v] Some Implications of the Incarnation 157 



visual symbol or some word-play depending on a silly 

 assonance? 



Of course, often one cannot ; but often one can, and 

 here the answer is again the answer of the pragmatist. 

 The analysis of dreams is now used by specialists for the 

 diagnosis of certain types of disease. The repressed 

 complex, which, it must be remembered, never emerges 

 at all into consciousness, is discovered, brought into 

 consciousness, verified ; and with, or sometimes without, 

 further treatment, the disease is cured. If there is 

 treatment, it is based on the discovery of the repression- 

 complex. But the important point is, that the pudding 

 is proved in the eating. 



Perhaps, since we all live in conditions that make im- 

 perative the repression of many potent desires, it may 

 seem strange that we do not all suffer from repression- 

 complexes, since these desires cannot ' abreact ' or be ful- 

 filled. But it is just here that the hopefulness of Freud's 

 discoveries comes in. If an illegitimate desire is faced 

 and fought, it can be directed into other channels. It 

 becomes 'sublimated 1 .' Sexual desire, to take the most 

 familiar instance (with which Freud's works are all 

 unduly permeated), may be sublimated into pure love, 

 if its existence is recognised. If, for instance the person 

 plunges into public work in order to forget a passion, the 

 force of the passion is poured straight in the work, and 

 not bottled up, to emerge later as a symptom, always 



1 Some workers in this field are inclined to give a far less im- 

 portant place to 'sublimation' than is given by Bernard Hart, 

 for example. They contend that in most cases the mere fact of 

 facing and fighting an anti-social impulse brings the whole matter 

 so strongly into consciousness that repression does not occur in 

 normal subjects, and sublimation is rendered unnecessary. With 

 this I do not altogether agree. The acquisition of new functions 

 by organs is a common phenomenon, and I see no reason to sup- 

 pose that we have not here an analogous phenomenon. 



