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one associated with heat, the other with light, and the third with chemical effects, 

 and, although each acted its part, it was the unified whole which operated ; and the 

 same analogy applied to the mind. But the analysis was carried even further : the 

 red rays were at one end of the spectrum, the blue at the other and the yellow 

 stood in the middle, and these corresponded to the exercise of the mental faculties 

 during the different periods of life : feeling was predominant in childhood, 

 intelligence in the autumn of life, and desire, with its impetuosity and passions, 

 during the period of youth. In may be stated that this analysis of the mental 

 facultiesprevailed as the basis of textbook teaching in Psychology until the objective 

 or experimental period when Mercier urged that, in studying the Mind, Conduct 

 should be the ultimate criterion and guide. Following upon this teaching some 

 foreign psychologists, notably Freud and Breuer, based the origin of human 

 activity upon desire ; that the strongest desires were implanted in animals and in 

 man as instincts, and that the strongest of these related to self-preservation, to the 

 feeling of hunger, to the seeking for warmth, to sex, and then to a number of binary 

 and even ternary types. The teaching of foreign psychologists laid particular 

 emphasis upon the instinct of sex, going so far as to assert — contrary to general 

 experience — that sex disturbances were at the root of all nervous and mental 

 abnormalities and diseases. The teaching of this school very rightly assumed, how- 

 ever, that the varied operations of the intellectual life, of memory, imagination and 

 reason, of the emotions and the will, resulted from the interaction of sensations and 

 ideas under the laws of association. They further taught that ideas grouped them- 

 selves into complexes, which may conflict one with another, some being repressed, 

 whilst others found expression in some sensory, motor or other mental or sympa- 

 thetic outlet ; but that in disease, or under any great overwhelming stress, or even 

 under a stress of a lesser severity but long continued, these groups of ideas became 

 dissociated, dissociation and repression tending to occur chiefly and mainly in 

 connection with ideas which existed during early infantile life ; these ideas also 

 carrying with them certain definite emotions, which could not be ascertained 

 because they were only unconsciously active, never rising into consciousness them- 

 selves but, being transferred or sublimated into some other form of expression ; 

 the difficulty experienced in identifying them being due to what was described as 

 the mental resistance of the individual. If it were possible to discover the links of 

 connection between the present abnormal condition and early infantile emotional 

 states, and if these could only be brought into consciousness and reasoned with, 

 then the abnormal condition disappeared. It will thus be seen that the new 

 school laid as much stress upon the laws of mental association as did its discoverer 

 Hobbes ; or Hartley, who was the first to make use of its application to the whole 

 intellectual system. One special method used by the new school to discover the 

 hidden links of association was by means of psycho-analysis — or, according to 

 English pychologists, through psychological analysis — which included in its scheme 

 the interpretation of dreams, because dreams were regarded as unfulfilled desires, 

 and an exploration of these desires, hidden in the unconscious mind, gave the 

 clue to the connection between outward symptoms and their inner and deeper 

 real origin or proximate cause. 



It is with the view of making clearer what is meant by this method of 

 examination described as Psycho-analysis that this little volume has been issued, 

 in the form of question and answer, by a well-known supporter and disciple of 

 the practice. In order to carry out this scheme a special vocabulary had to be 

 invented and words such as "sexual," wish, libido, have been employed with a new 

 meaning ; new terms have also been introduced into mental science; such as 

 " sublimation," when a group of ideas has been transferred to some new social 



