556 The Outline of Science 



hysteria and insanity. It may happen, for instance, that the 

 repressed complex leads to a certain kind of forgetfulness, a for- 

 getfulness of those things with which it is associated. A man may 

 forget an appointment from which he anticipated something un- 

 pleasant, he may forget the existence of unpaid bills. Such cases 

 are cases of active forgetting, and are to be distinguished from 

 cases of passive forgetting, where the matter is forgotten simply 

 because it made very little impression on the mind. A slip in 

 speaking or writing may sometimes testify to a repressed com- 

 plex; the substituted word corresponding to a wish, but a re- 

 pressed wish, of the speaker or writer, as when the President of 

 the Austrian Lower House announced that the sitting was closed 

 when he should have said it was opened, the reason being that 

 he privately expected no good from the sitting and would have 

 liked it closed. 



PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 

 Professor Freud's Theories 



A comparatively new branch of psychology is that closely 

 associated with the work of Professor Freud of Vienna. It deals 

 mainly with the phenomena of the unconscious. Whatever may be 

 said of Freudian theories, they have at least opened up a wide 

 field of study. Part of Freud's doctrine has become fairly well 

 established; on the other hand, a great deal of it is regarded as 

 merely ingenious theory, which is not generally accepted. This 

 "new" psychology is of very great interest, because of the bearing 

 it has on medical practice and the work of the teacher. 



The chief theory of the Freudian psychology is, that there is 

 a great part of the mind of which we are unconscious; that this 

 unconscious part exercises an enormous influence upon our 

 thoughts and actions, without ourselves being aware of it. Freud 

 conceived the idea that the influence of the unconscious mind was 



