And what might have happened may still happen. What is to be done? Each physician must decide this for himself. He should be able both to do his best as a psychoanalyst and at the same time help the patient to free himself from that sort of repression in consequence of which he is unable to see his own best possibilities. But he cannot do this unless he has trained himself to see and feel in himself the outlines of this vision any more than he could help the patient to rid himself of an infantile complex if he did not appreciate what this complex means. We must trust ourselves, as physicians, with deadly weapons, and with deadly responsibilities, and we ought to be well harried by our consciences if we should do injustice, in using them, either to our scientific or our philosophic training.
[*] It should be stated as possibly bearing on the interpretation of the dreams recorded by the author, who is well known to me, that she is the subject of an intense and unusual obsession of hatred of an obtrusively pathological character against a relative. The psycho-pathology of the obsession, of which I have an intimate knowledge, has not been determined. A reasonable interpretation is that the main etiological factor is jealousy. She has undergone prolonged psychoanalytic treatment by a skilled psycho-analyst without improvement of the obsession and without revealing a satisfactory explanation of its pathology. To what extent the contents of the dreams have been determined or coloured by culture acquired by this treatment and by the study of Freudian doctrines is also a question deserving of consideration.—Editor.
The Contribution of a Woman
IT is an easy matter to accept upon authority a given scientific theory and bring to its support certain selected evidence, but quite another to carefully observe and report phenomena, inspired, influenced and guided indeed by the scientific-theory but drawing conclusions no wider or deeper than individual insight warrants. Scientific knowledge advances not by ready acceptance of theories but by original observation and experiment and the following study of dreams is offered as fulfilling in some degree the latter requirement. While there is a certain familiarity on the part of the writer with the general theory advanced by Freud and with his principles of interpretation, there is no acquaintance at first hand with his Die Traumdeutung, the reading of which has been postponed lest there be excess of influence.
No apology is offered for this invasion of the domain of psychology by a layman. The laboratory of the mind is open to all and he who has missed conventional training may yet chance upon valuable facts and their interpretation. Neither is apology offered for the intimate nature of the data reported. Belonging as dreams do to the most personal and private life of the individual it is nevertheless true that continued and careful study of this form of mentation insensibly alters one's attitude so that at length the dream appears as a fact of nature, impersonal and objective.
It is a common remark that if one tells his dreams their number will increase but this increase is probably only apparent. With attention the products of the dream-self become more accessible until one who is practiced in introspection can raise the number of his remembered dreams from one in two or three nights to five, ten, or even fourteen in a single night. Even at this maximum of remembrance one feels that but a fraction of the mind's nocturnal activity is recalled. Images emerge in consciousness and fall back into obscurity before the waking thought can grasp them. Or it may be more accurate to say that upon awakening consciousness rises from level to level. It sometimes happens that when first awake I recall several dreams which vanish utterly as a sudden shifting of consciousness occurs. Then, upon this new level, a new set of dreams appears. There is reason to believe that in thinking again of a dream which has once been recalled it is not the original dream experience which comes to mind but the copy made in the waking consciousness when it first emerged. On the other hand visions recognized as dreams belonging to a long past time occasionally float into the mind giving rise to the suspicion that they have not before reached the waking consciousness. It is possible that all dreams are recorded in the depths of the mind, themselves influencing and merging with later dreams.
The number of my dreams recalled and written out during three years closely approaches five thousand and without doubt the total number far exceeds this. I am inclined to the belief that constantly, by day as well as by night, we are dreaming; that unnoticed and independent trains of thought are carried on. At times when resting if I fall into an abstracted state—not of set purpose—I find myself in the midst of a stream of thought appearing, for the moment, perfectly natural, familiar and intelligible, as if I knew the beginning and end of the matter. But only for a moment will consciousness remain at this lower level. There is a sudden return to the normal plane, the passage fades from memory and I wonder what on earth it was all about. These phases of subconscious activity differ from dreams proper in the absence of visual images. The ideas are embodied in words, heard with the mind one might say. The source may be the same as that of the night visions but it is evident that during the day the incessant stimulation of the eye from without leaves no opportunity for the emergence of the secondary visual images pertaining to subconscious ideas, which, we are told by Dr. Morton Prince, furnish the perceptual elements of the dream. The other senses are sometimes represented. Often we are performing, or trying to perform, some action. But dreams are predominantly visual. Goethe has said, "I believe men only dream that they may not cease to see."
An account of the probable genesis of the memory images not only furnishes a clue to the mechanism of dreaming but to the underlying conditions as well. The lowest forms of life possess no image-forming power. They have no sense organs; sensation is diffused over the entire form and undifferentiated. Gradually, as the scale of life is ascended, certain parts of the organisms become specially sensitive to certain stimuli and eventually individual organs give separate and distinct reports of phenomena. A substance hitherto merely felt, is seen, heard, smelled, tasted. The passage from sensation to perception occurs when but one or two of the sense organs are stimulated by an object, yet, because of nervous connections established during former more close and complete experience of the object the remaining sense organs are faintly roused, sending into consciousness copies of former sensations. Thus the whole is present to mind while but a part to sense. In the developing brain the store of memory images of various kinds would rapidly increase and these images would come at length to have a more or less independent existence. It is probable that the next step in the making of mind was the synthesis of one set of sense impressions to form an idea of the object, the first abstraction, and thenceforth a sensation gave rise to an idea. There is at this stage no impulse to explain sensations, but involuntarily, from the store of memory images, and from the reservoir of ideas above, emerges a representation of the exciting object. If this is one to which the organism is accustomed the resulting complex in the highest nerve centers fits the subject, but as evolution proceeds and environment and capacity for sensation grow more complex, new stimulations occur. In the absence of the capacity for knowledge and understanding of the object the developing mind, true to its law, brings forward mental images most nearly related—those which fit in one or two respects,—and thus we have the birth of analogy, "the inference of a further degree of resemblance from an observed degree of resemblance."
To look at one's self is a late endowment. The kitten pursues its own tail but would chase that of its mother with equal ardor. I once saw a monkey searching industriously with eyes and hands upon its own body. The sight was startling. I had never before seen an animal look intelligently at itself. It was long before man distinguished his self from the world without, and longer still before he began to understand himself. Physical and mental phenomena, pain and pleasure, could not be tracked to their sources and so came to be expressed in terms of the world of nature, and for a reason precisely similar that portion of the self functioning in sleep makes use of symbolism. Occasionally the higher thought centers are involved but the typical dream is the product of a restricted, primitive self, lacking the resources of the complete personality and limited in power of expression. In dreams we are deficient in self-consciousness because it is only a partial self that dreams. Our wishes are rarely given clear and definite expression for the reason that the section of the mind then active is incapable of clear, definite and adequate concepts. Symbolism and reasoning by analogy are the resources of the mind until the power of knowledge dawns.
