220 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



remedied? Freud, seeking to give the direct logical an- 

 swer, contends that disorders embodying psychic conflicts 

 due to repression of elements which have a right to ten- 

 ancy in consciousness are to be effectually cured only by 

 removing the repression and freely admitting such con- 

 tingents to their hereditary rights in consciousness. 



So much by way of outline of the principles contained 

 in Freud's system of psychotherapy. Now as to the 

 method. 



j 



METHOD OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 



It will be clear from the foregoing that the task of the 

 psychoanalyst is to bring into the high light of conscious- 

 ness the ideas or associations which have been relegated 

 to the recesses of the unconscious. The sole clue, how- 

 ever, to such repressed fancies lies in the symbolic equiva- 

 lents into which these unconscious ideas have been con- 

 verted through the process of repression. And the source 

 of such surrogate symbolizations is to be sought in the 

 symptoms themselves, in every spontaneous, unguarded 

 reaction of the patient, and, most critically of all, in the 

 patient's dreams. For it is in the drama of dream imagery, 

 which the mind enacts during sleep, when the sentinels 

 standing guard at the outposts of consciousness grow lax 

 in their vigil, that these harpies of the unconscious most 

 easily escape durance and venture to disport themselves 

 with least danger of surprise. 



Here, then, is our opportunity to take the demon of the 

 unconscious unawares. Not that this unconscious ogre, 

 be it remembered, is wont, even in dreams, openly to 

 expose itself, but there are revealed in the creations of 

 dream phantasy traces of its presence whereby it may be 

 tracked to its hiding. This tracing of the repressed in- 

 terests contained in the ideas lying behind the dream 

 images constitutes the method of dream analysis, as de- 

 veloped by Freud, and it is the analysis of the patient's 



