from which I drew these references, but I can supply any reference that is wanted.
If we examine the Freudian system, we find that it is impossible to disprove this theory of dreams. If we demonstrate that a dream has no sexual connection whatever, they have only to say that it is the censor that blinds, and, by resorting to symbolism and other such very present helps in time of trouble, they show plainly that we were mistaken. The situation is the same as it would be if I declared that what I saw as blue appeared yellow to the rest of the world. The disproof of this and of Freudianism are equally impossible. But, on the other hand, have the Freudians presented any proof or argument on the affirmative side of this question? They are over fond of saying, "Freud has proven thus and so," but in what did the proof consist? The great answer to all objections has been to analyze dreams and, so far as I know, the attempt has never failed to show that the dream in question conformed to the prescribed requirements. And in truth, it is not a difficult matter to analyze a dream a la Freud. After a little practice, especially if one has a vivid imagination and is somewhat suggestible, It is possible to find the repressed sexual wish in every dream. But if we use such flexible and wonderful factors as the four mechanisms, and, above all, symbolism, we can find the same things in any other experience. By this I mean that if we take a bit out of our daily life, a dream of some one else, a fictitious story, an historical incident, or any other pictured situation and PRETEND THAT IT IS ONE OF OUR OWN DREAMS and apply the Freudian analysis, we find that it serves for this purpose as well as a real dream. When this is the case, it is absurd to put any faith in the analysis of real dreams, when carried to extremes.
As an illustration of the above statement, the following is a fairly typical example. The supposed "dream" is a commonplace bit out of my daily life. This is chosen at random (although Jones would say such a thing is impossible) and subjected to a dream analysis.
ANALYSIS OF FALSE DREAM
Dream. I was walking along a street on a cold winter night. I looked down at the cement walk and in this was set a piece of granite on which the letters "W. H." were cut. Coming to the corner, I looked up and saw on a short board which was nailed to a post, the name of the street, "Queen Street," The street running at right angles to this was King Street, and I turned and went down this. After walking a short distance, I came to a house from a window of which a light was shining. The house number was "23." I took a key from my pocket, unlocked the door and entered.
Analysis. In attempting to analyze this (so-called) dream, I was amazed to find with how many past longings and emotionally-colored experiences it was associated. I first took up the letters on the sidewalk, and as I repeated them, letting my mind be as blank as possible in order that the associations might be free, I gained an immediate response. "W. H."—"Which House"—came out as in answer to a question. With these words there was a definite visual image of a young country farm youth standing talking to two persons in a buggy. I remembered the incident in all its details. I was the young man and these people were asking the way to a certain place, or at WHICH HOUSE they should stop. As it so happened, I was at that time keeping company with a young lady who lived at the very house concerning which they asked. I will not go into detail any further at this point, for this is a real case and I should be trespassing on personal ground. But any one who yet remembers his boyhood courtship, with all its agonies and fears, its hopes and joys, its disappointments and its pleasures, can see at a glance how important this occasion is in throwing light on the meaning of the dream. Of course "W. H." stood for "Which House."
I seemed to get no further in my associations with these letters at this time, and my thoughts spontaneously turned to the name of the street. "Queen Street." Even more readily and completely than in the other case, there came a whole complex of associations. First there was the name and image of Miss Agnes Queen, whom I had known for years. But, strange to say, the image was of this young lady standing and talking to a certain Mr. Harding. I saw them together but once, and it seemed passing strange that this incident should be the one remembered in connection with the name. But the associations were rapidly progressing, and I mentally reviewed parts of three or four years during which I was working and closely associating with this Mr. Harding. Here I began to see some light. This Mr. Harding was in all respects, at least as far as I knew him a man of good morals, but he was much less particular in his social habits than I was. He was engaged to a young lady all the time I was with him, and wrote letters to her constantly; but this fact did not prevent him from paying attentions to other young women, and I was aware that he was more familiar with them than conventionality would warrant. In fact he made no attempt to be secret in the matter, and often poked fun at me for my over sensitivity on the subject. Here was the key to a whole lot of meaning. The first year I was with him, I had no sweetheart or any lady friend on whom to center my affection or to whom I could write. There were a number of young men in our "squad," as it was called, and nearly all of them had correspondents and it was a joke among us that I was "out in the cold world with no one to love." In reality, this was not so much a joke for me at the time, as I tried to give the impression that it was, and I longed for the very thing of which we joked. The fact that I was out on the street on a cold winter night in this dream symbolized being "out in the cold world," as we had used the term then.
I now took up the letters "W. H." again, and the words "White Horse" came in response to the stimulus. With little hesitation I placed this as connected with the Knights of the White Horse of whom Tennyson writes in his poems of "King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table." I got very little out of this, but still the White Horse was a band of men who were unrestrained in their desires and bore about the same relation to King Arthur's Knights that Harding did to me. However, the associations did not stop here but went on, giving what at first seemed to be a meaningless list of words. "W. H." first called up the words, "Wish Harding"; next, "Will Harding"; next, "With Harding"; and last, "Walk Harding." In a minute it flashed on me what this all meant. "I WISH to do as Harding is doing, to WALK the way he is WITH him and I WILL." To walk up Queen Street meant, then, to follow his example, as he at one time paid some attention to this Miss Agnes Queen. Perhaps the reason why her name was selected instead of some others was because his relations to her had been very slight and formal, and thus the idea was easier for the censor to let into sleeping consciousness than it would have been if some other names had been taken. "W. H.," then, symbolized the four expressions that arose in the analysis.
The meaning of "King Street" came last of anything in the dream, but I will give it now. I did not seem to be able to get anywhere on this for some time, and the idea kept presenting itself that it symbolized that I was king of the situation which seemed innocent enough; but at last there came an association with Nero as portrayed in "Quo Vadis." I then remembered how I read this book while in the adolescent stage, and how a cousin made remarks, very sensuous in their nature, about parts of it. I then got a vision of the book, "Mad Majesties," which I saw on the library table not long since. Next came a memory of the French kings as portrayed in the works of Dumas. At this point, I realized that the idea suggested by the word king is very often, though not always, an idea or image of a very loose person as far as his social life is concerned. Thus to walk Queen Street or follow the example of Harding finds a parallel in walking King Street or following the example of a king.
With the light in the window, I came into an entirely new field of associations. I cannot go far into detail here as it would involve others as well as myself, but suffice to say that the light in the window called up a paper on the subject of light which was written by a Mr. X. and read in my hearing. Now Mr. X. and I had both kept company with the same young lady at different times, and here was another group of emotionally colored experiences. However, the important function performed by the light was that it symbolized (together with the house in which it was) the comforts, warmth and pleasures of the very opposite condition from that of being "out in the cold world with no one to love."
The house number "23" is associated with at least two occasions. One Sunday evening; a few of the boys of our "squad," myself among them, went out with the daughter of our landlady, and one or two other young ladies and took a boat ride in the park. It was a beautiful summer night and the park was full of young people who were treating each other to very endearing caresses. There were so many who wanted boats that only one boat was unoccupied, and it was No. 23. It had been left because it was a hoodoo number, and the other boaters were all superstitious. As we were not, we took this boat and used it. My longing lonesomeness was about at its maximum height on this night. The other occasion associated with this number is that I became engaged when I was twenty-three years old and at that time desired greatly to be married; but, as I was in school, it had to be postponed.
Now the climax of the dream! I took a key from my pocket, unlocked the door and entered. This is so plain that it hardly needs comment. Being in the cold world, as symbolized by the cold street, I enter the warmth and comfort of the lighted house. The key and lock are, of course, phallic symbols and have special significance for me as I once took a young lady to a banquet at which the favors were paper keys and hearts. Thus symbolically are fulfilled all the longings I felt while with Harding, all my desires to be married when twenty-three, all my adolescent courtship yearnings, and all my remaining repressed sexual longings.
As a point which may have a little bearing on this, I have recently received a letter from Harding and in it was information that he is for a time away from home, and I wondered if he is still careless in his behavior.
This analysis will seem foolish in the extreme to many, and I am one of the number, but my excuse is that I have copied as closely after the Freudians as possible. I have only to invite a comparison. This is not a "made up" dream, but a little bit out of my daily life; just an experience occurring on the way home from the seminary. The analysis is real in the sense that the associations arose as I have recorded them.
Perhaps some ardent Freudian might find it in his heart to say that this analysis only strengthened their position, as it showed how a whole sexual background underlies our entire life, and therefore our dreams must have a sexual origin. But the reason why I found a sexual solution of this was that I started the analysis with a definite Bewnssteinlage, as Titchener would call it, which consisted of a knowledge that I had started for a certain kind of solution, and the whole course of the associations was governed by this. If Freud had at first come into the possession of a theory that every dream fulfills a fear, or pictures a state of anger or any other emotion, he would have had just as good success in demonstrating the truth of his statements. The following analysis will illustrate this. This is a real dream, but before beginning the analysis, I took the attitude that the analysis would reveal the fulfillment of a fear or show that the dream was the dramatic representation of a feared condition as actually existing. It took some time to get into this attitude, it is true, but when the result was finally accomplished, the analysis was begun and the attempt was made to follow the Freudian method as closely as possible under the changed conditions.
The Dream. On the night of February first, I dreamed that I was going down a little hill in company with my brother and Mr. N. We seemed to be in Colorado, and at the foot of the hill was a little stream which was very pretty. There was a little waterfall, and a green pool below it, and a mist hung over the pool. I am not sure I saw the color of this pool. There was also a huge rock around which the water dashed. Some people were fishing in the stream. Some one asked if we could see the rainbows, and Mr. N. replied that he could see only one. I then looked carefully and saw a purple haze in the mist over the pool and supposed this was what was meant. But, as I continued to look, I saw a great number of rainbows, or at least patches in the mist over the water which showed the spectral colors. These were about two feet in diameter and extraordinarily beautiful. I was very anxious to get some of the trout which I felt sure were In the stream. As we came nearer, it seemed that the stream had overflowed and there were several shallow pools not over a foot deep and eight or ten feet long. In these pools could be seen fish by the dozen from a foot to eight feet long. I was slightly troubled because it would muddy my shoes, but I began to try to get some of them out. I got one very big one by the gill slit, but could not manage him and had to let him go. I handled several in the dream, but do not know whether or not I got any out.
ANALYSIS OF DREAM SHOWING FULFILLMENT OF A FEAR
I had some trouble in getting any light on this dream, but suddenly much of the meaning became clear and a whole group of associations came up. Undoubtedly the trouble I experienced at first was caused by the resistance of the censor. I will give the associated memories first and explain them later.
I delight in fishing and have spent many happy hours fishing for trout In the clear waters of the Colorado streams; but, strange as it may seem, it was not a memory of any of these which come into consciousness. Instead, there came up memories of three different instances, each accompanied with definite visual imagery, and in such rapid succession that I could hardly tell which came first.
Six years ago last summer, I crossed the Ohio River to spend a day in Carrolton, Kentucky, and on the way back, I bought some fish of a fisherman at the river's edge. This man was barefooted and wore a little greasy wool hat and very ragged clothes. I remember thinking at the time that his work must be very degrading, and that the river fisherman must be about the lowest type in that part of the country. I especially noticed his feet and legs, which were bare to the knees, and which were so sunburned that they hardly looked like parts of a white man's body. In the analysis of this dream, the image of the man as he stood there and the memory of the incident came back with great vividness.
A year or two later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just under the surface.
The other memory was one in which I did not figure personally. A year or so ago, my brother was telling me how he and his boy had gone to the river several times and gone fishing with an old fisherman who lived there. My nephew, like most boys, had a desire to become a fisherman or hunter, and my brother had suspected that a little close acquaintance with the way a fisherman lived would cure him of this desire; in this he was entirely right, and after a few trips to visit the old fellow, he had expressed himself as cured of any desire to live the beautiful, pleasant life of a river fisherman.