Predicating then a dream-self by its nature largely restricted to the use of symbolism and having at its disposal a vast store of images endlessly susceptible to influences which combine and alter their form, we reach the crucial question, what initiates the dream? This is by no means a mere purposeless thronging of visual images as occasionally happens in the period preceding sleep when faces, forms and scenes flit aimlessly before the mind's eye, some bare replicas of stimulations of the eye from without, others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. In the last example we come definitely upon a vision induced from within, an idea working downward upon the visual centers. Still nearer dreams, indeed if occurring in sleep they would be classed with them, are the purely imaginative pictures whose cause is as mysterious as that of the actual dream. Fire in the wall near the pantry door, a garden with a woman rising from a clump of bushes, high, rocky mountain tops, a perpendicular wall of rock and against it a man on a ladder reaching for a flower, a long vista ending with a pillared temple on a hill,—these are a few of my visions before sleep. But to return,—why the dream? Are all or most dreams sexual? Can we say with Freud that they express the fulfillment of repressed desires?
It is not my purpose to attempt a complete answer to this question as I am far from understanding even the majority of my own dreams. Broadly speaking I should say that considering the amount and complexity of the material on hand which the mind may use and the probable inconceivable number of dreams it is unlikely that all are concerned with this matter. This question may well be allowed to rest for the present. But certain convictions have arisen in my mind as the result of the study of hundreds of personal dreams, convictions which do not rest upon the arbitrary interpretation of accepted symbolism, though I am far from questioning the validity of this procedure. I venture little beyond the region illuminated by individual insight though examples are cited far exceeding my power of interpretation.
The sexual theory of dreams has by some authorities been characterized as greatly over-emphasized, as failing to take account of other factors and interests of human personality. To those critics let me present the matter briefly and simply. The very fact of a person's being alive today presupposes an ancestry stretching backward through uncounted ages, an ancestry whose chief function, up to very recent times, was sexual and reproductive. Modern interests, business, social, intellectual, religious, artistic and philanthropic, which today loom so large, are a recent innovation, occupying in comparison with the period when they were not but a moment of time. In a vertical section of man—both racial and individual, they are seen to constitute but a superficial layer, from a contemporary standpoint predominant and paramount but in the light of the ages secondary and unstable. Biologically a woman is only an agent for the reproduction of her kind; more than this, with mind, all save the conscious, socially and ethically restricted sections, set toward the same end and toward the means for its accomplishment. There is no gainsaying this fact and in my dreams which yielded to analysis it stands paramount. I am inclined to disregard the theory of a "censor" for the reason that after I had admitted to my thought and frankly considered certain facts, by a thousand devious hints, by a thousand subterfuges, my subconsciousness continued to express these same facts by means of obscure symbolism. As the savage seizes upon one link in a chain of events expecting thereby to repossess the whole, as the native of Borneo makes a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image melts, the enemy's body will waste away, as the women of Sumatra when sowing rice let the hair hang loose down their backs in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks, so this woman, this under-self, ignorant of the true law of cause and effect, and unable to form definite concepts, instinctively selects from the innumerable memories and visual images at her disposal those having relation to her unfulfilled function and forms a picture or weaves a tale, expecting through the performance of some remotely associated act the complete result.
To the events of an hour or so, supremely significant from a biological standpoint, are related a very large number of my dreams. Again and again events of that day and of the preceding days form the basis of dreams; trivial circumstances are revived one by one and fragments of the experience itself are seized, distorted and each woven into what I can no longer term "the baseless fabric of a vision." For instance the day preceding I broke my umbrella and found a shop where it was mended. In dream after dream appears that broken umbrella under various circumstances and when I ask the reason for its apparent importance I can not escape the conclusion that the article in question stands for a period of time, a series of events, in which the dream-self would again be placed. Apparently on that road opportunity lay in waiting, therefore by any means at her disposal must that path be regained. Involuntarily the language of metaphor is assumed in attempting to describe a process so far removed from actual knowledge. Still are we driven to avail ourselves of the expedient of primitive man.
Of the dreams presently to be cited only a part fall within the category of analogical reasoning. In none of the examples is a complete analysis attempted. The mind of each reader may carry the solution of the problem as far as it will. I am content merely to furnish a clue. That each dream is of great significance must not be assumed. But that each one, even though it appear a mere fanciful reverie, means SOMETHING can hardly be doubted. At the outset it is acknowledged that the dreams recorded followed a period of intense emotion when, through the exigencies of life the strongest instinct of humanity required control and repression. Further the writer is a musician and a botanist, and especially interested in biological and social problems. Study of the latter subjects was continued throughout the period in question. It must be confessed also that though loth to accept the sexual theory of dreams, once convinced of its at least partial truth I was on the watch for confirmation. I expected sexual symbolism. On the other hand each dream was absolutely spontaneous, an utter surprise, having no slightest likeness to any creation of my waking mind and seeming to rise from a region so remote as to be not myself. It should be noted also that the greater number of the nearly five thousand remembered dreams, all but very few in fact, would have remained in the limbo of the unconscious but for the persistent and trained effort which rescued them from oblivion. Neither by, nor apparently for my waking self were they formed.
Each individual mind, besides sharing in the symbolism common to mankind, has doubtless its own particular and special forms. For instance during the period covered by my study no less than ninety different varieties of plant life figured in my dreams, not including indefinite ferns, moss, grass, weeds and trees, and several plants noted somewhat in detail yet unlike any form known to me. Of the recognizable plants a number were used somewhat cleverly for their analogical significance. Of these may be mentioned the snowball and hydrangea whose flowers as every botanist knows are sterile, the size of the individual blossom being gained at the expense of loss of stamens and pistils. These plants were plainly used to indicate barrenness and the predominance of traits other than sexual. The keen critic will here interpose an objection. How is the primitive, unreasoning dream-self able to make use of symbolism whose import is known only to higher and developed states of mind? The force of the objection is granted and without attempting fully to answer it I will say that the likeness of the primitive mind of the race to that surviving in the highly evolved individual is only partial. Like tendencies exist but the influence of a great body of knowledge above inevitably alters the action of the latter. Maidenhair fern stood indubitably in several instances for the pubic hair, once surrounding a cluster of trailing arbutus when talcum powder of that fragrance had been used on the body. I dreamed of Linnaea borealis, the little twin-flower, in connection with a woman who a few days before when told of the birth of twins to a friend, said, "That is the way to have them come." Lettuce, for its milky juice obviously, appeared in two bunches on the front of the waist of a woman into whose house I had broken by leaning against a screen door, and a lawn bordered by cowslips, our common name for Caltha palustris, certainly represented a certain lawn that a friend told me had been kept mown by the cows feeding upon it when driven from pasture.
