246 Note on Freud s Censor [APP. 



questionably directed towards an end which is not for 

 the progress of the patient ; and further, it seems to be 

 absolutely determined. 



On the other hand before the patient seem to lie two 

 possibilities, and two only ; the greater evil of abnormal 

 pleasure from which his soul revolts, and the lesser evil 

 of suicide. I cannot help suspecting that it is a false 

 reading of the evidence to say that the impulse to suicide 

 is due to the feeling of isolation. I am inclined to think 

 that, if all goes well, time will show that the real source 

 of that impulse is not fear of isolation, but the reverse, 

 the fear of over-intimacy of a particular kind that is 

 dreaded fear of temptation 1 . If this be the true inter- 

 pretation, the difficulty vanishes. The censor becomes 

 once more a moral agent, and not purely determined. 



Another possible explanation is, that the censor con- 

 cerned is that between the unconscious and the fore- 

 conscious (Freud's terminology), not that between the 

 foreconscious and the conscious, if Freud is right in his 

 theory of the double censorship. 



But is he? The function of the censor seems to be to 

 prevent certain psychic formations from entering con- 

 sciousness. But the foreconscious is no more conscious 

 than the unconscious. (We must remember that Freud 

 gives a special meaning to the term unconscious, and 

 that neither his unconscious nor his foreconscious is in 

 consciousness. Both come under the term unconscious 

 in ordinary psychology.) If then there is a censor be- 

 tween the unconscious and the foreconscious its function 

 must be totally different from that of the true censor. 

 If one can attach any meaning at all to the idea, this 

 lower censor must simply represent the inhibition of un- 



1 Closely associated with this is an anti-religious complex a 

 hatred of Christ dating from the fifth year, due to a brutal 

 attack by one who called himself Jesus and threatened eternal 

 damnation. Escape from the results of this complex is unlikely. 



