190 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



primitive, hitherto^ suppressed activities. He held that the hysterias 

 are essentially ' substitution neuroses, ' connected with and modified by 

 the gregario'us instincts, and are primarily due to a regression to the 

 primitive instinctive danger reaction of immobility, gi~eatly modified by 

 suggestion. So, too', he held that the anxiety neuroses, which are for 

 him essentially ' repression neuroses,' also' show regression, though less 

 complete, in the strength and frequency of emotional reaction, in the 

 failure during states of phantasy to appreciate reality, in the reversion 

 to the nightmares, and especially the tennfying animal dreams, charac- 

 teristic of childhood, in the occurrence of compulsory acts, in the desire 

 for solitude, &c. Indeed, because he believed that suppression is 

 especially apt to occur, and to be relatively or absolutely perfect, in 

 infancy, Elvers suggested that the independent activity of suppressed 

 experience and the process of dissociation, as exemplified in fugues, 

 complexes, &c., are themselves examples of regression. 



He criticised Freud's conception of the censorship, substituting 

 in place of that anthropomorphically-coloured sociological parallel the 

 physiological and non-teleological conception of regi'ession. He 

 supposed the mimetic, fantastic, and symbolic fo'rms in which hysterias 

 and dreams manifest themselves to be natural to the infantile stages 

 of human development, individual or collective. For him they were 

 examples of regi'ession to low-level characters, and not, as Freud 

 supposes, ascribable to compromise formations tO' elude the vigilance 

 of an all -protective censor. He regarded nightmares and war-dreams 

 as examples of infantile states. He believed the absence of affect in 

 many noiTnal dreams to be natural to the infantile attitude, which 

 would treat the situation in question with indifference. That absence 

 of affect also' arises from the harmless symbolic solution oi the conflict. 

 The affect of dreams is only painful, Rivers supposed, when they fail 

 to provide a. solution of the conflict, and is not due, as Freud holds, to the 

 activity of the censor. In the social behaviour of primitive com- 

 munities Rivers was able to find striking analogies to the characteristics 

 of dreams, as described by Freud. 



On the protopathic side he ranged the primitive instincts and 

 emotions, and the complexes, together with the activities of the optic 

 thalamus, and on the epicritic side intelligence and the sentiments, 

 together with the activities of the cerebral cortex. We are now in a 

 position to examine Rivers 's treatment of the gregarious behaviour of 

 animal and human life, on which he was still engaged at the time 

 of his death. In the gregarious instinct he recognised a cognitive 

 aspect which he termed ' intuition,' an affective aspect which he tenned 

 'sympathy,' and a motor aspect which he teiTned 'mimesis.' He 

 used ' mimesis ' for the process of imitation so far as it was unwitting, 

 ' Sympathy ' he regarded as always unwitting. ' Intuition ' he defined 

 as the process whereby one person is unwittingly influenced by 

 another's cognitive activity. But I feel sure that the term 

 ' unwittingly ' is not to be considered here as equivalent to 

 ' telepatliically.' .\11 that Rivers meant was that the person is 

 influenced by certain stinuili without appreciating their nature and 

 meaning. He prefen-ed to employ the term ' suggestion ' as covering 