In each of the above instances the floral symbolism was part of an elaborate dream having wider significance leaving no doubt as to the accuracy of my conclusions. A particularly interesting and devious use of flowers occurs in the following dream—I am in front of a certain house over which, in the dream, is growing a vine having white, star-like, fragrant blossoms. I want one flower and the woman living there says I may have it. The name of the vine seems to be "Dyak." There is no plant having that name but a few months before I was reading of the Dyak girls of Borneo who "are very careful of their clothing, and often very vain, but when they are married they frequently become exceedingly untidy." I quoted the passage in an article thus fixing it in my mind. The link with the dream consists in the fact that the woman living in the vine-decorated house is, in reality, notoriously untidy. Her two daughters as they approached womanhood greatly improved in the daintiness of their garb, and one had become pregnant— outside marriage. Another dream:—I see a friend, by name Anna, stoop and pull from the ground a tiny lily-of-the-valley plant. It has no roots. I say, "What a pity." This dream had no meaning until into my mind came the thought of another Anna, a young girl who was led astray and who, I had just been told, had taken medicine to terminate her pregnancy. When I learned of this I had thought of the loss of the incipient life. The same night I dreamed of going upstairs in a shed or barn. At the top of the stairs something—a door—is in the way. I go by it. A child is there. Again:—I am crossing a level field and come upon little star-like flowers which I try to analyse. I find many with pistils but no stamens,—the pollen bearing organs which effect fertilization. I wonder if they will keep fresh until I reach home. Once more:—I approach a city. I see woods and two gardens, either flower or vegetable, from which comes music. On a mound wild flowers are growing, some white, some small and dark. I gather them. Then very remote and vague,—my brother is there. I see a long snake which my brother puts on(?) and covers my flowers. Still another vision was of a branch of beautiful; fragrant apple blossoms growing through the wall of a room. Some of the flowers were pistillate, some staminate,—a condition false to nature as regards the apple.
A dream, which in common with many others, seems not the fulfillment of a wish but the symbolical expression of a bodily and mental state, is the following:—After a day of very great physical restlessness I dream that I am walking in a path by a river. I can not see the water for the over-hanging trees beneath whose branches grow quantities of Impatiens fulva, the spotted touch-me-not,—named from the sudden bursting of the pod when touched. The plant in question I had not seen for some time and the fitness of the symbolism to the bodily state was too close to be accidental. After a walk in the spring when the ground was white with the cotton-tufted seeds of the poplar and I thought if all germinated how overwhelmed we should be with poplars, I dream that I am sweeping a floor upon which cotton is scattered, some of which flies and is caught in my hair. I dream of walking under pine trees whose pollen falls on me, and finally—though examples of the significant use of plants are by no means exhausted—I have upon awakening the vision of a pine tree growing from my nose. This strange anomaly becomes intelligible when I recall that a friend told me that the pores of her nose were enlarged, and I said mine were also; we had been talking of a quotation from Emerson relating to nature's fecundity; my friend was soon to be married; and a line from Emerson often in my thought is that in regard to pines "throwing out pollen for the benefit of the next century."
For a musician to dream of playing, or of trying to play, upon an organ or piano is apparently the most natural thing in the world and an attempt at interpretation is, to uninstructed common sense, a journey far afield. Yet the strange and striking variations introduced and the hindrances to my accomplishment of the act invest the dream with marked significance. For instance:—It is after church service and I want to play upon the pipe organ. I find my music. The stool is a kettle of water with a board over it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which kicks or bites me. Again:—I play on the piano to a friend who is a German scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is nonsense or otherwise according to the observer's point of view. Another dream:—Some children want me to play and I go to the piano and try to play the Spring Song. But the piano stops sounding; only a few bass notes respond. I dream that a table of sheet music is on fire. Sometimes the music is too far away or too high for me to see: the notes are flowers, or books, or animals, or "hanging objects," or queer figures; in the book from which I play are pictures of the sea, a ship, a person, and birds—sea gulls, among them. The bed becomes an organ upon which I try to play. I begin to play the Witches' Dance and there are not enough keys to the piano. Again the keys are covered by a cloth or there are no keys. An organ behind me is played and I see no organist, or I move the pedals of an organ and music begins before the instrument is open. I try to play and the stops are wrong. Often I search frantically for the hymn given out by the minister and can not find it. Once I picked flowers in its place, drooping racemes of sweet alyssum, which I gave to a woman. Oddest of all on the keys of a piano I see a small boy who salutes me. Lastly, I play for children to sing. At the top of the page of music are whole notes—easy to play; below there are whole notes in groups of two, joined like confluent living cells.
There are several examples of punning to record—not brilliant, even somewhat vulgar yet interesting as exhibiting varieties of mental action. I dream that I am at a barn yard trying to hold the gate shut. In the yard are two men, each with an animal, a kid, one light, one dark. The light kid is unmanageable, pawing and shaking its head. Some days elapsed before the interpretation dawned upon me but once noted could not be doubted. Several weeks previously I had a business engagement and of two pairs of gloves—kids—I hesitated which to wear. I was to do some writing necessitating their removal and as one fastening of a light glove was difficult I fixed upon the dark pair, as to ask help would under the circumstances, have proved exceedingly embarrassing.
A friend had informed me of her approaching marriage. I dream of eating at a table with her. I take meat but she wants me to do she does. So I return the meat I had chosen and take spare-rib. This variety of meat I had neither eaten nor thought of for months and the conclusion that the reference is to the story of Adam and Eve is inevitable. I dream of eating at the table of a friend. I am a little sick and cannot eat all that is given me. My friend points smilingly to a package of stuffed dates on my plate. One date is apart from the package. This dream relates unmistakably to a day when I had a pressure of engagements and had not time to eat; when I did feel slightly ill, and when one very significant engagement was made unexpectedly—a date apart from the others. A kiss of her lover upon the lips of a young girl becomes in my dream a piece of court plaster on her upper lip, and a woman about whose prospective marriage some one asked, returns, in my night vision to a university to obtain the degree of B. Ed., which in sleep I took to indicate Bachelor of Education but which is open to a different interpretation.
Visions of natural scenery are most remote, strange, beautiful and delightful. They are doubtless composites of actual localities but in their construction and use fine powers of imagination are at work and real life seems left far behind. In my dreams of this type the ocean stands as a symbol of Life itself, of the mighty and profound procreative force the entrance into whose domination is the crisis of existence. For this experience is demanded the mightiest symbol. It is evening. I am on the seashore with my father and mother. Greatwaves are rolling in. I look backward and see one wave break where we have passed. My mother is afraid but we cannot turn back. I am calm. Then—this immediately follows—I am in a kind of tunnel and fear that I shall suffocate. This and the following might be construed as symbolising my own birth. I am in a boat on the ocean with my mother. The waves are tremendous and as she goes out on deck to close a great door I fear she will be washed away. But she is safe. Next there is a violent jar and the boat is aground. Then I see down a city street. In a particularly impressive dream I approach the sea at early morning. I think I shall see the sun rise from the water. I go over a hill to reach the ocean which is frozen near the shore. I go into a little house and when I come out I can not close the door. The wind is high and the waves enormous. Then there is calm and I see a man on horseback in the water. Next a fog rises and out of the mist a little boat comes toward me, the oars flashing like silver. Then a little boy comes ashore. There are strange dreams of a frozen ocean, and of being out in a small boat with a friend, soon to be married, with ships passing and we afraid. I am near the ocean and longing to see it, and once trying to go with some one to see the foundation of the sea but am hindered.