Without going any further, it can easily be seen that a fisherman symbolizes for me everything that is synonymous with failure. Thus, when I stepped out into the muddy water and began fishing I symbolically became a failure, a no-account, a man who had failed in the struggle and had not achieved success. The very fact that we came DOWN HILL to the place of fishing shows, on the face of it, that a downhill career is symbolized. My brother was with me, and that is easily explained as a dramatization of the fact that I was accompanying him on that downhill road to the state of the man in the rickety wagon which he had prophesied as his future. The water in the shallow pools was muddy, and I stepped into it just after experiencing a fear that I would get my shoes wet. Remembering the fisherman's bare brown feet, this can be interpreted as nothing but a very strong symbolization of a drop from a cultured and successful circle to a low and unsuccessful one. I grasp a fish bigger than myself and struggle with it, but am compelled to give it up. Another symbol: my work is plainly too big for me; this question is too much for me to handle, and this thesis will ultimately have to be given up as the big fish is. In fact, I cannot say that I succeeded in getting ANY fish out of the water and, therefore, I shall never succeed at anything I undertake, but will land figuratively, if not actually, in the fisherman's hut.
The Mr. N. who was with us, was cross-eyed which, in itself, seemed to have no special meaning; but it immediately called up an image of a cross-eyed man standing at the river's edge at Vevay, Indiana. This fellow was the picture of ignorance and want. He was telling another man about catching a big fish a few days before and how he liked that kind of fish boiled so well, but he could not wait for it to boil, but had fried part of it and eaten it that way. As I heard him relate this and watched his face, the whole event seemed to me to be most disgusting. As I was watching him, some one at my side told me that, because of a drunken spree, he had been disfranchised. He was also a fisherman and another typical specimen of the class. Mr. N., having the same facial defect, though in a much less noticeable way, became identified with him, and I am again found walking down the hill to oblivion in company with this brother in distress. This is bad for Mr. N., but it cannot be helped.
The rainbows seem bright enough, but they bring in another disquieting group of associations. The rainbow is almost, if not quite, a universal symbol of failure. We all know the old story of going to the end of the rainbow for a pot of gold, and if we want to belittle any effort we say that the individual is chasing the rainbow. So here I am again on the downhill road between two failures, following the rainbow to a hopeless condition of muddy uselessness. And if it were not bad enough to be following one rainbow, I am following a great number which must mean that I shall always end in failure whatever I undertake.
But, besides this, the rainbow has special associations for me. The first of these associations which came into consciousness was a little booklet made by a Latin student and handed her professor. I had several years of Greek and Latin under this teacher and at a certain place in the course, he asked each student to make a little booklet of some kind, using as much originality as possible, copy some favorite quotations from De Senectute and hand in the finished product. Every year he gets these out and exhibits them as a kind of inspiration. One of them had a rainbow and a pot of gold on the cover. I spent a great deal of time and work on mine and made a more elaborate booklet than any other that had been made, but I purposely left it unfinished and inscribed a statement that this was to typify the kind of work I did in that department. Of course it was a joke, but I have often thought that there was method in this madness, and that it really approximated the true state of affairs. This seeming chance association, then, is closely connected with my fear of making a failure which is so clearly dramatized in this dream.
The fact that the dream is placed in Colorado is also important. Two years ago, I spent the summer in Colorado and had a very delightful time, as was natural, being on a wedding trip. But during this stay, I did make a total failure at fishing. I had been a fairly successful trout fisher a few years before, but I had forgotten the art and did not do enough fishing to relearn. In other words, my dream gives me to understand that I cannot be successful even in fishing. One evening my bride and I witnessed a most beautiful sunset, a rainbow figuring largely in the scene. At this time we were debating whether or not to go on farther West as I had originally planned; but circumstances prevented this and instead of going on farther, we came back East or toward the rainbow. This is just one more place where the dream so clearly symbolizes a failure to do what I undertake. I will not carry the analysis any further, though I could find associations by the hundred which would strengthen the meaning given.
Of course I am not at all conscious of having any such fear as this. In fact I am rather inclined to be over-confident; but this is, of course, due to the repressing influence of the censor and only strengthens the analysis.
Examples could be given until the last trump is sounded and the world rolled up like a scroll, but I do not want to keep any one so long. Whatever we wish to make out of a dream—the dramatization of a fear, a joy, a joke (really this is what the Freudians often do), a tragedy, anything that can be suggested, the result can easily be accomplished if only we be allowed the use of Freud's mechanisms and a moderate amount of symbolism.
I have tried to show: First, that any situation or experience can be analyzed with as good success as a dream, and second, that a dream may be made to mean anything. In other words, with Freud's method, one can demonstrate anything to suit his taste or belief. Long ago, the saying was formulated that all roads lead to Rome. This being true, it must also be true that all roads lead everywhere else. Freud employs a wonderful figure of a mystical sphere, with its layers and cross veins and other mineralogical characteristics, to represent the part of consciousness with the repressed factor at the center well guarded. It would be far more to the point if he should represent the whole of past experience as the surface of a country, with its various roads connecting the different centers. The stations would then represent the experiences, and the roads the association tracks between them. If one should travel at random over these roads, he would in time pass through all kinds of towns and cities, but if he started in quest of a certain type, say mountain villages, he would arrive at his goal much more quickly than he would otherwise. The Freudians themselves acknowledge that they have difficulty in knowing when to stop the analysis. Their plan seems to be to travel until the landscape suits them and then get off and camp.
Thus, while I have made no attempt to give positive proof or argument that Freud's theory, in its extreme form is at fault, I have tried to substantiate my argument that there has been no real argument on the other side. And when a theory so spectacular and altogether out of the ordinary is presented, the burden of the proof should very decidedly be thrown on the positive side. We have no obligation or even excuse for accepting such a theory on the mere presumption of the originator.
And that Freud's theory is weird and fantastic is a self-evident fact. Perhaps the Clark University student who very carefully worked it up a few years ago went a little too far when he said it was a chaotic inferno, but at any rate, it is far removed from celestial harmony. Sidis takes about the sanest attitude possible when he refers to certain Freudian writings as being full of unconscious sexual humor. He observes further as does Prince and others that the Freudian school is in reality a religious or philosophical sect. He says that Freud's writings constitute the psychoanalytic Bible and are quoted with reverence and awe. Kronfeld, in a most valuable criticism, says that in comparison with Freud's conception of the vorconscious and its work, Henroth's Demonomania appears a modest scientific theory.
The attitude of the Freudians is, itself, worth noticing. They are very prone to consider any criticism as very personal, and fly to the rescue with all the fervor of a religious fanatic. A work on dreams, because it does not bear out Freud in all details, calls forth thunderbolts from two continents. This over-anxious attitude indicates that the belief in the theory is based on an emotional condition rather than logical reasoning. Bernard Hart, who is one of those happy individuals who get the best out of Freudianism, shows the difference between the two kinds of belief by comparing our belief that the earth goes around the sun and that the man who abuses a woman is a cad. The cold, indifferent attitude toward the former is in marked contrast to our warm lively interest in the latter, and the reason is that the belief in the one is founded on scientific demonstration and in the other on our feeling in the matter. If we allow this as a gauge by which to measure, it is not difficult to place the Freudians.
We must not overlook the immense opportunity for suggestion in the work of psychoanalysis, both on the subject and the one who is in the work. The Freudians vehemently deny that any of the results of dream analysis are suggested into the mind of the dreamer, but the evidences are all on the other side. Freud, in referring to psychoanalysis of hysterical patients, says, "It is not possible to press upon the patient things which he apparently does not know, or to influence the results of the analysis by exciting his expectations." Such an attitude is fatal when it comes to a question of accurate work. And no less important is the self-suggestion practiced by the Freudians. When we read of Freud's long struggle in an attempt to find something which he felt surely was to be found, we see that he had abundant opportunity to acquire almost an obsession. The long years since, which he has spent in analyzing dreams and making them all come out right some way, would serve to more firmly ground his conviction, and the same is true of his disciples. Put a man to drawing square moons for ten years, and at the end of the time he will swear that the moon is square.
A large portion of the scientific world seems to have gone mad over the term "psychoanalysis." But this kind of work has been done by all peoples and times under different names. There can be no objection to such an analysis of a dream if it is done by the right person. The dream may be used to aid the dreamer in finding out his own life, it is true, and when we understand psychoanalysis as this process, and only this, it is not objectionable. But if such is the case there is no need of all the mechanism and symbolism. The preacher who uses the Old Testament stories of the wars with the Philistines to illustrate a moral struggle is not to be criticised; but if he maintains that they were written for that purpose, we should hardly feel inclined to accept his position. A very inspiring message might be builded on the text, "The ants are a people not strong, but they prepare their meat in the summer"; but it is hardly possible that such thoughts were in the mind of the writer. Just so, a dream or a story or any other situation may be used to open the locked doors of a life, but to say that the dream has slipped stealthily out of the keyholes and over the transoms and wonderfully, mysteriously and magically clothed itself is quite another matter.
FREUD AND HIS SCHOOL
NEW PATHS OF PSYCHOLOGY
BY A. W. VAN RENTERGHEM M.D., AMSTERDAM
(Concluded)
WE are frequently confronted with the question: "Just why does an erotic conflict cause the neurosis? Why not just as well another conflict?" To this the only answer is, "No one asserts that this must be so, but evidently it always is so, in spite of anything that can be said against it. It is, notwithstanding all assurances to the contrary, still true that love (taken in its large sense of nature's course, which does not mean sexuality alone), with its problems and its conflicts of the most inclusive significance, has in human life and in the regulation of the human lot a much greater importance than the individual can image.
The trauma-theory (meaning what was in the beginning conceived by Breuer and Freud) is therefore out of date. When Freud came to the opinion that a hidden erotic conflict forms the real root of the neurosis, the trauma lost its pathogenic significance.
An entirely different light was now thrown upon the theory. The trauma question was solved, and thrown aside. Next in order came the study of the question of the erotic conflict. If we consider this in the light of the chosen example, we see that this conflict contains plenty of abnormal moments, and at first sight does not suffer comparison with an ordinary erotic conflict. What is especially striking, seemingly almost unbelievable, is the fact that it is only the exterior action, the pose, of which the patient is conscious, while she remains unconscious of the passion which governs her. In the case in question the actual sexual factor unquestionably remains hidden, while the field of consciousness is entirely governed by the patient's pose. A proposition formulating this state of affairs would read as follows.
In the neurosis there are two erotic inclinations which stand in a fixed antithesis to each other, and one of these at least is unconscious.
It might be said of this formula, that although perhaps it is adapted to this case, possibly it is not adapted to all cases. Most people, however, are inclined to believe that the erotic is not so widespread. It is granted that it is so in a romance, but it is not believed that the most affecting dramas are more often enacted in the heart of the citizen who daily passes us by unnoticed, than upon the stage.
The neurosis is an unsuccessful attempt of the individual to solve in his own bosom the sexual question which perplexes the whole of human society. The neurosis is a disunity in one's inmost self. The cause of this inward strife is because in most men the consciousness would gladly hold to its moral ideal, but the subconsciousness strives toward its (in the present-day meaning) immoral ideal. This the consciousness always wants to deny. These are the sort of people who would like to be more respectable than they are at bottom. But the conflict may be reversed; there are people who apparently are very disreputable, and who do not take the slightest pains to limit their sexual pleasures. But looked at from all sides this is only a sinful attitude, adopted, God knows for what grounds, because in them, back of this, there is a soul, which is kept just as much in the subconsciousness as the immoral nature is kept in the subconscious of moral men. (It is best for men to avoid extremes as far as possible, because extremes make us suspect the contrary.)
