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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 991 



several translations of works of tlie " psycho- 

 analytic school," including Freud's " Se- 

 lected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psycho- 

 neuroses " and " Three Contributions to 

 Sexual Theory." The editors of the series, 

 being themselves interested in this movement, 

 are helping to make the psychoanalytic au- 

 thors accessible in English. As the limits of 

 this review evidently do not admit of an 

 analysis of the whole series of papers, we may 

 confine ourselves to a few remarks on Freud 

 and his school. The two numbers translated 

 from Freud perhaps give as good an insight 

 into the core of his doctrine as could be had 

 in small compass. It is, however, character- 

 istic of this author that cross references are 

 very important in getting his meaning. 

 Everywhere there are gaps in the argument 

 that need to be supplied from some other paper 

 or book; in fact, a reading of all Freud's 

 works still leaves the impression of un- 

 bridged gaps, jumps in the thought and in- 

 completeness of evidence. Quite possibly, 

 these deficiencies are inherent in the doctrine 

 at its best, but it is at least to be hoped that 

 some Freudian with a taste for orderly expo- 

 sition should show what can be done towards 

 giving this fascinating theory a scientific 

 dress. 



The whole scope of the Freudian doctrines 

 is very far-reaching, involving a treatment of 

 hysteria and other psychoneuroses, a theory 

 of the mechanism of these disorders, certain 

 significant views on normal as well as patho- 

 logical mentality, and even certain strictures 

 on the ethics of civilized society. In his psy- 

 chology, Freud lays stress on the importance 

 of repressed desires, and on the devices by 

 which these desires, though relegated to the 

 " subconscious," yet contrive to express them- 

 selves in dreams (every dream being a drama- 

 tized or , symbolic fulfilment of a repressed 

 wish), in witticisms, and in slips of memory 

 and similar lapses. He is fond of insisting 

 that lapses and apparent irrelevances and 

 extravagances of thought or action do not 

 occur without a cause — by which he means 

 that they do not occur without an emo- 

 tional and volitional cause. We forget a 



name because, subconsciously, we wish to 

 forget it, we make a slip of the tongue be- 

 cause some subconscious wish expresses itself 

 in this way, we indulge in witticisms be- 

 cause by them we can give expression to 

 wishes which social custom forbids us to ex- 

 press directly, or which we even do not ac- 

 knowledge to ourselves. Now society is spe- 

 cially insistent on the repression of sexual 

 wishes; and for this reason, and because sex 

 is a dominant factor in human make-up and 

 because man is driven to " sexualize every- 

 thing," the repressed wishes which express 

 themselves in dreams and lapses are chiefly 

 and fundamentally of a sexual nature. 

 Furthermore, the repression of sex motives 

 begins early in childhood, for the child is not 

 the sexless creature that he is often supposed 

 to be, but is, on the contrary, strongly sexed 

 from the very start. In part, his sexual pro- 

 clivities are self -centered and do not drive him 

 to persons of the opposite sex — an infantile 

 condition which persists in some individuals 

 in the form of sexual perversions — but in 

 part, the polarity of the sexes appears al- 

 ready in the young child, so that the boy is 

 sexually attracted to the mother and becomes 

 in his own mind a rival of the father. These 

 sexual proclivities, being socially repressed 

 from a very early age, generate submerged 

 emotional " complexes " which persist from 

 childhood to adult life and form the deepest 

 stratum of that subconscious life of desire 

 which finds expression in dreams, etc. Thus 

 the full analysis of a dream or lapse leads to 

 a suppressed wish, to a sex motive, and ulti- 

 mately back to the sexual life of childhood. 

 Suppression, sex and infantilism are the 

 three fundamentals of the Freudian psychol- 

 ogy. 



This psychology is readily applied to the 

 explanation of hysteria, or rather it grew out 

 of a study of hysteria. The " attacks " and 

 other abnormal behavior of hysterics are, like 

 dreams, the expression of repressed sexual 

 wishes dating back to childhood. Often some 

 shocking or disappointing experience of a 

 iexual nature has been repressed from mem- 

 ory, but its " afl^ect " or emotion remains and 