Among visions of mountains is the following.—I see high and beautiful mountains as I stand on a bridge. I hear the squeal of a horse. Then stones fall from a mountain-top into the stream and spirals of bright water rise to meet them. After receiving from a man of vigorous, vital personality an atomizer for a slight hay fever, I dream of high mountains and at the foot of one is an irregular patch of red sunlight. Above are two houses, not side by side. In front of them is a fine, slanting veil of rain. A dream in which indications of the reputed "father complex" may be found is one of my father and myself in a team at the top of a high mountain, at the end of the road. My father wants to drive off among the peaks but I fear that we shall be lost. I dread the night there but think I can call for help. Somewhat similar is the following.—I am in a high, steep place with my father. I fear. He moves a stone and in the hollow of a rock I see moss or fungus. There are often brief, passing dreams in which no person figures. I see a bridge across a chasm; it is long and extends beyond where a bridge is necessary. I see two rivers join and wonder what the resulting stream is called. I see a river from the side of which emerges a spring of water and a new stream. A small, steep hill, snow-capped. A river with water above the banks.
To dream of moving to an old house—what signifies this? Apparently nothing. If one is to dream it must be of something—houses or people or scenery. But to dream often of going to live in an ancient house,—of trying to find in it my room; mosquito netting at the window, not quite tight; from my room into a smaller one a door which I try to fasten but can not because at the bottom it is a swaying curtain, the wall paper loose and a mouse hole near the floor; a long, sunshiny room where I see what appears to be a rat but which becomes a little kitten, weak from long confinement, that follows me from room to room and at last through a door leading to a porch;—why all these accessories? Once I go through many rooms—furnished but uninhabited—and come to an upper bed chamber where, upon a couch, lies a woman, quite dead I think; but presently she moves one hand. Again I go through room after room until I reach one where still another woman—or is it the same—lies dead on the bed. As I look she becomes a beautiful child who has lain there forty years. The child stirs and opens its eyes; I think something should be done to keep it alive but the eyes close, and sleep, or death, reigns again. After calling upon an expectant mother who showed me her layette, all white and blue, I dream that I go in an old house to a room with blue papered walls, a blue and white spread on the bed and a case of books, one of which is Dickens' Great Expectations. In one old house I find the bulbs of some plant sprouting on a shelf; in another I open the stove and find to my surprise that fire is still there. In still another house I see behind the stove a closed door which I long to open. I go about the house, up steep, worn stairs, down again and out into a garden where there is a single strawberry and I think staminate and pistillate plants should be set out to insure fertilization. Always I think of the closed door and presently I return to the house and enter the room behind the stove. On the floor is a green veil of firm texture. And at last there are cobwebs on the ceiling of my old house and I still search for my room.
After the presentation of this array of symbolism quite spontaneously the interpretation arose in my mind. The old house is the recurring abode of life. I would dwell there and take my place in the line of succession. Quite in line with this symbolism was the very beautiful dream of a young woman not many months before her bridal which I give in her words—"With a crowd of unknown people I was to visit and go over a haunted house. The living room was nicely furnished in antique furniture and the whole house was very still. We went upstairs, and it passed through my mind that people who were dead and gone had moved through the rooms. I was coming down the stairs when suddenly a pipe organ burst forth. That was the haunted part—music in the air, no organ at all. We were awestricken and I awoke with the same feeling." In dreams of this character we find it necessary to predicate a creative, myth-making tendency in the structure of the mind by means of which currents of life flowing beneath all thought become articulate.
Coming now to examples of reasoning by analogy directly expressive of the desire for maternity, I wish to make still more plain my view of the reason for symbolism. Maternity is untold ages old; intelligent comprehension of the function very recent. That portion of the mind functioning in dreams—that is in the majority of dreams—is unable to picture the process and its necessary antecedents. (Frankly sexual dreams occurred to me very rarely.) Instinctive acts are the last to be made objects of thought; a relatively high degree of mental development is necessary before the requisite detachment from the process can be obtained and as we have seen this detachment is beyond the power of the self that dreams. Hence the recourse to analogy and symbolism.
I call upon a woman who is pregnant and whose face is slightly bloated. In that night's dream I look in a mirror and see that my face is plump. I think I am too old. I see on the street a young girl in short skirts wheeling a baby carriage. My friend tells me that the girl is a mother. That night I dream of being in a shop to buy an article which I in reality intended to purchase and in addition looking at a dress for a girl of twelve or fourteen. I hear of a pregnant woman who ran away and worked for a time in a mill and a night or two after I have a dream of a devious walk with many details which finally ends at a kind of factory. An expectant mother tells me of her trip to a neighboring town where a friend gave her a tiny crocheted jacket. Soon after I start in a dream for that town, afoot, in the dark, without lantern or money, and hampered and stumbling, make the weary journey.
A dream which upon analysis proves extremely interesting is the following:— I come out from a house and stand looking at other houses. I am waiting for some one, and look toward the street. In the yard I see a large elm tree nearly sawed off but at one side the wood is continuous,—to indicate that the tree is still alive. I look up. A bough sways and I am dizzy. I think the bough will fall. Beneath the tree is a sick woman on a couch. Until the clue was found this appeared a mere aimless mixture of imagery but one circumstance makes it very clear. Shortly before I was reading a book on biology and in the section devoted to the influence of environment on organisms a portion of the trunk of an elm tree was shown and the influence of various factors noted as indicated by the annual rings of growth. One considerable variation was due to the fact that children had swung from one limb of the tree. At the time of reading the fact made so slight an impression that after the dream some time elapsed before I recalled it and then so faintly that I had to refer to the book for verification. Thus we see upon what slight and obscure basis a dream may be constructed.
That all dreams do not originate in one section or at one level of the mind is quite evident. The range extends from those which almost merge with waking thought to creations strangely remote and primitive. When I dream that Goethe is a guest at my home and I am trying to ask him in regard to Faust, Wilhelm Meister and Mignon,—when after reading of x-rays, ether waves and electrons wake with the thought, "To solve the problem of matter would prove materialism,"—when I dream that I am conversing with a conservative friend who says that he does not like new religions and I reply that Moses and Jesus were new once, it is plain that a different stratum of mind is operative than when I dream that I am in an old fort and chased by three rats, or that a snake is on my bed and my father kills it with a pitchfork, or strangest of all, that I throw an egg at the plug of a sap bucket which it hits and then flies to the left; it is rotten. Again, a very vague dream, I, see two eggs and then am climbing inside a kind of tower. A dream which immediately preceded the menstrual period, is as follows:—I pass a narrow, dark canal which seems to be under cover. On the very brink is a child and I fear it will fall in. A man is there whose business it is to save the child but be does not. That this indicates the impending passage from the body of the ovum can hardly be doubted. Under like conditions—this before sleep—I see a doorway filled with flowers.
It was natural that after a time I should wonder what event of the day would be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering, will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to find. I see cows and am afraid.—This based on reality of a few days before.—At length by a stone I find a fern coiled as in spring. This becomes a squirrel, the male comes, and then they are lions. The male has a sprig of leaves which he lays at the feet of the female and which she eats. I want to know what the leaves are but fear to look closely because of the lion. I found it difficult to deliberately influence dreams by suggestion. The dream-self is not to be coerced and usually I over-did the matter. Most of my examples deal with flowers and perhaps the most apposite is the following:—I plucked a stem of blossoms of white everlasting and wore it inside my waist on my bosom all day, asking as I fastened it in,—How will this reappear in my dream? The following morning as consciousness returned, I had a vision of a baby's bottle filled with milk and beyond it, more faint, another similar bottle. It is fair to say that this outcome was entirely unexpected. Another night after watching Venus, low in the southwestern sky, I dream that I am molding a statue—strangely enough the arms as the reference is to the Venus de' Melos—and the figure is that of a young woman of immoral life.