This general explanation was necessary in order to explain to some extent the conception of the erotic conflict in analytical psychology. It is the turning-point of the entire conception of the neurosis.
After Breuer's discovery, putting into practice the "chimney sweeping" so justly christened by his patient this method of treatment has evolved into shorter psychoanalytical methods, which we will now discuss in succession in their main points.
In his use of the primitive method, Freud depended upon the time saving of hypnotism and upon the circumstance that many could not be brought into the desired deep degree of provoked sleep. The aim of this operation was to call up in the patient another state of consciousness, in which it would be possible for him to remember facts which had given cause for the origin of the phenomena, facts which thus far had remained hidden from the ordinary daily consciousness. By questioning the patient when in this state, or by spontaneous production of phantasies communicated by the patient while in hypnosis, memories come to light and affects connected with them are relaxed (these are abreagirt [rearranged], as the expression is) and the desired cure is attained. This just-mentioned method (cathartic, cleansing) and more especially the modified one, which aims especially at the promotion of a spontaneous production of phantasies communicated by the patient while under hypnotism, is still used in practice by some investigators. In what follows we go still further back—Freud next sought for a method to render hypnotism unnecessary. He discovered it by applying an artifice which he had seen Bernheim use during a visit (1887) to the latter's clinic at Nancy. Bernheim demonstrated upon a hypnotized patient how the amnesia of the somnambulist is only an appearance.
With this aim in view, Freud from then on ceased to hypnotize his patients and substituted for that method, "spontaneous ideas." This means that when the analysis of a patient who is awake is obstructed, and has come to a dead stop, he is told to communicate anything which comes into his mind, no matter what idea, what thought, even if the thing were very queer to him or seemed meaningless. In the material thus obtained the thread should be found leading to the semi-forgotten, the thing hidden in the consciousness. In single cases—where the resistance toward bringing into consciousness the forgotten or repressed thing, the complex, was slight—this method of treatment very quickly attains its end, but in others where the resistance was greater, the spontaneous ideas merely brought about indirect representations, mere allusions as it were to the forgotten element. Here favorable results either were not so readily obtained, or else were entirely lacking. In conjunction with this, Freud planned a simple method of interpretation by means of which, from the material thus obtained, the repressed complexes could be brought to consciousness.
Independently of Freud, the Zurich school (Bleuler, Jung) had planned the association method in order to penetrate into the patient's subconsciousness. The value of this method is chiefly a theoretical experimental one; it leads to an orientation of large circumference, but necessarily superficial in regard to the subconscious conflict (complex).
Freud compares its importance for the psychoanalyticus; with the importance of the qualitative analysis for the chemist.
Not being completely satisfied with his method of spontaneous ideas Freud sought shorter paths to the subconscious, and therefore undertook the study of the dream-life (dealing with forgetfulness, speaking to one's self, making mistakes, giving offense to one's self, and with superstition and absent-mindedness, and the study of word quibbles taken in their widest sense), to all of which we are indebted for the possession of his three important books: "Die Traumdeutung?" (First edition 1900, third edition 1912); "Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens" (1901-1907); "Der Witz und seine Bedeutung zum Unbewussten" (1905).
Because of the discovery of the repressed and the forbidden in the soul life, the instructions contained in the three last-named works are of great importance and of help to us in the study of the spontaneous ideas of the patient brought to light by free association. But what is of more importance for analysis is the study of what may well be termed Freud's masterpiece, "Die Traumdeutung."
Jung expresses himself as follows in regard to Freud's ingenious discovery.
"It can be said of the dream that the stone which was despised by the architect has become the corner-stone. The acorn of the dream, of the ephemeral and inconsiderable product of our soul, dates from the earliest times. Before that, men saw in the dream a prophecy for the future, a warning spirit, a comforter, a messenger of the gods. Now we join forces with it in order to explore the subconscious, to unravel the mysteries which it jealously guards and conceals. The dream does this with a completeness which amazes us. Freud's exact analysis has taught that the dream as it presents itself to us, exhibits merely a facade, which betrays nothing of the inmost part of the house. But where, by attention to certain rules we are able to bring the dreamer to express the sudden ideas awakened in him in talking over the sub-division of his dream, then it very quickly appears that the sudden ideas follow a determined direction, and are centralized about certain subjects, possessing a personal significance and betraying a meaning, which in the beginning would not have been suspected back of the dream, but which stand in a very close symbolical relation, even to details, to the dream facade. This peculiar thought-complex, in which all the threads of the dream are united, is the looked-for conflict in a certain variation which is determined by the circumstances. What is painful and contradictory in the conflict is so confused here that one can speak of a wish-fulfillment; let us, however, immediately add that the fulfilled wishes apparently are not wishes, but are such as frequently are contradictory to them. As an example let us use the case of a daughter who inwardly loves her mother and dreams that the latter is dead, much to her sorrow. Dreams like this are frequent. The contents make us think as little as possible of a wish-fulfillment, and so one might perhaps get the idea that Freud's assertion—that the dream presents in dramatic form a subconscious wish of the dreamer—is unjust.
That happens because the non-initiated does not know how to differentiate between manifest and latent (evident and hidden) dream contents. Where the conflict worked over in the dream is unconscious, the solution, the wish arising from it, is also unconscious. In the chosen example, the dreamer wished to have the mother out of the way; in the language of the subconscious it says: I wish that mother would die. We are aware that a certain part of the subconscious possesses everything which we can no longer remember consciously, and especially an entirely thoughtless, childish wish. One can confidently say that most of what arises from the subconscious has an infantile character, as does this so simple sounding wish: "Tell me, father, if mother died would you marry me?" The infantile expression of a wish is the predecessor of a recent wish for marriage, which in this case we discover is painful to the dreamer. This thought, the seriousness of the included meaning is, as we say, "repressed into the subconscious" and can there necessarily express itself only awkwardly and childishly, because the subconscious limits the material at its disposal, preferably, to memories of childhood and, as recent researches of the Zurich school have shown, to "Memories of the race," stretching far beyond the limits of the individual.
It is not the place here to explain by examples the territory of dream-analysis so extraordinary composed; we must be satisfied with the results of the study; dreams are a symbolical compensation for a personally important wish of the daytime, one which had had too little attention (or which had been repressed).
As a result of the dominant morals, wishes which are not sufficiently noticed by our waking consciousness and which attempt to realize themselves symbolically in the dream are as a rule of an erotic nature. Therefore it is advisable not to tell individual dreams in the presence of the initiated, because dream symbolism is transparent to one acquainted with its fundamental rules. Therefore we have always to conquer in ourselves a certain resistance before we seriously can be fitted for the task of unraveling the symbolical composition by patient work. When we finally comprehend the true meaning of a dream then we at once find ourselves transposed into the very midst of the secrets of the dreamer and to our amazement we see that even an apparently meaningless dream is full of sense and really bears witness of extremely important and serious things concerning the soul-life. This knowledge obliges us to have more respect for the old superstition concerning the meaning of dreams, a respect which is far to seek in our present-day rationalistic era.
Freud correctly terms dream-analysis the royal road which leads to the subconscious; it leads us into the most deeply hidden personal mysteries and, therefore, in the hand of the physician and the educator is an instrument not to be too highly valued.
The opposition to this method makes use of arguments which chiefly (as we will observe, from personal motives) originate in the still strongly scholastic bent, which the learned thought of the present-day exhibits. And dream-analysis is precisely what inexorably lays bare the lying morals and the hypocritical pose of men, and now for once makes them see the reverse side of their character. Is it to be wondered at that many therefore feel as if some one were stepping on their toes?
Dream-analysis always makes me think of the striking statue of worldly pleasure which stands before the cathedral at Basel. The front presents an archaic sweet smile, but the back is covered with toads and snakes. Dream-analysis reverses things and allows the back side to be seen. That this correct picture of reality possesses an ethical value is what no one can contradict. It is a painful but very useful operation, which demands a great deal from the physician as well as from the patient. Psychoanalysis seen from the standpoint of therapeutic technic consists chiefly of numerous analyses of dreams; these in the course of treatment, little by little, bring what is evil out of the subconsciousness to the light and submit it to the disinfecting light of day, and thereby find again many valuable and pretendedly lost portions of the past. It represents a cathartic of especial worth, which has a similarity to the Socratic "maieutike," the "obstetric." From this state of affairs one can only expect that psychoanalysis for many people who have taken a certain pose, in which they firmly believe, is a real torture, because according to the ancient mystic saying: "Give what you have, then shall you receive!" They must of their own free will offer as a price their beloved illusions if they wish to allow something deeper, more beautiful and more vast to enrich them. Only through the mystery of self-sacrifice does the self succeed in finding itself again renewed.
There are proverbs of very old origin which through the psychoanalytical treatment again come to light. It is surely very remarkable that at the height to which our present-day culture has attained this particular kind of psychic education seems necessary, an education which may be compared in more than one respect with the technic of Socrates, although psychoanalysis goes much deeper.
We always discover in the patient a conflict which at a certain point is connected with the great social problems, and when the analysis has penetrated to that point, the seemingly individual conflict of the patient is disclosed as the conflict, common to his environment and his time.
Thus the neurosis is really nothing but an individual (unsuccessful to be sure) attempt to solve a common problem It must be so, because a common problem, a "Question" which plunges the sick man into misery is—I can't help it—"the sexual question," more properly termed the question of the present-day sexual moral.
His increased claim upon life and the joy of life, upon colored, brilliant reality, must endure the inevitable limitations, placed by reality, but not the arbitrary, wrong, indefensable limitations which put too many chains upon the creative spirit mounting from out the depths of animal darkness. The nervous sufferer possesses the soul of a child, that arbitrary limitation which represses and the reason for which is not understood. To be sure it attempts to identify itself with the morals, but by this it is brought into great conflict and disharmony with itself. On one side it wishes to submit, on the other to free itself—and this conflict we speak of as the neurosis.
If this conflict in all its parts were clearly a conscious one, then naturally no nervous phenomena would arise from it. These phenomena arise only when man cannot see the reverse side of his being and the urgency of his problem. Only under these circumstances does the phenomena occur which allows expression to the non-conscious side of the soul.
The symptom is thus an indirect expression of the nonconscious wishes, which, were they conscious to us, would come into a violent conflict with our conceptions of morals. This shadowy side of the soul withdraws itself, as has once been said, from the control of the consciousness; by so doing the patient can exert no influence upon it, cannot correct it and can neither come to an understanding with it nor get rid of it, because in reality the patient absolutely does not possess the subconscious passions. Rather they are repressed from out the hierarchy of the conscious soul, they have become autonomous complexes, which can be brought again into consciousness only with great resistance through analysis. Many patients think that the erotic conflict does not exist for them; in their opinion the sexual question is nonsense; they have no sexual feeling. These people forget that in place of that they are crippled by other things of unknown origin. They are subject to hysterical moods, bad temper, crossness, from which they, no less than their associates, suffer. They are tortured by indigestion, by pains of every sort, and are visited by the whole category of other nervous phenomena. They have this in place of what they lack in the sexual territory, because only a few are privileged to escape the great conflict of civilized man of the present day. The great majority inevitably takes part in this common discord.
As specimens of dream-analysis I will give resumes of two histories of illness told me by Dr. Jung.
ANALYSIS AND CURE OF A CASE OF NERVOUS PROSTRATION
A twenty-year-old banker's son, from a large city in Hungary, suddenly grew sick two years ago, shortly after his father had suffered an attack of apoplexy and paralysis of the right side. He is spiritless, restless, not able to work, cannot use his right arm to write, is powerless to put his attention on anything, sleeps badly, etc. No treatment has any helpful effect. He is advised to seek distraction in Paris, but this, too, is of no avail. Then, after months of torture, he came to Zurich to Dr. Jung, who subjected him to analysis. At the second visit the patient behaved extremely mysteriously; he was much disturbed and appeared to be under the influence of an anxious dream, which he had dreamt that night. It required some effort to induce him to tell this dream, and it was only after he had convinced himself that no one could listen in the hall, that this story, not without emotion, came out.
