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.