My store of dreams is so great and varied that the forms of symbolism are by no means exhausted. The reception of mail is a favorite subject and here again one may say that this is the most natural of dreams and quite its own excuse for being. But strange things come in the mail,—pieces of turf in which are growing tiny plants, boxes of rice, jelly, breakfast food, cooked fish still warm; and once a sack of mail is emptied upon my door-stone—not by the postman but by a man who the day before drove past with a little child. Other recurring motifs are strawberries, yeast, Bologna sausage, ice cream— once poured over slices of clear, transparent fruit which I eat, this very plainly referring to the fertilization of the eggs of fish about which I read the preceding evening:—"As soon as the female finishes spawning the male will approach the eggs and eject a milky fluid over them to effect fertilization. If this is successful the spawn will have a clear, glassy appearance." The dream-self can turn anything to its use,—I read of certain suffrage activities in England and forthwith dream that I attend a suffrage meeting. But the house at which it is held is in reality the home of a woman nearly my age, who is pregnant.
I pass over all the dreams obviously of an infantile character, and likewise those of travelling and of packing for a journey. More unusual is the dream of a flight of birds which twice occurred under conditions which left no doubt as to its sexual character. A house having a wet sink and a dry one is the verdict of my dream-self regarding a home in which the woman can bear no more children because of physical disability; and a railway station where I go down the steps, pick from the floor a flower—wondering if it is all right,—reach a restaurant in which seventy have that night been served and where I lose my flower, symbolizes a house of prostitution mentioned in Chicago's famous report where one woman served sixty men in one night and was said to have seven thousand dollars in the bank. Beneath convention strange unconvention lurks. A young woman of irregular life appears in my dream as one with soiled skirts, and, very vaguely, some one's else skirts are soiled also. After seeing a print of Tompkins' painting, Hester Prynne, heroine of The Scarlet Letter, I dream that I go to a shop, where I have great difficulty because of darkness, to buy some dark green silk for embroidering a letter somewhere on my dress. Not to pander to the base in human nature are these details given but to make known life's realities to those who are blinded by theories. The frank and honest truth is never foul and monstrous. Society can be renovated only when all the facts are brought to light.
In conclusion I give the dreams of a single night:—First, a drunken man and girl in the same team; I think they should not be there. Then I am on a porch looking off at a headland with ice at the foot. Farther up the hill are quantities of ice—a sheet of it over the ground and in one place it is as if water had been poured and allowed to freeze. In the midst of this last, which is not on the hill, is a fine and shapely tree with the ice about it very smooth and shining and slanting somewhat. I think it is a good place for skating. In the morning as I recalled this dream, quite abruptly into my mind came the remark of Philina in Wilhelm Meister, after seeing a woman "great with child," "It were prettier if we could shake children from the trees." Next I see far off high mountains with sunlight on the summits. Then I am in a porch enclosed by a wire screen; by me is a woman. From the window of a building outside, which seems to be a hospital without funds, a woman looks at me. I want to see far off and shade my eyes with my hands. I think I must cut the screen in order to see clearly. Then I see a rampart and beyond it is the ocean. I hear a bird, a robin, on the rampart. Near it is another bird, large, gray and strange. Then it is a rooster. The key to this dream lies in the fact that the day before I received an appeal for financial aid from a hospital and the printed request showed the picture of a row of nurses each with a tiny baby in her lap. Finally I go into a bed-room. On the bed is a baby. I uncover it and it moves and cries. It wants its mother and I go to find her.
That the mind which dreams is not uncognizant of the hopelessness of its aspirations is strangely indicated by the following for which at the time I found no direct exciting cause:— I see two long lines of seeds planted and at the end of the rows tiny lettuce plants. Near by are apple trees in blossom. But it is autumn.
Bergson at the close of his essay on dreams hints that the mind may transcend its conjectured limits and be influenced in profound slumber by telepathy. This is but an hypothesis which must long await verification. My own dreams which apparently forecast the future are out-numbered by erroneous forecasts and one vivid dream of the death of a friend though coinciding as to the day, is not of great value as evidence as I had been expecting the news for weeks, and further, beyond the surface portent the dream is remotely allied in certain details with more personal and vital memories.
Though the dream process may to a certain extent be made verbally intelligible he who studies it most best realizes the attendant mystery. Dream-self, subconscious ideas, visual images,—these are but terms which bridge the abyss of our ignorance. Further exploration of the mystery is of value not only from the standpoint of pure science, to whose domain there is no limit, but also in the interest of education, health, sanity and morality. It is neither necessary nor wise for all persons to study their dreams, but for those who shape the growing thought and conduct of the world a knowledge of even the remotest outposts of human mentality is supremely important.
[1] Dr. Isador H. Coriat's paper with this title appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Volume IX, No. 6, February-March, 1915.
I have frequently wondered whether those of us who oppose the dissemination of the Freudian theories, at least as they are being and have been applied to the psychoneuroses and to psychopathology in general, have solved the problem as we should have solved it or fought the fight as we should have fought it. It has not infrequently seemed to me that our plan of battle, our campaign, the battle we have in a way waged, was not as consistently planned and as well organized as it should have been and as the occasion really demanded. There were many lines of attack open for us. We could, if we so wished, have made generalized and wholesale attacks upon all that Freudism stood for regardless of whether, in certain principles, it was right or wrong. This some have actually done. Although this method is not in my opinion fair or scientific, yet, so reckless and so uncritical have been many of the Freudians, and the foremost Freudians at that, in their declarations and conclusions, that I can readily see how one may be prompted to resort to unmitigated ridicule and general condemnation of the entire system, the standpoints and the conclusions that have been made the bulwark of the Freudian movement. Others have adopted a different method of dealing with the situation. They have entirely ignored the Freudian school and all that it stands for, and have permitted the members of this school to go to ever greater and greater extremes and excesses, with the more extensive elaboration of their system, so that eventually the error of their ways would be apparent to all, since the final conclusions to which they would be led would be openly fallacious and give proof positive that the foundation, the psychology upon which as a basis the Freudian system of interpretation and analysis has been erected, was defective to such an extent that it would crumple into disintegrated portions under the heavy load of the unsupported superstructure. This method has by no manner of means been unsuccessful.
A third standpoint to be assumed is that in which replies to or criticisms of individual articles, rather than criticisms of a general nature and applicable to the Freudian psychology or method or conclusions in toto, is adopted as the proper method of dealing with the situation with which we found ourselves with the advent and spread of the Freudian movement. This last-mentioned method is probably the most desirable of the three methods which have been here mentioned.
And it is the method which I shall follow in this criticism of Dr. Coriat's paper, because, among other reasons, I believe it is the fairest to all concerned.
It is not my purpose to take up for discussion the various statements, made by Dr. Coriat, with which I disagree, but rather to consider only the question of the correctness or incorrectness of the general thesis which he has presented.