"I see in a vault a coffin in which my father lies, and I beside him; in vain I attempt to remove the lid, and in my horrible fear I awake."
Some days were employed with the analysis of this dream. The explanation of it is: he has a very strong father-complex. From childhood up he has always been with his father, he has assumed the role of his father's wife, has cared for him, lived for him. He often reproached his mother for not making enough of the father, for not always cooking his favorite dish, for sometimes contradicting him, etc. He was always around with his father, worked at his office, served him in all sorts of ways, and anticipated all his wishes. Now, when the father suddenly became an invalid, the conflict arose. He identifies himself with the father. His father's invalidism becomes his own, he cannot think any more, he cannot write any more, and he sees death approaching. In the dream he is apparently dead, but his youth, his strength refuses to die, and this is translated in his attempts to get out of the coffin, which explains the fear.
The explanation brings relaxation. After some days, during which the patient communicates his secret thoughts in detail, he feels very much better, his heavy burden has been rolled away, and he cannot find words enough to express his thanks to the doctor. The latter points out to him that however natural this feeling of thankfulness may be, it is partly a symptom of the cure at his hands. He shows the patient how the latter, who had seen through the analysis that his love for his father has been exaggerated and morbid, had been able to control this, and how he now transfers to him, the assisting physician, the need for love, freed from suffering along the way of sublimated homo-sexuality. He impresses upon him that he must now learn to moderate the sympathy, which he expresses too feelingly, and that he must not desire to see another father in the doctor, but simply a friend, who is teaching him to stand on his own feet and to become an independent man. After a few more weeks the young man was entirely cured of his neurosis, freed from his exaggerations and returned home a well man.
ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF SLEEPLESSNESS
Once when traveling I made the acquaintance of a naturalist who not long before had completed a famous exploring expedition in distant countries. During this expedition he had been almost constantly in peril of his life. Almost every night he had had to stay awake and watch so as not to be set upon and killed. He had been back in England a short time and had completely recovered from the privations and sufferings he had experienced, but he suffered desperately from insomnia. On his return he had slept well, but a month before his sleep had suddenly begun to be disturbed.
Knowing me to be a neurologist, he asked my advice. I inquired about the patient's former life, but discovered that my traveling companion was little inclined to be communicative in this direction, in fact he was strikingly reticent. To my inquiry about the immediate origin of the insomnia, he told me it was immediately connected with a miserable dream which he had dreamt a month past, and from which he had awakened in terrible anxiety. I asked him to tell me this dream and gave him hope that perhaps the analysis of this might succeed in laying bare the cause of the insomnia. The substance of the dream was as follows:
"I was in a narrow gorge, formed by almost perpendicular walls of rock. This made me think of a similar narrow gorge which, during my journey, I had passed through at peril of my life. Upon a jutting rock a hundred yards high above the abyss, I saw a man and woman standing, shoulder to shoulder, both covering their eyes with their hands. They step forward and I see them plunge downwards together, and hear their bodies falling to destruction. Screaming wildly I awoke. Since that time I dare not let myself sleep for fear of the repetition of this dream.
The patient, accustomed to deadly peril on his long expedition, could not explain to himself the anxiety caused by this dream. I called Mr. X's attention to the fact that in my opinion an erotic conflict was concealed in the dream, and asked him point blank whether he had taken part in a love story. At this the patient grew deadly pale, struck the table with his fist and said "That you should have guessed it!" Now the confession followed, how he had had a love affair in which he had not cut a good figure and which ruined a woman's life, and that afterwards he had been violently remorseful and had lived with the idea of suicide. Then he had seized upon the opportunity offered him to lead a dangerous expedition. He wanted to die and here he would not find death ingloriously.
It is clear that the two people upon the rocks above symbolized the two, who went to meet destruction.
Soon afterwards the travelers parted. A year later the newspapers contained the report of the marriage of the famous explorer. The surmise is allowable that the analysis of this dream was the cause of this fortunate solution.
As I have already pointed out, the original cathartic method of Breuer and Freud, explained to some extent, is still followed by some investigators, by Muthman, Bezzola, Frank and many others. I had the opportunity in June and July, 1912, of observing for some time the treatment of patients by Dr. Frank in Zurich at his private clinic, and of gaining for myself a satisfactory idea of his technique. Frank by no means rejects the Freudian psychoanalysis with all its helps, but uses it only when he does not succeed in hypnotizing his patient. Preferably, and in a great number of cases, he uses, in a state of hypnotism, a cathartic method he originated.
Where Breuer and Freud profited from the spontaneous or the provoked somnabulistic state of the patient, and by questioning dug up the hidden depths, Frank decided to be satisfied with a light hypnose, a state of hypotaxie, which might be termed analogous to the half-conscious state of the person who after taking a mid-day nap frequently denies having been asleep. In this condition we can give an account on waking of what happened around us. One sleeps and one does not sleep; the upper-consciousness then can control what the sub-consciousness brings up.
Frank says that, except in the peculiarity that he is satisfied with a lighter degree of hypnose, his method differs from that of Breuer and Freud in that generally he does not question the patient when under hypnotism, neither suggests. Experience has taught him, he says, that the ideas loaded with affect, spontaneously discharge. They are the very ones which would do so in a dream, but are differentiated from the occurrences in the dream in the sense that these last enter phantastically dressed, while the first express themselves with the mental affects belonging to them, precisely as they were lived through.
Precisely as in the primitive-cathartic method, the affects pushing in here are disemburdened here, but at the same time, the connection between the existent sick-phenomena and the causes having a place here were automatically conscious to the patient. In some cases suggestion is called upon for help in order to free an affect or to direct the attention to the expected scene.
In most cases the process goes on itself, after the introduction of hypnosis. If the sleep is too deep, then the ideas are transferred into real dreams, which the patient immediately recognizes as such, or the production of scenes discontinues; the superconsciousness no longer works.
The scenes described are usually recalled by the patients, just as they were experienced by them, even when taken from the earliest youth. The reality of the events which happened in childhood, lived over again in hypnose, are substantiated as much as possible by the patient's parents or associates. He succeeds best in inducing this semi-sleep by exhorting the patient as he closes his eyes not to bother about whether he sleeps or not, but to fasten his attention upon the scenes which are about to present themselves; that is, to think himself, so to speak, into the state of someone at a moving picture show.
As an example I give a fragment of a Frankian analysis of a case of
FEAR NEUROSIS (ANGST-NEUROSE)
Y. B., born 1883, a law clerk. Patient comes on the third of December, 1908, to Frank's consultation hour; he complains of periods of short breath; during these he feels as if his heart were ceasing to beat, especially when he is just going to bed. He feels then as if something heavy were striking him on the chest, great restlessness, and a feeling of faintness comes over him. After taking a glass of wine the condition is aggravated and becomes insupportable. These attacks come once or twice a day, mostly in the evenings. At times they keep off for eight or ten days. He lives continually in an excited state, he suffers from palpitations of the heart, from pain in the left thigh, pain in the left side, and at night cannot get to sleep.
Patient attributes this condition to an automobile accident which happened to him on June 2, 1908. Even before this accident he had been a trifle nervous on account of overwork. In the automobile accident he had been thrown out, and had been thrown a distance of ten or fifteen yards. The automobile, which was at high speed, had also plunged down the decline, but luckily the patient was not caught directly under the machine. He did not lose consciousness, and escaped with some scratches and a bad fright; it was a marvel that he and the chauffeur escaped with their lives. He plainly recalls thinking, during the fall, that his last hour had come, and even yet is amazed how extremely untroubled he had been by that thought. The days following the accident he felt as if his face were burning, and he was inwardly agitated whenever he thought of an automobile. On June 30, 1908, he was obliged to take a business journey. While seated in the station restaurant it suddenly grew dark before his eyes. He could breathe only with difficulty, his heartbeats were irregular and he had a strange sensation of fear. This condition lasted the whole day. On the return journey his train ran into an automobile truck. The patient was thrown to the floor of the coupe by the shock. This incident made a great impression upon him; nevertheless, for eight days he was free from the uneasiness already described. After that an attack of fear again set in, continuing at intervals, with periods of greater or lesser violence, until the present.
December 7, 1908. A first attempt to induce hypnosis was successful.
December 8, 1908. Patient goes to sleep immediately, becomes frightened and gives frequent signs of terror. When awakened, he mentioned that he had had a feeling as if he were falling into a hole, that had given him a very strange sensation. The patient speaks while he sleeps; his super-consciousness therefore remains awake and is able to take notice directly of the scene taking place. After some minutes he sees in the hypnosis a locomotive approaching. He cries out, "There it comes out of the tunnel." He is afraid of being run over, and is terrified. Two years previously he had been through this scene. He was standing on the track when a train approached, and he was afraid of being run over. In his sleep, the patient communicates the details and sees everything clearly. After a short interval of complete rest, he begins to breathe heavily, his pulse quickens, then he cries out in fright and excitement and dread, "Now it's coming, now the auto's coming, it's turning over, we're under it, there it's riding over us!" Gradually he quiets down again, and after a quarter of an hour, awakes. He says he now feels something lifted from his chest, that he has slept well, and feels better. He recalls everything. The train came out of the tunnel with gleaming lights; this scene took place in the evening. The automobile scene was reproduced precisely as he had taken part in it, no detail escaped him; his breathing is unobstructed now, and he has no more heart palpitations.
On the day appointed for the seance I was unexpectedly obliged to go away. When I wished to resume the treatment, January 9, the patient wrote me that his condition was strikingly improved, the heart palpitations and feelings of anxiety had not reappeared. His pleasure in life and work had returned once more, his night's rest left nothing to be desired, his appetite was excellent, therefore he thought that further treatment was not necessary for the present. To a later inquiry, February 12, 1910, a year afterwards, I obtained this answer: "Without exaggeration I am able to write you that in my whole life I have never felt so well as now. There has been no question of any nervous attacks or feelings of dread. My weight, which had gone down to fifty-eight kilos during my nervous sickness, has gone up to seventy kilos."
When Frank shuts himself up with his patients in a room, from which all outer noises are excluded as much as possible, by means of double windows and doors, although he—by means of electric light signals visible to him alone—keeps in touch with the servant outside, he has the patient recline as comfortably as possible upon a low sofa. He kneels on a cushion at the head, bends down over the patient and has the latter look upwards directly into his eyes. Meanwhile he lets his left hand rest upon the patient's forehead and gently presses the latter's eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. As soon as the patient shows signs of weariness, he carefully gets up, takes a seat next to the patient and continues carefully observant of the latter's behavior and expression of countenance. He makes note of everything that shows itself and rouses the patient after about a quarter of an hour, unless the latter awakes spontaneously. Now he talks over with him the material which has been procured and then has the patient go into a renewed hypnosis, until the end of an hour. Sometimes the seances are protracted when important scenes come up, and in the interest of the treatment it might be lengthened to two or even three hours.
Bezzola makes use of a small, light, black silk mask, which he puts on the eyes of the patient. He induces hypnosis, and for the rest follows Frank's technique already described.
While analysts who avail themselves of hypnosis as a means of help have all their patients take a reclining position, those who have given up hypnotism in their treatment, have also given up this reclining position. Freud continues to prefer having the patient assume a reclining position, and takes his position with his back to the patient, behind the head of the sofa. He considers that this manner of treatment induces the greatest calmness in the patient and makes it easier for him to express himself and to confess. He keeps as quiet as possible, listens with undivided attention, does not take any notes during the seance, not wishing to give rise to the suspicion that all the confession will be written down and perhaps seen by other eyes.
