February io, 1916] 



NATURE 



645 



as "psycho-analysis," the assumed utility of the 

 latter claiming- for it a fresh title under the name 

 of the "new psychiatry." Its author is Sigmund 

 Freud, of Vienna, and one of its most brilliant ex- 

 ponents is K. Yung, of Zurich, who has lately 

 tended to break away completely from the teach-" 

 ings and practice of the so-called " Freudian 

 school." This school has few disciples among 

 thoughtful and reflective men and women. In this 

 country healthier conditions and a more natural 

 and ethical view of life maintain, and we recognise 

 that man is not an animal dominated by crude 

 instinct and base passion, as the disciples of Freud 

 maintain, but that he is a responsible being, 

 fashioned after the image of God, and endowed 

 with mental, spiritual, and physical attainments 

 which can be proved by an experience not that of 

 men of science only. 



The causes, attributed by those whose lives are 

 spent in the investigation of nervous and mental 

 disorders to these pathological conditions, are ob- 

 served chiefly in heredity, environment, education, 

 fatigue, and various intoxications, whether these 

 are generated within the body or introduced into 

 it from without, the latter, for instance, being the 

 poisons of alcohol, syphilis, tuberculosis, etc. ; but 

 the disturbing effects of strong emotion, grief, 

 anxiety, and worry caused by any one specific 

 event, such as a moral emotion, are also not 

 excluded. Charcot, Hack Tuke, Savage, Janet, and 

 many others have connected mental and nervous 

 disorders with vivid emotional experiences, as also 

 with the memories of these and with the conserved 

 and revived ideas of such memories. It has been 

 recognised that these memories may remain in the 

 subconscious field, although capable of rising into 

 the conscious m,ind under certain normal and ab- 

 normal conditions. It is the claim of the disciples 

 of Freud that they can by "psycho-analysis" dis- 

 close the workings of this unconscious mind 

 through the examination of spontaneously uttered 

 thoughts, i.e., "free-association," and that all 

 conscious thought and action are coloured and in- 

 fluenced by the unconscious ones, which, indeed, 

 are looked upon as the springs of action of all 

 conscious ideas, which implies that the uncon- 

 scious mind is the primitive soil out of which all 

 conscious thoughts originate, and out of which all 

 intellectual processes grow. Freud considers the 

 conscious active mind of thought, feeling, and 

 >vill to be a commingling of the unconscious and 

 the conscious, in which the lower level supplies the 

 motive force, whilst the upper regulates it. Thus 

 there are many mental states which may be packed 

 together in the mind at one time, thougVi one or 

 more of them may be repressed ; as Bergson 

 states, they may be compressed like steam in a 

 NO. 2415, VOL. 96] 



boiler, so they may not rise to the conscious level 

 of expression. 



It is within the knowledge of every practising 

 physician that certain sensations or experiences 

 are able to determine certain attitudes of mind 

 which may appear after their memories have 

 faded, and the hypothesis that the memories ol 

 past experiences are potential agencies in deter- 

 mining certain abnormal mental symptoms is also 

 an acknowledged fact. The teachings of Freud 

 have certainly tended to elucidate many facts in 

 the unconscious field. He maintains, for instance, 

 that in the education of children many incidents 

 are remembered, although more are forgotten ; yet 

 they remain engraved upon the marble of the un- 

 conscious mind. He cites the trend of social and 

 ethical education to be mainly in the direction of 

 repressing natural tendencies, suppressing feelings 

 and passions, personal wishes and sentiments, 

 which is thus a constant effort for the learning 

 pupil, but which it succeeds eventually in more 

 or less completely controlling. These tendencies, 

 so repressed, may at any time become uppermost, 

 and then give rise to wishes, longings, delusions, 

 unfulfilled desires, dreams, or obsessions. 



Dr. .Stoddart's lectures are an eloquent brief 

 Jor this Freudian school, and if his advocacy had 

 ended here we should have been satisfied, in- 

 terested, and gratified ; but he carries his support 

 to the extreme limit of Freudian disgust, and some 

 parts of the lectures are unwarrantable, painful, 

 and unjustifiable. Freud and Dr. Stoddart both 

 i believe that there is an unwillingness to recall or 

 I evoke painful feelings, that these are kept under 

 by an assumed ego, the " endo-psychic censor," or, 

 more briefiy, the " Censor " — a purely artificial 

 inhibiting factor. Lapses of memory, which cause 

 us not to do things we wish to do and intend to 

 do, drop out of the mind owing to their lack of 

 interest, and not owing to the working of an 

 active and repressive force. It is claimed for 

 Freudism that a solution is obtained to the 

 problems of grammar, language, literature, art, 

 and religion, and this ambitious aspiration we 

 should willingly have passed by ; but because the 

 purpose of psycho-analysis is to discover some 

 unpleasantly painful or shameful event in the past 

 history of the patient, because these are taken to 

 be the root cause of most cases of mental perver- 

 sion, and because sexual matters are placed as the 

 bed-rock of most cases of insanity — a hypothesis 

 which is not only unjustifiable and unproven, 

 but is also an insult to the clean mind of an 

 innocent sufferer — we are compelled to remon- 

 strate. The method of psycho-analysis practised 

 by this school of the " new psychiatry " has been 

 responsible for suggesting lewd, objectionable, and 