The reasons for my entering into a criticism of this particular article by Dr. Coriat may be stated as follows: In the first place I am interested in the general problems of psychopathology, and of the psychoneuroses in particular. In the second place I am somewhat unusually interested in the problem of stuttering.[2] This latter interest has two main sources of origin: (1) I am deeply interested in the question of stuttering because of my general interest in neurology and psychiatry, including the speech disorders, under which heading stuttering finds its place; (2) I have myself, from earliest childhood, suffered from this affection and so find myself naturally much interested in the subject.
[2] In this paper I shall use the terms "stammering" and "stuttering" interchangeably.
It is not out of place, it seems to me, to at once answer one of the stock arguments which certain Freudians have been in the habit of offering as a reply to those who criticized their theories and conclusions. I refer to the argument or rather the insistence that those who oppose the spread of the Freudian ideas are themselves unconscious illustrations of the truth and accuracy and general applicability of the Freudian dicta. In this argument they accuse their opponents of unconsciously indulging in or being victims of a defense mechanism, as a means of self-justification and self-rationalization, based on repression, sexuality, etc., in order that their hidden, unconscious, repressed, forgotten desires, tendencies and inclinations may not be brought to the surface and consciously acknowledged. In other words, in my particular case (my present criticism of Dr. Coriat's paper), I could, perhaps, be accused, by those Freudians who are in the habit of resorting to this charge as their own method of self-justification and self-rationalization, as the path of least resistance and as a loophole through which they can escape from meeting the situation presented to them by a frank self-examination and acknowledgment of error or by a fair and satisfactory response—I could be accused, I repeat, of showing, by the very fact of my criticism, that all that Dr. Coriat stated concerning the origin and nature of stammering was true.
In replying to this oft-repeated and oft-resurrected assertion, I need not be detained for any great length of time from proceeding to the consideration of those facts which are the real purpose of this paper. I need only say, in parentheses, that it does seem to me that there surely are a few anti-Freudians (and I may here include myself) who are perhaps, who knows, capable of that degree of unprejudiced self-criticism and intensive self-analysis which is necessary for the purposes of making ourselves eligible for candidacy as critics of the Freudian theories and dogmata. I may go further and gently suggest that it even seems to me that there may be some others of us who are capable of as great a degree of such self-criticism and self-analysis as, and it may even be of a greater degree than, many of those who have been making this claim. I am content to leave this point to the sound judgment and good sense of the average reader of these pages.
The second point that I should bring out in this connection is as follows: That which is of fundamental importance and of basic significance in the life of the psychoneurotic or the stutterer, that which is the fundamental and essential motive force which controls the psychoneurotic and the stutterer is also true, but in greater or less degree, for all of those who are not within the confines of this group.[3] And as a further statement I must assert that whatever is deemed to be the essential and primary cause for stuttering must also be applicable, in the same way but in different degree, to all the other manifestations of speech disorder such as the slips of the tongue, and many other of the psychopathologic acts of everyday life. Consequently, if the Freudian theories of sexuality are directly applicable to the problem of stuttering, it follows that they must likewise be applicable to all the other disturbances of speech just referred to. For, if followed out to the very end, we shall find that the possible mental content and mental mechanisms are the same for all psychopathologic acts, whether of everyday life or distinctly abnormal and outside the pale of our average range. If sexuality lies at the bottom of stuttering, it must be at the root of all other psychopathologic acts, of whatever nature, of whatever degree and wherever and whenever found. I cannot devote the time in this place to enter into an elaborate discussion to prove the truth of this thesis. But I can gain my point more easily and more directly in another way. Although Freud and his followers have not stated, in just so many words, that the psychopathologic acts of everyday life have the same hidden mental content that the psychoneuroses have (although it is my contention that this conclusion is but a natural extension of their sexual theories concerning the psychoneuroses), yet we do find that Freud and the Freudian school in general apply their sexual theories to the whole group of the psychoneuroses. Now, since stuttering is a psychoneurotic disorder of a certain special type, it is understood that they must believe that stuttering, as a matter of course, comes within the rubric of their generalization. As a matter of fact, if their sexual theories were at first applied only to stuttering, as they were originally applied to hysteria, it would mean that, by a process of reasoning, the Freudian school would have to apply their dicta to all of the psychoneuroses. This was, in truth, just what did occur, beginning with hysteria. And it is seen that the same thing would have happened had they begun with stuttering. I contend, further, but I shall not endeavor in this place to prove the correctness of my contention, that what is absolutely and without exception, fundamentally and essentially true of the psychoneuroses is likewise true, in different degree, of the psychopathologic acts of every day life. This would be the conclusion to which I would be forced if I started with any one of the psychoneuroses, whether it be hysteria or stuttering. One can thus see that my statement that if Freud's theories are true for stuttering they must of necessity be true for all psychopathologic acts of whatever sort is quite true.[4] I could go much further and prove that if Freud's theories were the primary and basic explanation for stuttering they must be applicable to all manifestations of human mental energy, which to me would mean that they are no less true of all vital energy, human or otherwise. In other words, the solitary application of Freud's conception to the problem of stuttering would lead us, by logical steps, to the ultimate conclusion that the vital energy was sexual—a conclusion with which Jung will not agree. And let us not forget, too, that the term "sexual" would here be used in a psychological sense, so that, in fact, Freud's theories of sexuality as the explanation of stuttering would lead us, step by step, to a psychosexual conception of the universe. And is this not exactly what the Freudian school has assumed?
[3] Freud himself agrees that his sexual theories apply to all mankind and that the psychoneurotic differs from others in not being able to successfully and completely repress or sublimate the undesirable sexual trends.
[4] Freud himself agrees psycho-pathologic acts of everyday life are the formes frustes of the psychoneuroses and that this shows that we are all slightly nervous.
I fear that I have not made myself as clear as I should and as I should like to, but at the risk of being misunderstood, or of not carrying the reader with me in my argument, I shall not enter into any further discussion of this aspect— the wider meanings of Dr. Coriat's paper.
As can be judged from the above remarks, it was no surprise to me to see such a paper on stuttering as Dr. Coriat's. To be sure it was tacitly understood, by those who could read between the lines, that this must be the belief of the Freudian school, since their conclusions were said to be true of all the psychoneuroses.
I had also known that a few Freudians abroad had arrived at conclusions similar to those presented by Dr. Coriat, but since, so far as I knew, no paper along this line had appeared in the English or American journals, I did not give the subject any serious or special consideration and had not the slightest idea of refuting the statements. When, however, Dr. Coriat's paper appeared, I concluded that it was not out of place for me at this time to enter into a criticism of these views.
I have felt on many occasions that too many of the statements made by members of the Freudian school have been left unchallenged, with the result that the views promulgated have received quite widespread dissemination; so much so that many believe that the sensational and unsupported views which have come to their ears are accepted as the untarnished truth by most or all psychopathologists, and were a definitely proven and generally accepted part of psychopathology. It is therefore not at all surprising to find so many workers in other fields of medicine who believe that the terms "psychopathology" and "Freudian psychoanalysis" are synonymous, one and the same thing.
This also is one of the motives which prompts me to write these lines.
I am furthermore impelled by the purely scientific desire for truth and accuracy, as applied in particular to the problem of stuttering.
And last, but by no means least, I see a serious danger to the community in the uncritical acceptance and the widespread dissemination of the views promulgated by the Freudian school.