Jung receives the patient in his study just as he would receive any ordinary visitor. He thinks that in this way the patient is put most at his ease and that it makes him feel he is not considered as a patient, but rather as some one who, being in difficulties, comes to ask advice and needs to tell his troubles to a trusted friend. Even less than Freud does he take notes in the presence of the patient.
Stekel does as Jung, the only difference being that he remains seated at his writing-table and makes notes of the most important points.
The most satisfactory way for the uninitiated to make himself familiar with the technique of psychoanalysis is to submit himself to psychoanalysis. For that purpose one turns to an experienced analyst, and takes to him one's ideas and dreams. Consequently I submitted myself for two months to analysis from Dr. Jung, who in that way initiated me into the practice of psychological investigation. The interpretation of one's own dreams, reading and studying of the principal literature about analytical psychology or deep psychology, as Bleuler calls it; and the application of what is thus learned, at the start to simple, later to more difficult cases, must do the rest in making an independent investigator in this branch of psycho-therapy.
As has already been said, psychoanalysis aims at bringing into consciousness all the forgotten things. When all the gaps in the memory are filled in, when all the puzzling operations of the psychological life are explained, then the continuance and the return of the suffering has become impossible. The attainment of this ideal state is truly the attainment of Utopia. Most certainly a treatment does not need to be carried so far. One may be satisfied with the practical cure of the patient, with the restoration of his power for work, and with the abolition of the most difficult functional disturbances.
It is applicable in cases of chronic psychoneurosis which exhibit no difficult or dangerous phenomena. Among these are counted all sorts of compulsive neuroses, compulsive thoughts, compulsive behavior and cases of hysteria, where phobias and obsessions play a chief role, also somatic phenomena of hysteria which do not need to be acted upon quickly, such as, for example, anorexia. In acute cases of hysteria it is better to wait for a calmer period before applying psychoanalysis. In cases of nervous prostration this manner of treatment, which demands the serious co-operation and attention of the patient, which lasts a long time and at first takes no notice of the continuance of the phenomena, is difficult. This form of psychotherapy places great demands on the physician's patience and understanding. Psychoanalyses which last more than a year, are no rarity. It cannot be applied to the seriously degenerated; to people who have passed far beyond middle life, because among the last named the accumulated material compasses too much; to those who are entangled in a state of great fear and who live in deep depression. Analysis can be applied to the neuroses of children. It is desirable in those cases for the physician to be supported by a trusted person, as for example a woman assistant, but preferably by parents enlightened sufficiently to observe the spontaneous remarks of the child, to make notes of them, and communicate them to the physician. According to the experiments undertaken by the Zurich school, the expectation is justified within certain limits, that psychoanalysis will be therapeutically useful in certain forms of paranoia and dementia praecox.
I think that it will soon be said of psychoanalysis, as of so many other systems which like it were decried and yet later were highly valued, that the enemies of to-day are the friends of to-morrow.
Whoever wishes to judge Freud must take the trouble to initiate himself seriously into his doctrines, and use his methods for a long time in practice, according to his instructions.
Most of the condemnations are brought forward by investigators who judge a priori, without acquaintance with the facts, upon uncertain theoretical grounds and with prepossession against his sexual theory.
Whoever initiates himself seriously into the practice of psychoanalysis, will arrive at the conclusion that this new form of psychical curing deserves, to a great degree, the attention of the physician and that it may be considered as an enrichment of the armory of the psychotherapy, not yet sufficiently valued.
Does it render other forms of psychotherapy superfluous? There can be no thought of that.
Taking the pros and cons given here, we see that each of the forms of psychical therapy deserves in its turn preference, and that all support and complement each other.
Jung, as well as Freud, both of whom have made their life's aim the perfection of psychoanalysis, and who for that reason now concern themselves exclusively with it, appreciate all forms of verbal treatment, as well with hypnotism as without it. Hypnotic suggestion and suggestion given when awake was used at an earlier period by both of them with good results, and they still are not averse to using this method where quick comprehension and the immediate subdual of a troublesome symptom is desired.
The psychoanalyst follows the longer road, and assails rather the root of the sickness; it works more radically; hypnotic treatment takes hold quicker and is directed at the symptoms.
Freud explains it in this manner: when one treats the patient by hypnotic suggestion, one introduces a new idea from outside in exchange for the morbid idea; if psychoanalysis is applied, then one simply eliminates the morbid idea. Within certain limits the modus agendi of the two methods is in absolute opposition.
The suggestion method, substituting one idea for another, puts in something; the analytical, expelling an idea, takes out something. Both aim at and obtain the same end, a more or less lasting cure. Suggestion neutralizes, stops the poison; analysis expels the harmful matter. The latter manner of treatment is positive and the most decisive.
"Don't we all analyze?" Bernheim inquires, and once more I agree that all forms of psychotherapeutics do, but there is a difference in analysis.
Superficial analysis can bring us a long way toward the goal. In many cases it may suffice. But the profound, the Freudian analysis, is what we need if we wish to attain the radical cure of psychoneurosis, as far as we can ever speak of a radical cure. Many cases of illness do not lend themselves to deep analysis.
When, because of the nature of the illness, or the lifetime, or the feeble intelligence of the patient, or because of temporary circumstances of a moral or material nature, its adaptation is excluded or impossible, it is advisable, especially in chronic cases— to take refuge in the more palliative forms of the psychic methods of cure.
Thus the psychotherapeutic as moral leader fills the role of guide (directeur-d'ames), one who helps along the doubter, encourages the toilers, calms the frightened, arouses courage, keeps up hope and comforts where comfort is needed.
Pierre Janet, in his instructive book ("Obsessions et Idees Fixes"), observes that one of his chronic patients gave him the pet name of "le remonteur de pendules," an expression which luminously describes the role of the physician of souls, who, tirelessly, day in, day out, lifts the burdens, and for a time breathes new life into the depressed.
Hypnotic suggestion, which induces sleep, stills pain, silences fear, abolishes functional disturbances, works chiefly palliatively. The place for its application is where quick comprehension is desired. In its simplest form it resembles the treatment of a mother, who soothes her child with pacifying words and loving touch, and rocks him to sleep, and also it resembles the behavior of the father, who asserts his authority by force and breaks down the childish opposition. We find hypnotic suggestion, perfected and clothed in its scientific garment, in Liebeault's assertion: "It is a cure of authority, of faith, of confidence, a cure which frequently performs semi-miracles. Respect on one side, sympathy on the other, is what gives the hypnotiser results."
However highly we may value this last mentioned form of therapy, however numerous the cures due to it may be, however indispensable it may be in the practice of medicine, yet its splendor pales before the light which shines forth from the cures which aim at reeducation and which are directed toward the understanding. Those are the cures which make use of analysis.
One method, which we will call the superficial analytical method, is directed exclusively toward the upper consciousness and cures principally through exhorting, convincing, exercising and hardening. Its sponsors are Bernheim, Rosenbach, P. E. Levy, Dubois. At least it is true to its birth, it has suggestion blood in its veins.
The other method is the deeper: the Freudian analysis. This does not allow itself to be satisfied with seeing only one side of the medal, it does not limit its field of activity to the superliminal consciousness, in searching for the causes of psychogenic illnesses, but it penetrates into the strata which lie hidden under the threshold of the consciousness.
Where the moral and the suggestive methods of cure are limited exclusively to symptomatic treatment, the first form of educative therapy, limited merely to a superficial analysis, is only partly symptomatic, but the second form of educative therapy penetrates with its deep-going analysis to the root of the trouble, and has as its aim a fundamental cure.
Only too frequently the physician must be satisfied with the cure of the symptoms, with lightening the load. He always strives to remove the cause. Freud's great service is that he has opened before the physician a path which leads to the cause.
These lines of Vondel's seem as if composed for him:
"The physician must not only know How high the pulse has mounted, And where the sickness lies, which makes him groan with pain, But he must see the cause, from where The great weakness of this sickness came."
REVIEWS
AN ELEMENTARY STUDY OF THE BRAIN, BASED ON THE DISSECTION OF THE BRAIN OF THE SHEEP. By Eben W. Fiske, A.M., M.D. Illustrated with photographs and diagrams by the author. The Macmillan Company, New. York, 1913.
The study of the brain is confessedly a difficult subject, and particularly so for the elementary student. There is certainly no royal road to its conquest, but this is an added reason why an introduction to its study should be made as simple as the subject permits, and also as interesting. Dr. Fiske has attempted this task in this book, which he entitles "An elementary study of the brain." The brain of the sheep is chosen as the basis of study because of its availability, its relative simplicity of structure, and its essential similarity to that of man. It appears to the author, and we think with justice, that the subject should be approached from a biological standpoint; hence, throughout the book, there is constant reference to the evolution of nervous structure and to fundamental conceptions of a biological character. Further than this, the relations of cerebral anatomy and function, together with allied psychological considerations, demand continual reference as a supplement to purely anatomical considerations. The secret of exciting interest in any anatomical study surely lies in a consideration of the function of the organ or structure in relation to its anatomical form. Bare descriptions cannot and should not inspire interest, whereas the driest anatomical facts, if seen in their broader relationships, at once assume a significance in the student's mind which may be attained in no other way.
The first chapter is a brief statement of phylogeny, followed, as are succeeding chapters, by directions to the student regarding means of study. The second chapter concerns itself with ontogeny, and the student is wisely advised to make drawings of various stages in the development of the brain of one of the higher mammals. An actual brain is always to be preferred to a model. The third chapter gives directions of a simple and practical sort as to methods of removing the sheep's brain. Thereafter, chapters follow, descriptive of the various surfaces of the brain, of sagital, horizontal and transverse sections, and of certain of the internal structures and the brain stem.
A summary concludes the volume, and a very brief but well selected bibliography. The illustrations are thoroughly adequate, the excellent method being used of photographic reproductions, with accompanying descriptive plates done in outline. In general, the book, modest though it is, should prove a most admirable laboratory guide, not only for students of zoology, but also for those who propose, as physicians, to make a final study of the human brain. It is, no doubt, more difficult to write an acceptable elementary text-book than a more complete treatise, but the author, we have no hesitation in saying, has succeeded in this object, and has added a book of positive value to the long list which has gone before. The BNA nomenclature has been adopted in part, but by no means to the exclusion of the old terminology, which is certainly a far more efficient means of introducing an ultimate uniform nomenclature than an immediate complete change to the BNA system. The text is well printed and readable, and the proof reading in general good. We note, however, on page 86, that the name Von Gudden is spelled with one d instead of two. E. W. TAYLOR.
THE BACKWARD CHILD, A STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BACKWARDNESS: A PRACTICAL
MANUAL FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. By Barbara Spoffard Morgan. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, New York, 1914. Pp. xvii plus 263.
This book by Mrs. Morgan, which is somewhat unique and certainly very different from other books on the same subject, promises to be one of the most widely read educational works which has recently appeared. It is based on two years' experience in an experimental clinic for backward children in New York City and the author states that, "It is an effort to persuade teachers and parents, in spite of a hide-bound educational system, to study the children that interest them as individuals and to recognize their faculties and tendencies." It "Looks to a future when teachers will so understand every child's mental structure that his whole education will be directed to the fortifying of his weak points and the development of his tendencies."
