J.— PSYCHOLOGY. !75 



not be certain that the memory was a real memory, but thought that it 

 probably was, because he had lived in India up to the age of two, when he 

 left for England and had not returned since. It was thus probable thai 

 it was a real experience ; if not so in all its details, the central kernel 01 

 the experience was probably real, and its recall was effective in curing 

 him. It will be noticed that he did not ab-react this experience in 

 relation to another person. He was not in a doctor's consulting-room, 

 telling the doctor what he could remember. He was by himself. He had 

 not even gone to a doctor beforehand, so that it could not be described 

 as a transference towards the doctor in the latter's absence. He had 

 not applied to any doctor for treatment at that time. He came on to me 

 afterwards, simply to talk the matter out still further, and to learn 

 whether he had been working on the right lines, and how he should proceed 

 in order to ensure that the fearsome experience should not return. An 

 example like this is a refutation of the view that the only beneficial effect 

 of ab-reaction is the transference. Transference is indeed often the chief 

 factor of cure, and in many ab-reaction cases transference is an additional 

 factor. But an example like this shows that ab-reaction by itself has 

 therapeutic value, in contradiction to Jung's view. 6 



Ab-reaction of repressed emotion sweeps away the repression, and so 

 frees energy which had been previously needed to hold the repressed 

 memories apart from the rest of the mind and away from clear conscious- 

 ness. This freed energy is thus put once more at the general disposal of 

 the personality. The previous ' fixation ' of this repressing energy and 

 its deviation from the common fund of energy of the personality probably 

 explains, to some extent, the feeling of fatigue that generally accompanies 

 a psycho-neurosis. 



The unitary personality, as an organisation of mental activities and 

 mental powers, is not static but dynamic, and is in process of development 

 throughout life. Although it carries with it, as a physical correlate, a 

 unitary working of the brain and of other parts of the body, this does 

 not necessarily involve complete dependence upon the latter for its con- 

 tinued existence. The question of personal survival of bodily death is 

 one which can be intelligibly and scientifically put, and which is in theory 

 answerable along the lines of scientific observation and inference. The 

 investigations carried out by the Society for Psychical Research during 

 the past fifty years are of this nature, and the Society's results and 

 provisional hypotheses can rightly claim a place in modern psychological 

 science. Nevertheless, if due allowance is made for the possible working 

 of such factors as conscious or sub-conscious fraud, telepathy between 

 the living, and chance coincidence, the scientific evidence for personal 

 survival of bodily death is not very strong. 



For more convincing reasons (apart from the pronouncements of revealed 

 religion) in support of this belief we still have to turn to philosophy, and 

 in modern philosophical theories of value we find arguments that are far 

 from negligible. 6 



Note : At the meeting, this paper will be supplemented by descriptions 

 of cases illustrating mental dissociation. 



8 1 record this case in Talks on Psychotherapy, University of London Press, Ltd., 

 1923. pp. 39-41. 



6 1 have set out arguments from theory of value in my Mind and Personality, 

 University of London Press, Ltd., 1926, pp. 309-318. 