Let me assure Dr. Coriat that I regret very much that I find myself compelled to take the field against him or rather his paper in this connection, and that no personalities enter into the question at issue, but that it is a purely scientific problem, which demands the freest discussion, from all sides. Each of us is entitled to his personal opinions in this matter. The question of sincerity and honesty of purpose is not at all breathed. It is purely a matter of "What is the truth?"
And it shall be my object in the following brief discussion not to give my personal views upon this subject, nor even to dissect each and every statement in Dr. Coriat's paper with which I find myself at issue, but merely to show wherein Dr. Coriat is in most serious error.
I shall confine myself to the question of the application to stammering of the sexual theories so rampant in Freudism. Besides, I shall avail myself of the privilege of giving, in Dr. Coriat's own words, the gist of his theory or concept.
"The attempt to repress from consciousness into the unconscious certain trends of thought or emotions, usually of a sexual nature, is the chief mechanism in stammering." This is the only place in the article where Dr. Coriat expresses any doubt as to the universal validity of his theory for all cases of stuttering. But I consider this merely as a slip of the tongue or pen, because in the other portions of the paper the conclusion concerning the sexual basis of stammering is unqualifiedly made general, and I find that even on the very next page, at the conclusion of the paragraph of which the sentence just quoted is the beginning, there occurs the statement that "the fear in stammering is a deflection of the repressed sexual impulse or wish." With this beginning Dr. Coriat proceeds to explain: "Thus the repressed thought, because of fear of betrayal, comes in conflict with the wish to speak and not to betray (the secret through words[5]). Hence, the hesitation in speech arises and as the repressed thoughts gradually are forced into the unconscious, there finally develops the defective speech automatism, either stammering or a spastic aphonia. This arises in childhood after the child has learned to speak."
[5] Words in parentheses mine but taken from Dr. Coriat's paper; for explanatory purposes.
Moreover, "the hesitation of stammerers on certain words or letters is due to disturbing complexes. The stammering does not cause the inhibition, it is the inhibition which is at the bottom of the stammering."
"Two types of stimuli lead to stammering, either internal conflicts, or external instigators which throw these conflicts into activity. The internal conflicts are either conscious or unconscious fear of betrayal (and therefore a wish to retain a secret), and this mental attitude leads to the dread of speaking, a genuine conversion of morbid anxiety into defective speech. . . . The external stimuli act like dream instigators, for instance the fear of speaking to relatives or to intimate friends may be based upon the fear that the unconscious wishes may be discovered and this stimulates the unconscious anxiety, whereas with strangers, speech is free, because the dread of discovery is absent."
"Thus," says Dr. Coriat, "the beginning of stammering in early childhood . . . is caused by the action of unconscious repressed thoughts upon the speech mechanism, the repressed thought obtruding itself in speech."
In brief it is contended by Dr. Coriat that the stammering arises as a defense or compensation mechanism, the object of which is to keep from consciousness certain painful memories and undesirable thoughts, in order that they may not be betrayed in speech. In fact, as Dr. Coriat says, "all stammering, with its hesitation, its fear, its disturbing emotions, is a kind of an association test in everyday life and not a phonetic disturbance. It is a situation phobia, the same as phobias of open or closed places."
Consequently, according to this view, stammering is purposeful and intentional and not accidental. This purposiveness is psychological and individualistic. It is resorted to by the individual for very definite, intimate, personal reasons. It is due to unconscious, repressed hidden complexes which crowd or press between the words of syllables, as Stekel puts it, and which produce the inner resistance which inhibit the free flow of speech.
It is asserted that these hidden, repressed, unconscious thoughts are related to the sexual impulse or wish.
Dr. Coriat enumerates the types of repressed complexes in childhood which may bring about stammering as follows:
1. Repression of sexual acts or secrets and the fear of betrayal. 2. Typical Oedipus complexes, with a fear of betrayal of the hate for the father and a consequent embarrassment of speech in his presence. 3. Masochistic phantasies, wondering and imitating how it would sound to talk with the tongue cut out. 4. The fear of pronouncing or saying certain sexual and, therefore, tabooed words, and thus betraying what the child thinks, his hidden thoughts.
The stammering may then arise as a wish to say or think certain tabooed words and the wish encounters a prohibition from within. These words may relate to certain anal, urinary or sexual functions which are recognized by the child as unclean, and thus forbidden to pronounce. 5. As a manifestation of anal eroticism, that is, holding the feces so that he could talk while trying to conceal the act.
. . Talking at these times would be difficult, because talking would take away the muscular tension for withholding the feces."
At another place Dr. Coriat assures us that "the dreams of stammerers are interesting because these dreams reveal their wishes to talk freely, their resistances and transferences and, also, their reversions to childhood when the stammering arose as an embarrassment complex or as a gainer of time to conceal their sexual thoughts or libido."
I have presented Dr. Coriat's views so fully and quoted him so much at length in order that there may not be any question of the absolute accuracy of my statements.
What does this mean to the one who has followed the trail of the Freudian movement? The meaning is plain. It is like the handwriting on the wall. Dr. Coriat has permitted himself to be deluded by the Freudian sexual theories and their application to the psychoneuroses, and in this special instance to stammering.
What does this imply? It implies that Dr. Coriat accepts the Freudian theories en masse. Hence, to discuss this subject in a thorough way I should have to take up for discussion the various aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis. This would include a consideration of the method employed, the psychology, the attitude or standpoint assumed, the "art of interpretation" developed, and the real meanings, in their wider and more extended sense, of various unsupported, unfounded, dogmatic and untrue conclusions of a theoretical and practical nature. This cannot, it is obvious, be expected in this place. Attempts of a certain sort in this direction have been made by me in previous communications.[6] In the not very distant future I shall endeavor more successfully to cope with some of the problems mentioned.
[6] See, for example, the Psychoanalytic Review, January 1915 and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June-September, 1914.
With respect to the general problem of sexuality I may say that I have recently[7] taken up, for separate dissection, the conception of sexuality assumed by Freud and his followers. The present paper should, I feel, be read in connection with this particular paper, since it will, in a way, clear the field of many of the misunderstandings in interpretation. Everything depends upon what one means by "sexuality" or "sexual impulse" or "sexual tendency." Unless a mutual understanding is arrived at on this subject of sexuality, little advance toward the dissipation of conflicting views of Freudians and anti-Freudians can ever be had. And permit me to mention in this place that it is the Freudians themselves and not their opponents who are most to blame. Until the Freudian school decidedly and once for all gives up its false and distorted viewpoint of man's sexual impulse and of human mental life, little progress of a worth-while nature can be made by them.[8]
[7] "A Critical Review of the Conception of Sexuality Assumed by the Freudian School." Medical Record, March 27, 1915.
[8] Owing to the fixed, systematized theories of the Freudian school, I believe that little co-operation can be expected from it. We can only prevent the dissemination of their dangerous sexual theories.