The author terms her process "mental analysis" and says it differs from the Binet and Simon tests in that they are merely to classify children, and her method discovers peculiarities and also gives the training necessary to bring the child up to normal. She gives a psychological basis for her work which will be surprising to many readers because of its great divergence from the usual psychological treatment. The child's mind is considered as having four primary processes, namely: (1) Sense Impressions, (2) Recollections of Sense Impressions, (3) Association Channels (4) Abstraction Processes. As the child grows older these are elaborated into Imagination, Reasoning, and Expression. Attention is of three kinds: (1) Homogeneous Attention or concentrating, which consists in attending to one thing for a period of time; (2) Simultaneous Attention or observing, which consists in giving attention to a number of things at once; and (3) Disparate Attention, or giving attention to two or more things over a period of time. Memory may be (1) Automatic, (2) Voluntary, or (3) Retentive. The function of the tests is to determine just which one of these processes are weak or strong and discover a method of education which is suited to the individual. Other mental processes, such as sensation, perception, abstraction, and judgment are discussed, and an interesting treatment distinguishing between the analytic and synthetic type of mind is given.
One of the most important parts of the book is the discussion of the way in which the tests are given. She insists that the relation of the child and the examiner be very personal and informal and that the process be varied as much as possible in order to prevent crystallization. Many of the tests are the same, or much the same, as those of Simon and Binet, but the greatest of liberty is taken in adapting them to the particular case. Much use is made of conversation, puzzle-pictures and other little friendly means by which the personal characteristics of the child may be learned. After this is done, the proper training of the child is to be selected and the effort made to bring him back to normality, for which purpose, some quaint and interesting devices are used. One case given is that of a little girl whose senses of sound and form were defective and who therefore could not learn her letters. These letters were pasted on the keys of a piano and she was taught to play a piece with one finger, meanwhile chanting over the names of the letters as they were struck. In this way her sense of sound was trained, she learned her letters and gained ability to learn more and faster. Abstraction may be strengthened by having the child measure distances with a rule, first calculating the distance with his eye. The power of association may be made stronger by having the individual sort words or pictures which are pasted on slips of cardboard; he is to arrange them according to meaning or according to the activities with which they have to do. Simultaneous attention may be trained by such games as "Hide-the-thimble" or Jack-straws, and homogeneous attention may be trained by some such action as hammering nails in the upper left hand corners of all the squares on a board. Imagination is developed by retelling stories, and invention by solving puzzles; voluntary memory is strengthened by writing original rhymes and automatic memory may be strengthened by having the child write out a list of all the things in his kitchen or any other room with which he may happen to be familiar.
Different types of backward children are described and a few pages are devoted to a discussion of hysteria.
It is a book which will, in all probability, arouse considerable discussion and which will find some warm friends and some determined enemies. As one more publication calling attention to this important problem, it is of great value and it will probably be read more widely than any other book in this field which has appeared. Perhaps its greatest practical value lies in its suggestiveness as to the ways in which one may use his personality and initiative in dealing with backward children, rather than sticking so closely to prescribed tests and methods. RAYMOND BELLAMY. Emory & Henry College, Emory, Va.
CONTINUITY: THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR 1913. By Sir Oliver Lodge. G. P. Putnam s Sons, New York and London, 1914. Pp. v, 131.
The most obvious particular wisdom of the present scientific period is undoubtedly just that concept denoted by the title of this volume, continuity. And this wisdom is advanced wisdom and, withal, wisdom which is very expedient and even indispensable at this day, as a reaction required to set right the over-specialization of recent minds thoughtful only of some little branch of knowledge. Just in proportion as one esteems "authority" will one give heed to the pronouncement of the presidential address before the British Association, yet for its own intrinsic sake it is a piece of work which cannot be ignored.
Interesting and revolutionary as are the recent additions to philosophical physics brought about by the discovery of radium and its like, it is the other phase of this great physicist's mental trend which particularly interests the student of human behavior— that wisdom which gives him (as it gave William James, and for a like reason), the bravery to look a bit beyond the more or less materialistic confines of mere science into the broader realm. And strange, is it not, that a man NEED be brave in this twentieth century Domini to discuss spiritism and survival and telepathy? Only those do it who cannot "lose their jobs." Can one indeed honestly doubt that many an intelligent psychologist to-day is kept from investigating this pressing phase of knowledge largely, or even solely, by the materialistic incubus whose continuance still stands for an academic salary usually sufficient to buy wife and children bread, if not a little meat?
"Material bodies are all that we have any control over, are all that we are experimentally aware of; anything that we can do with these is open to us; any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they can be applied much more widely, and that the psychic region can be studied and brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair field. Let those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means develop their thesis as far as they can; but let us try what we can do in the psychical region, and see which wins. Our methods are really the same as theirs—the subject-matter differs. Neither should abuse the other for making the attempt."
Here is this matter in a nutshell, and the evolution of cosmology in the last few years makes this argument and this plea greatly more persuasive still, for it forges one more link in the actual knowledge of continuity.
Twenty-four pages of useful, explanatory notes follow in this volume, the text of the Address. The book lacks an index. To those sapient ones who have not already saved the important little work out of Science, the dollar which this volume costs is a dollar well-spent, unless, indeed, philosophy be to him but a reproach. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN. Tufts Medical and Dental Schools.
ADVENTURINGS IN THE PSYCHICAL. By H. Addington Bruce. Little, Brown & Co., 1914.
Professor Flournoy, in the Preface to his Spiritism and Psychology, made the remark: "It will be a great day when the subliminal psychology of Myers and his followers, and the abnormal psychology of Freud and his school, succeed in meeting, and will supplement and complete one another. That will be a great forward step in science and in the understanding of our nature." (Page VI.)
Any one who attacks the problem from this standpoint, in the right manner, is to be commended; and this is, very largely, the method of attack taken by a certain group of "psychical researches"; it is also the method of approach of Mr. Bruce, in the book under review. Although it will probably contain but little new to the student of abnormal psychology, it is, nevertheless, a welcome and extremely sane presentation of the problems discussed; while, for the general public, the effect of the book cannot be other than beneficial,— giving a sound and scientific view-point of many of these obscure and outlying problems.
Much of this book will be familiar to readers of the JOURNAL. The chapters on the "Subconscious" (extended and amplified in his final chapter on "The Larger Self"), "Dissociation and Disease," and "The Singular Case of B. C. A.," contain a summary of material long familiar to general psychological students—though this data has not been sufficiently popularized as yet,—while the case of B. C. A. is a relief after the oft-quoted earlier cases!
The first chapter, "Ghosts and their Meaning," deals with apparitions of the living, of the dying, and of the dead—according to the tentative arrangement of these cases made by the English S. P. R. Most of these are quoted from the Society's Proceedings, and the usual theories are offered to account for them; in the case of apparitions of the dead, e. g., "ghosts," the theory of deferred telepathic suggestion being held. This brings us naturally to the second chapter, "Why I believe in Telepathy," which again contains a summary of much of the S. P. R. work in this field; accompanied, however, by some other cases and a few interesting incidents which fell under the author's personal observation. The next two chapters deal with "Clairvoyance and Crystal Gazing" and "Automatic Speaking and Writing" respectively. Here, again, the bulk of the material is familiar to psychical and psychological students; though it must be admitted that this material is all excellently and carefully summarized. The author's attitude, throughout, is strictly critical and scientific; and while he believes in telepathy and other supernormal powers, he rejects spiritism as an explanation, and his views throughout are temperate and modest.
The remaining chapter, dealing as it does with "Poltergeists and Mediums," takes us into the more dubious field of "physical phenomena"—spontaneous and experimental—and cases are discussed which lie outside the province of the psychologist,— since they entrench more upon the domain of physics and biology. As such they have been treated and discussed by the majority of Continental savants.
One word more regarding the famous medium, Eusapia Palladino, whom Mr. Bruce refers to in several passages in this Chapter, referring to her in a footnote on page 196, as "The discredited Eusapia Palladino, once the marvel of two continents." May I take this occasion to repeat here what I have often repeated in public and private, elsewhere? and that is, that I retain my unshaken belief, amounting to a conviction, in the genuineness of Eusapia's power, and that, despite the trickery which was undoubtedly discovered here—and which had also been discovered, I may add, more than twenty years before she ever came to this country—she yet possesses genuine, remarkable powers of a supernormal character, and this belief, I may say, is shared equally by all the continental investigators, who remain unaffected by the so-called American expose. A statement of their attitude is perhaps well summarized by Flournoy, in his Spiritism and Psychology (Chap. VII); while I have published the records of the American seances— for those who may be interested—in my "Personal Experiences in Spiritualism," where copious extracts from the shorthand notes of the American sittings are given.
To return, however: If there is a criticism to make of Mr. Bruce's book, it is that it displays a lack of personal investigation and experimentation, and bears throughout the ear-marks of a literary compilation. But this is, after all, not a serious detraction from a work of this character,—which is, as I have said before, excellently done. HEREWARD CARRINGTON.
DES TROUBLES PSYCHIQUES ET NEVROSIQUES POST-TRAUMATIQUES, Par R. Benon.
Ancien interne de la Clinique des Maladies Mentales et de l'Encephale a la
Faculte de Paris, Medecin de l'Hospice General de Nantes (Quartiers
d'Hospice). G. Steinheil, editeur, Paris, 1913; pp. x-449.
The author in this volume has written a clinical and medico-legal treatise on traumatic nervous affections from a broad and philosophical standpoint. The subject is treated under the following headings: "Generalities," in which is discussed the historical development of our knowledge of the effects of traumatism, the etiology, the evolution of the various disturbances, and the legal side of the questions at issue.
Following this introduction, under Chapter I, the general topic of what the writer terms the traumatic dysthenias or the traumatic sthenopathies is discussed under the following subheadings: (a) Simple post-traumatic asthenia; (b) Post-traumatic astheno-mania; (c) Prolonged asthenia and chronic traumatic asthenia, under which he includes traumatic neurasthenia, traumatic hystero-neurasthenia, traumatic neurosis, and traumatic psychoneurosis; (d) Chronic post-traumatic mania; (e) Periodic post-traumatic dysthenias; (f) Asthenic mania and pathological anatomy. Chapter II, under the general heading, "Traumatic Dysthymias: (a) Anxiety post-traumatic hyperthymia; (b) Traumatic hypochondriasis and traumatic hysteria; (c) Special hyperthymia of accidents; (d) Hysterical and traumatic crises; (e) Prolonged or permanent post-traumatic disturbances of character in children and adults. Chapter III, under the general heading, "Traumatic Dysthymias": (a) Traumatic amnesia; (b) Post-traumatic Korsakoff syndrome; (c) Traumatic mental confusion; (d) Post-traumatic agnosia; (e) Post-traumatic dementias; (f) Systematized chronic post-traumatic deliriums. Chapter IV, under the general heading, "Psychic states and Diverse Post-Traumatic Neuroses": (a) Post-traumatic epilepsy; (b) Traumatic aphasia; (c) Alcoholism, traumatism and hallucinatory conditions; (d) Post-traumatic sensual perversions; (e) Pains, vertigos, deafness, etc., following trauma; (f) Distant post-traumatic psychic disorders with cerebral lesions; (g) Unclassifiable observations. To this comprehensive material is added an appendix on the topic of psychic and neurotic disturbances as indications for trephining.
This outline of the contents of the book, which contains in addition many subheadings, gives a sufficiently clear idea of its scope and of the pains which the author has taken to subdivide his subject matter to the last possible degree. Whether such a detailed classification has merit sufficient to justify its complexity must be left to the individual reader to determine. It may, however, with justice be said that the author has spared no pains to illustrate by case reports the various phases of traumatic disorder which he enumerates. He has a keen sense of the significance of psychiatric knowledge in a proper understanding of the various results of trauma, and lays special stress upon the breadth of the psychiatric field, under which he properly enough includes the various so-called psychoneuroses as well as epilepsy, tics and aphasia. He believes that one may only arrive at a diagnostic criterion of such affections through the sensations and emotions expressed by the patients. The somatic phenomena he regards as always subordinate and accessory. Under this point of view, he attacks his problem, and with considerable success An admirable brief historical review of traumatism in relation to the nervous system constitutes a valuable section of the book, in which he brings out the conflicting views which have prevailed since the earlier work of Erichsen down through the fundamental investigations of Westphal, Charcot, Knapp, Oppenheim and others.
The author finds fault with the common use of the word traumatism in the sense of trauma, and correctly draws attention to the fact that traumatism should express a general condition, whereas, trauma should be used as indicative of a local lesion. This distinction has been too often overlooked, with resulting confusion.
In general, the book represents a vast amount of painstaking thought and an earnest but somewhat confusing attempt to bring light into the somewhat dark places of a much-discussed subject, which has frequently been the source of more or less acrimonious discussion. Not the least significant part of the volume is the constant reference to the legal implications of the traumatic affections. It should therefore be useful, not only to the physician, but also to the legal profession. It will doubtless be used rather as a book of reference than as a readable treatise. E. W. TAYLOR.
VERBRECHERTYPEN. 1 Heft. Geliebtenmorder von Albrecht Wetzel und Karl
Wilmanns. Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin: 1913.
With a better understanding of psychopathic phenomena, the underlying psychology of criminology becomes more clearly defined. Maladjustment may express itself in an insane outbreak, criminal act, or in an anti-social deed, indeed, in all of them the underlying phenomenon is a psychopathic condition which comes under the realm of abnormal psychology. The large group of criminals SHOULD not be looked upon as a homogenous class, but the individuality of criminal and the type of the delinquent act in reaction to his heredity, mental make-up and environmental influences should be fully considered. Herein lies the great value of Wetzel's and Willmann's Monograph—these authors report three cases in which criminal acts were attributed to abnormal mental life.
The first case was that of a young man of twenty-three, who showed a psychopathic personality with tainted heredity on the paternal side. He was subject to convulsive attacks, which were regarded as hysterical and not epileptic. In his intelligence he was above the average. He was engaged to a young woman, and because she refused to marry him, he at first contemplated to take his life, but later shot at her three times without injuring her, and then made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. His delinquent act was determined not only by his environment, but also by his peculiar type of personality, which was taken into consideration by the court, and on this ground he was acquitted.
In the second case, a young man of twenty shot his fiancee through the temporal region, injuring her severely. Soon after committing this act he surrendered himself to the police. He also showed striking evidences of a psychopathic personality with a strong suggestion of epilepsy, but with intact intelligence. He was given to periods of depression and was unstable mentally. He was easily suggestible and his general conduct was not only controlled by environmental influences, but also by his mood. Suicidal ideas and jealousy played a very important role in his mental life; especially they were marked when he began to keep company with the young woman. Although his abnormal constitution was taken into account, nevertheless he was punished by one year's imprisonment. During confinement he attempted suicide, but was unsuccessful. Some time after his release he committed suicide, the cause of which he assigned to an abortion that was induced by his sweetheart.
The third case is very interesting and rather intricate, by reason of the fact that murder or double suicide was suspected. The following are the details of this case: A young man of eighteen kept company with a young woman about the same age, from another town. The girls of the town were jealous of her and began to gossip about her to the extent of casting aspersions upon her character, etc. The young man's father, without investigating this case, forbade his son to marry her. However, the two lovers would have frequent secret rendezvous, and his fiancee became depressed over this scandalous and groundless rumor and also because of the peculiar attitude her young man's father assumed. One evening the young man returned home late, and upon confessing to his father of his secret meetings with his fiancee, he was severely beaten and prohibited to see her again.
A few days later the young man wrote a letter to his sweetheart, telling her of his father's emphatic determinations, but soon they met again and she suggested that they should die together on account of this gossip that was circulated about her. A day following this meeting both of them were missed, and after some search the young woman was found lying on the ground with two shots in her head and one in the breast, and the young man was hanging from a tree, in a near-by wood; the latter was resuscitated, but the former was dead. It is interesting to note that the autopsy showed that death in her case was due to strangulation and not to the bullets. This young man was endowed with a psychopathic personality, and there was a history of short attacks of depression. He received several head traumata and suffered from enuresis in his early life.
Following the resuscitation, he grew confused and excited, and within twenty-four hours he recovered from the acute episode but showed incomplete amnesia for his act. He stated that he remembered firing the shots, but had no remembrance of strangulating her. Soon after this he passed into a peculiar state of confusion; in addition, fabrications and retention defect were also demonstrated. The cerebrospinal fluid revealed some abnormal changes which were suggestive of an organic brain disease. The Wassermann test was negative. Finally, he made a complete recovery except for the incomplete amnesia.
Since the death of the young woman was caused by strangulation, the question had to be decided whether he was the cause of her death or she died as the result of her own hand. The court favored suicide, and held that the bodily injury was inflicted with the pistol by the young man. He received a lenient sentence—only nine months imprisonment. In this case, the type of his personality, and all the circumstances that led to the development of the act were taken into consideration.
Although the authors presented this subject purely objectively, yet their studies are extremely interesting and important, and show conclusively the importance of psychopathological methods in criminology. One who is interested in this subject will find this monograph of great value and help. It may also be added that the authors give a complete list of the casuistic literature of the murder among lovers. MORRIS J. KARPAS.
DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE. AN ESSAY TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. By L.
T. Hobhouse, Martin White Professor of Sociology in the University of
London. Macmillan & Co., London: 1913; pp. xxix, 383.
"Development and Purpose" is essentially the complement of Professor Hobhouse's well-known and valuable "Mind in Evolution," published in 1901; if it were rather a continuation than the complement, many would be pleased, for the exposition already made practically guarantees a rich application, were it undertaken, to matters still further "away" in the realm of thought. The present volume lacks the multitude of scientific data and references which make "Mind in Evolution" so important for the study of psychology (as behavior or not as behavior, as the reader pleases), but it contains in their space many timely discussions, in some cases seemingly prophetic, of teleology in its relation to evolution.
The seventeen chapters of the book (there is also an extremely thoughtful Introduction and a full Index), are divided into two parts, one entitled "Lines of Development" and the other "The Conditions of Development." The reviewer's lazy cortex, and possibly those of other and more leisurely readers, is made glad by a complete chapter-synopsis or syllabus, occupying seven pages). So much of the whole treatise is suggested in the synopsis of the first three chapters that it is well to give them in full, as follows:
"I. The Nature and the Significance of Mental Evolution. (1) The biological view regards Mind as an organ evolved to adapt behavior to the environment, (2) and tends to reduce its action to a mechanical process. (3) Parallelism in the end reduces Mind to an epi-phenomenon {an important undoubted fact which has been often ignored by what are left of the Parallelists!] (4) The object of Comparative Psychology is to determine empirically the actual function of Mind in successive stages of development. (5) It involves a social as well as an individual psychology. (6) The statement of the higher phases also opens up philosophical questions, (7) and on the solution of these depends the final interpretation of the recorded movement.
"II. The Structure of Mind. (1) Mental operations are known in the first instance as objects of consciousness. (2) Mind is the permanent unity including consciousness and the sum of processes continuous with consciousness and determining it. (3) These processes involve, but are not identical with physical processes, constituting with them a psychophysical unity.
"III. The General Function of Mind and Brain. (1) The generic function of Mind, as of the nervous system, is correlation (2) The special organ for effecting fresh correlation is consciousness. (3) The deliverances of consciousness arise from stimuli acting upon structures built up by experience, (4) on foundations laid by heredity, (5) which supplies not only specific adaptations, but a background to the entire life of consciousness."
It would be hard to find a more concise, complete, and timely formularization of the seeming trend of present resultants in this particular direction than these sentences set forth for whomsoever will ponder each carefully-built statement and really understand what it means as part of a system. "Mind is the permanent unity including consciousness and the sum of processes continuous with consciousness and determining it. These processes involve, but are not identical with, physical processes, constituting with them a psychophysical unity,"—this quotation might almost serve as the motto of early Twentieth Century scientific philosophy. It seems to the present reviewer to have almost as much philosophy in it as Harold Hoffding's well-known sentence has of psychology: ("the unity of mental life has its expression not only in memory and synthesis, but also in a dominant fundamental feeling, characterized by the contrast between pleasure and pain, and in an impulse, springing from this fundamental feeling, to movement and activity"). It might be the creed of the Neoidealism.
Hobhouse's discussion of mechanism in relation to teleology and to the universal harmony and reality is fairly representative of the drift of thought as set forth by recent English and French writers such as J. S. Haldane, Oliver Lodge and some of the prominent biologists, and by Henri Bergson: "An organic whole is therefore like a machine in being purposive, though unlike it in that its purpose is within." "A purposive process is one determined by its tendency to produce a certain result, purpose itself being an act [sic] determined in its character by that which it tends to bring about. As such it differs fundamentally from a mechanical cause." "The empirical and philosophical arguments point to the same general conclusion, that reality is the process of the development of Mind." As a guide to one's thinking, and as integrators of one's subconscious intuitions and resultants, such concise formulae certainly have much value, especially when, as here, clearly and ably expounded in the text proper. Tufts College. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY. Isador H. Coriat. Pp. xvi and 428. 2d Ed. Moffat,
Yard & Co., 1914. $2.00 net.
MENTAL MEDICINE & NURSING. Robert Howland Chase. Pp. xv and 244. J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1914. $1.50.
THE TEACHING OF DRAWING. S. Polak and H. C. Whilter. Pp. 168. Warwick &
York, Inc. 85 cents.
OUTLINE OF A STUDY OF THE SELF. Robert M. Yerkes, A.M., Ph.D., and David W.
LaRue, A.M., Ph.D. Pp. 24. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1914.
EROS. Emil Lucka. Pp. xx and 379. G. P. Putnam & Sons. 1915. $1.75.
COLLECTED PAPERS OF MARGARET BANCROFT. Ware Brothers Company, Philadelphia, 1915.
EUGENICS: A SCIENCE AND AN IDEAL. Edgar Schuster. Pp. 263. Warwick &
York, Inc. 40 cents.
LIFE AND WORK OF PESTALOZZI. J. A. Green. Pp. 393. Warwick & York, Inc. $1.40.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE. Wm. Stern. Translated by Guy Montrose Whipple. Pp. 160. Warwick & York $1.25.
THE JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
ANGER AS A PRIMARY EMOTION, AND THE APPLICATION OF FREUDIAN MECHANISMS TO ITS PHENOMENA[*]
[*] Read at a meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, New
York City, May 5, 1915.