Starting out, then, with certain concepts or theories which are basically wrong and can be summed up by stating that they assume an individualisitic, psychosexual conception of life and interpretation of vital phenomena, and with a psychology and a sexology which is radically wrong in its sweeping and dogmatic conclusions, Dr. Coriat, who has obviously accepted these theories as actualities, else he could not have arrived at the ideas concerning stammering which he presents in his paper, builds up or accepts an imaginatively constructed theory which he applies in full force to the problem of stuttering, and into which he crowds the phenomena of a physical and mental order which are manifest in this intermittent, special psychoneurotic disorder. As a natural consequence all the faults of Freudism have been transported to the elucidation of the genesis, nature and evolution of stammering. And this means that the theories of universally acting psychical repression, of the unconscious, of the endopsychic censor, of the significance of resistance and amnesia, of the employment of highly complicated and phantastic symbolism, of the manifestations of sexuality and so forth have been made use of in a high-handed, uncalled for, unnecessary and unscientific manner to prove the truth of the thesis with which the author set out upon his journey.
It is no wonder that in such a fashion and with such concepts the conclusions above cited were arrived at. Indeed, work along this line was unnecessary, except in a purposively corroborative way, if the theories of Freud in the case of the whole group of psychoneuroses is once seized upon and accepted as the basic truth. The problem for Dr. Coriat is to prove the truth of Freud's conceptions as laid down in his psychology and sexology, upon which his psychopathology is built.
I must stoutly protest against an evasion of the real issues by the leaders of the Freudian movement. Let them retrace their steps and first prove the truth, soundness and validity of their psychological and sexual theories and cease pressing on to pastures new, as Dr. Coriat has done here in the case of stuttering. If they are not prepared to do this, or are unwilling so to do, I do not believe that they are entitled to continue to inflict upon others views which have little real foundation in fact, which are unproven, unfounded, purely speculative, imaginative, pure figments of the imagination, a delusion and a snare. I have elsewhere[9] given credit to Freud and his co-workers where I think they deserve it. But that should not deter me from protesting against their evasion of the issues, their befogging of the problems involved, their failure to prove their case or to offer satisfactory replies to criticism which is given in a fair and frank fashion.
[9] "A Plea for a Broader Standpoint in Psychoanalysis." Psychoanalytic Review, January, 1915.
The method of burying one's head in sand, after the manner of the ostrich, and the refusal to see that which is pointed out or which stares one clearly in the face, cannot go far to establish one's case or as a method of defense. And the same thing applies to that oft-repeated and tiresome retort: "You do not (or perhaps you cannot) understand our theories and viewpoints." Or that other evasive accusation, rather than reply: "Your lack of understanding is of itself proof positive that our theories are absolutely correct in every detail." Or "Your attack or criticism just completely and undoubtedly proves our case. You are prompted by those very mental mechanisms and by that self-same mental content—meaning all the time the sexual content and sexual mechanisms—which we have been trying to explain to you so that you might understand us."
In response to this I should like to ask the Freudian school what it means by "censor," "wish," "unconscious," "sexual," and other similar and constantly used terms which form the stronghold of their defenses. I have shown,[10] at least to my own satisfaction, that the conception of sexuality is not at all clear to any of the Freudian school, including Freud himself. This should by no means be so. Surely the terms which are constantly used and are the sine qua non of their theories should have a definite meaning of some sort, at least to the Freudians themselves. Mystical and metaphysical implications should not continue to find a sheltering place in the province of psychopathology. They should be uprooted and driven forth from the dark and hidden recesses into the light and open highways.
[10] Loc. cit.
These statements have a direct application to the paper which I have undertaken to criticize. It is all very well and very commendable to come forward with new theories. They are entertaining, interesting and make one think, even if they are not at all true. But it should be definitely and plainly stated that we are dealing with theories and not with facts, that the theories will be considered theories until they are proven to be facts, and that if they are disproven, they should be thrown into the rubbish heap or discarded, or else they should be modified to meet with the facts and actual conditions—as they are and not as they ought in our opinion to be or as we should like them or as we imagine them to be. Here we are confronted with a problem (stammering) which has been the subject of much study and discussion by many men. Theories have been carefully and guardedly formulated by most workers in this field. Many of them were, it is true, in error in their conclusions or viewpoints. They were, as it were, on the wrong trail.
Here is a problem of the greatest interest and of the greatest importance— one which should demand the most careful research and the most positive deliberation and consideration, with prolonged and intensive study and observation of cases, combined with self-scrutiny and self-analysis and self-knowledge (which means a keen insight into human nature and the human mind in its manifold workings). Here is a serious, concrete problem of great practical importance. Its solution and elucidation means much. And he who comes forward with an explanation of this problem should be expected to give conclusive proof of his conception and for his conclusion. And we should, justly and as a matter of course, expect and demand it.
And what proof has Dr. Coriat given us for his conclusions? Here and there scattered through his paper one finds a few conclusions or explanations of a concrete nature, but they are his interpretations of the facts and not the facts. No real, in fact not a vestige of proof is offered. The few dreams which he presents do not, to the inquiring and demanding reader, show anything which permit of the conclusions which Dr. Coriat draws with reference to their meaning or significance. He seems to have interpretated (rather than analyzed) them in typical Freudian fashion. And, furthermore, even if his interpretations of the few dreams which he presents and which were taken from different cases were true, of what significance would that be? What right would we thus have of drawing conclusions which apply to all cases of stuttering (and, as mentioned earlier in this paper, to many other related states of a normal and abnormal nature)? Not the slightest.
Not a single case has been presented in proof of the conclusions drawn in the paper. Surely this is not what we have been accustomed to expect in other fields of medicine, especially when the conception newly put forth is entirely novel, sensational, revolutionary, contrary to all former beliefs, and based on theories and conclusions which have been for some time and still are a centre of storm, of wordy argumentation, and even of insult and abuse—at any rate sub judice,
Has the science and practice of psychopathology come to the stage when theories of any sort can be given to the reading public as fact, and no actual proof therefor presented?
I venture to say that in no other department of medicine or in fact in no other aspect of life would scientific men tolerate such presentation and promulgation, despite opposition and disproof and with no tangible or definite evidence or proof. Nor would men come forward to offer revolutionary, let alone dangerous theories, for general consumption, with so little proof, as is being laid on the platter for psychopathologists.
I find no evidence offered by Dr. Coriat to bolster up the conclusions of his paper.
In response to a question asked by one of those who discussed his paper in which he was requested to explain how he knew that stammering begins by concealing something, Dr. Coriat stated: "I have had an opportunity of examining a number of stammerers and subjecting them to a complete psychoanalysis, studying all the paradoxical mental reactions and in nearly every case this concealment of some sexual secret of childhood came up. It is easy to establish a certain relationship between the speech embarrassment and the concealed sexuality."
There is, as is seen, no other proof for this theory (that is all that one call it) of Dr. Coriat and the Freudian school in general, than his or their say-so. Those who are acquainted with the method of arriving at conclusions adopted by the Freudian school will demand more than this as proof of either the "concealment" of some "sexual secret" of childhood (and where lives there a man or woman that has not sexual memories, not necessarily secrets, of some sort or other, related to the period of puberty or antedating it by a certain varying period?) or the establishment of a relationship other than co-existence or coincidence, between the speech embarrassment and the "concealed sexuality" (just as if even proof of the existence of this relationship was sufficient testimony of the causative operating influence of the latter).