BY G. STANLEY HALL
THE exact sciences consist of a body of truth which all accept, and to which all experts strive to contribute. Philosophy, however, like religion, has always been broken into sects, schools or parties, and the body of truth which all accept in these fields is relatively far less, and the antagonistic views far greater. Normal psychology, which a few decades ago, started out to be scientific with the good old ideal of a body of truth semper ubique et ad omnibus, is already splitting into introspectionists, behaviorists, genetic, philosophical and other groups, while in the new Freudian movement, Adler and Jung are becoming sectaries, the former drawing upon himself the most impolitic and almost vituperative condemnation of the father of psychoanalysis. With this latter schism we are not here concerned, but we are deeply concerned with the more general relations between the psychologists of the normal and those of the abnormal; with a very few negligible exceptions psychoanalysis has hardly ever had a place on the program of our American Psychological Association, and the normal has had little representation in your meetings and publications. This I deem unfortunate for both, for unsatisfactory as this sadly needed rapprochement is on the continent, it is far more so here. That the normalists in this country so persistently ignore the unique opportunity to extend their purview into the psychopathological domain at the unique psychological moment that the development of Freudianism has offered, is to me a matter of sad disappointment and almost depression. In reading a plea for Freud in our association of normalists, I am a vox clamantis in deserto and can evoke no response, and even the incursions of psychoanalysis into the domain of biography, myth, religion and dreams, have not evoked a single attempt at appreciation or criticism worthy of mention by any American psychologist of the normal. I have sought in various ways the causes of this reticence, not to say ignorance. While I received various answers, the chief one was to the effect that the alleged hypertrophy of sex in its gross pathological forms, and the conviction of the kind and degree of sex consciousness found in the many hundreds of analyzed cases, are so unique and constitute the very essence of the neurotic and psychotic cases, and conscious and unconscious sex factors are slight or absent in most normal cases, that these patients and their doctors alike are sex-intoxicated, and that the Freudian psychology applies only to perverts and erotomania or other abnormal cases. To ascribe all this aversion to social or ethical repression is both shallow and banousic, for the real causes are both manifold and deeper. They are part of a complicated protest of normality, found in all and even in the resistance of subjects of analysis, which is really a factor which is basal for self-control of the varying good sides of which Freudians tell us nothing. The fact is that there are other things in the human psyche than sex, and its ramifications. Hunger, despite Jung, fear despite Sadger, and anger despite Freud, are just as primary, aboriginal and independent as sex, and we fly in the face of fact and psychic experience to derive them all from sex, although it is freely granted that in morbid cases each may take on predominant sex features. In what follows I can only very briefly hint at the way in which some of the Freudian mechanisms are applied to one of the emotions, viz., anger.
Anger in most of its forms is the most dynamogenic of all the emotions. In paroxysms of rage with abandon we stop at nothing short of death and even mutilation. The Malay running amuck, Orlando Furioso, the epic of the wrath of Achilles, hell-fire, which is an expression of divine wrath, are some illustrations of its power. Savages work themselves into frenzied rage in order to fight their enemies. In many descriptions of its brutal aspects, which I have collected, children and older human brutes spit, hiss, yell, snarl, bite noses and ears, scratch, gouge out eyes, pull hair, mutilate sex organs, with a violence that sometimes takes on epileptic features and which in a number of recorded cases causes sudden death at its acme, from the strain it imposes upon the system. Its cause is always some form of thwarting wish or will or of reduction of self-feeling, as anger is the acme of self-assertion. The German criminalist, Friedrich, says that probably every man might be caused to commit murder if provocation were sufficient, and that those of us who have never committed this crime owe it to circumstances and not to superior power of inhibition. Of course it may be associated with sex but probably no human experience is per se more diametrically opposite to sex. Some temperaments seem to crave, if not need, outbreaks of it at certain intervals, like a well-poised lady, so sweet-tempered that everybody imposed on her, till one day at the age of twenty-three she had her first ebullition of temper end went about to her college mates telling them plainly what she thought of them, and went home rested and happy, full of the peace that passeth understanding. Otto Heinze, and by implication Pfister, think nations that have too long or too assiduously cultivated peace must inevitably sooner or later relapse to the barbarisms of war to vent their instincts for combat, and Crile thinks anger most sthenic, while Cannon says it is the emotion into which most others tend to pass. It has of course been a mighty agent in evolution, for those who can summate all their energies in attack have survived. But few if any impulsions of man, certainly not sex, have suffered more intense, prolonged or manifold repressions. Courts and law have taken vengeance into their hands or tried to, and not only a large proportion of assaults, but other crimes, are still due to explosions of temper, and it may be a factor in nearly every court case. Society frowns on it, and Lord Chesterfield says the one sure and unfailing mark of a gentleman is that he never shows temper. Its manifestations are severely tabooed in home and school. Religion teaches us not to let the sun go down upon our wrath and even to turn the other cheek, so that we go through life chronically afraid that we shall break out, let ourselves go, or get thoroughly mad, so that the moment we begin to feel a rising tide of indignation or resentment (in the nomenclature of which our language is so very rich, Chamberlain having collected scores of English expressions of it), the censorship begins to check it. In many cases in our returns repression is so potent from long practice, that the sweetest smile, the kindest remarks or even deeds are used either to veil it to others, or to evict it from our own consciousness, or else as a self-inflicted penance for feeling it, while in some tender consciences its checked but persistent vestiges may become centers of morbid complexes and in yet other cases it burrows and proliferates more or less unconsciously, and finds secret and circuitous ways of indulgence which only psychoanalysis or a moral or religious confessional could trace.
I. Anger has many modes of Verschiebung, both instinctive and cultivated. One case in our returns carries a bit of wood in his vest-pocket and bites it when he begins to feel the aura of temper. Girls often play the piano loudly, and some think best of all. One plays a particular piece to divert anger, viz., the "Devil's Sonata." A man goes down cellar and saws wood, which he keeps for such occasions. A boy pounds a resonant eavespout. One throws a heavy stone against a white rock. Many go off by themselves and indulge in the luxury of expressions they want none to hear. Others take out their tantrum on the dog or cat or perhaps a younger child, or implicate some absent enemy, while others curse. A few wound themselves, and so on, till it almost seems, in view of this long list of vicariates, as if almost any attack, psychic or physical, might thus be intensified, and almost anything or person be made the object of passion. Be it remembered, too, that not a few look, do, think, feel their best under this impulsion.
II. Besides these modes of Abreagierung there are countless forms of sublimation. In anger a boy says: I will avenge myself on the bully who whipped me and whom I cannot or will not whip, by besting him in his studies, class-work, composition, or learn skilful stunts that he cannot do, dress, or behave better, use better language, keep better company, and thus find my triumph and revenge. A man rejected or scorned by a woman sometimes makes a great man of himself, with the motivation more or less developed to make her sorry or humiliated. Anger may prompt a man to go in to win his enemy's girl. A taunt or an insult sometimes spurs the victim of it to towering ambition to show the world and especially the abuser better, and to be able to despise him in return; and there are those who have been thus stung to attempt greatness and find the sweetest joy of success in the feeling that by attaining it they compensate for indignities they suffered in youth. In fact, when we analyze ambition and the horror of Minderwertigkeit that goes with it, we shall doubtless find this factor is never entirely absent, while if we were to apply the same pertinacity and subtlety that Jung in his "Wandlungen" has brought to bear in working over the treacherous material of mythology, we might prove with no less verisimilitude than he has shown the primacy of the libido that in the beginning was anger, and that not Anaxagoras' love or the strife of Heraclitus was the fons et origo of all things, that the Ichtrieb is basal, and that the fondest and most comprehensive of all motives is that to excel others, not merely to survive, but to win a larger place in the sun, and that there is some connection between the Darwinian psychogenesis and Max Stirner and Nietzsche, which Adler has best evaluated.
III. Anger has also its dreams and reveries. When wronged the imagination riots in fancied humiliation and even tortures of an enemy. An object of hate may be put through almost every conceivable series of degradation, ridicule, exposure and disgrace. He is seen by others for what our hate deems him to be. All disguises are stripped off. Children sometimes fancy a hated object of anger flogged until he is raw, abandoned by all his friends, an outcast, homeless, alone, in the dark, starving, exposed to wild animals, and far more often more prosaic fancies conceive him as whipped by a parent or stronger friend, or by the victim himself later. Very clever strategies are thought out in detail by which the weaker gets even with or vanquishes the stronger, and one who suffers a rankling sense of injustice can hardly help day-dreaming of some form of comeuppance for his foe, although it takes years to do it. In these reveries the injurer in the end almost always gives up and sues for mercy at the feet of his quondam victim. So weird and dramatic are these scenes often that to some minds we must call anger and hate the chief springs of the imagination. A pubescent girl who was deeply offended went off by herself and held an imaginary funeral of her enemy, hearing in fancy the disparaging remarks of the bystanders, and when it was all over and the reaction came, she made up with the object of her passion by being unusually sweet to her and even became solicitous about her health as fearing that her revery might come true. We all too remember Tolstoi's reminiscences when, having been flogged by his tutor, he slunk off to the attic, weeping and broken-hearted, and finally after a long brooding resolved to run away and become a soldier, and this he did in fancy, becoming corporal, lieutenant, captain, colonel. Finally came a great battle where he led a desperate charge that was crowned with victory, and when all was over and he stood tottering, leaning on his sword, bloody and with many a wound, and the great Czar of all the Russias approached, saluted him as saviour of his fatherland and told him to ask whatever he wanted and it was his, replied magnanimously that he had only done his duty and wanted no reward. All he asked was that his tutor might be brought up and his head cut off. Then the scene changed to other situations, each very different, florid with details, but motivated by ending in the discomfiture of the tutor. In the ebb or ambivalent reaction of this passion he and the tutor got on better.
IV. Richardson has collected 882 cases of mild anger, introspected by graduate students of psychology, and finds not only over-determination, anger fetishes and occasionally anger in dreams with patent and latent aspects and about all the Freudian mechanisms, but what is more important, finds very much of the impulsion that makes us work and strive, attack and solve problems has an element of anger at its root. Life is a battle and for every real conquest man has had to summate and focus all his energies, so that anger is the acme of the manifestation of Schopenhauer's will to live, achieve and excel. Hiram Stanley rather absurdly described it as an epoch when primitive man first became angry and fought, overcoming the great quaternary carnivora and made himself the lord of creation. Plato said anger was the basis of the state, Ribot made it the establisher of justice in the world, and Bergson thinks society rests on anger at vice and crime, while Stekel thinks that temper qualities should henceforth be treated in every biography and explored in every case that is psychoanalyzed. Hill's experiments with pugilism, and Cannon's plea for athletics as a legitimate surrogate for war in place of James' moral substitute, Frank Howard's opinion that an impulse that Darwin finds as early as the sixth week and hardly any student of childhood later than the sixth month, and which should not be repressed but developed to its uttermost, although carefully directed to worthy objects, are all in point. Howard pleads for judicious scolding and flogging, to be, done in heat and not in cold blood, and says that there is enough anger in the world, were it only rightly directed, to sweep away all the evils in it. In all these phenomena there is no trace of sex or any of its symbols, and sadism can never explain but must be explained by it. My thesis is, then, that every Freudian mechanism applies to anger as truly as it does to sex. This by no means assumes the fundamental identity of every feeling-emotion in the sense of Weissfeld's very speculative theory.
In this very slight paper I am only trying to make the single point which I think fear and sympathy or the gregarious or social instinct would still better illustrate, although it would require more time, that the movement inaugurated by Freud opens up a far larger field than that of sex. The unconscious that introspectionists deny, (asserting that all phenomena ascribed to it are only plain neural mechanisms, and therefore outside the realm of psychology,) the feelings which introspection can confessedly never tell much about and concerning which our text-books in psychology still say so little: studies in these fields are marking a new epoch, and here the chief merit of Freudism is found.
THE NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS
BY JAMES J. PUTNAM, M. D.
SOME years ago, at the Weimar Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association, I read a paper on the importance of a knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics for psychoanalysts regarded as students of human life. Perhaps if I had had the experience and ability to contribute the results of some original analytic investigation on specific lines, I should not then have ventured into the philosophic field. Perhaps, indeed, if those conditions now obtained I should not be bringing forward similar arguments again, and if any one feels tempted to maintain that philosophic speculation is a camp of refuge for those who, in consequence of temperamental limitations and infantile fixations which ought to be overcome, draw back from the more robust study of emotional repressions on scientific lines, I should admit that the allegation contains an element of truth. But in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that there is some truth also in the statement that the effects—good and bad—of emotional repression make themselves felt, as a partial influence, in all the highest reaches of human endeavor, including art, literature, and religion;—in spite of these partial truths, philosophy and metaphysics are the only means through which the essential nature of many tendencies can be studied of which psychoanalysis describes only the transformations. And this being so it is perhaps reasonable that one paper should be read at an annual meeting such as this, where men assemble whose duty it is to study the human mind in all its aspects.