362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the more likely will the complex be to avoid the censor. It is as though 

 the complex, in its mad desire to escape, disguised itself and slipped 

 around the back way. It succeeds in escaping, but its disguise alters it 

 so beyond recognition that even its best friends will not recognize it. 



Thus in the dream we see the conflict of the two systems of energy, 

 and, if we are skilled, we may even interpret the signs as the woodsman 

 would do, and tell what complex has passed that way, and how it was 

 clad. For the first time the psychology of dreams is thus given a co- 

 herent setting, which shows it as a type of activity not foreign to our 

 usual modes of thought, but of one piece with them. For the dream is 

 only one illustration of this conflict. What, says Freud, are the symbols 

 of the artist and the poet but just such disguises, the product of the 

 conflict in his own soul between the primitive and the civilized ways of 

 thought ? Other observers have already shown that the root of art is in 

 sex ; here we see that it is through the symbolism of a sex-conflict that it 

 develops. 



Now, suppose that the complexes are a little stronger, have not been 

 as well suppressed as in the normal individual ; in such a case they may 

 break out as hysterical symptoms or obsessions — yet the emergence is 

 not complete, though more complete than in the dream, for the individ- 

 ual still has gaps in his conscious memory with regard to the ways in 

 which the complexes are connected with his symptoms, or he may have 

 forgotten the origin of some of his symptoms altogether. And yet in 

 every case his neurosis goes back and roots in the strength of just such 

 complexes, which have seized on events of his adult life somewhat sim- 

 ilar to them in nature, and through the breaches thus made have burst 

 forth into a real, if detached, life. 



Shocks, traumatic experiences, cause forgetfulness and splitting of 

 personality, on this theory, because they resemble sufficiently in some 

 respect the old childhood complexes, and these latter are for one reason 

 or another so strong that the experience forms its associative connec- 

 tions with the older complexes, and not with conscious personality. So 

 it drops below the level of consciousness, to in turn strive to rise to the 

 surface. The hysterical symptom is then a symbol of the conflict be- 

 tween the two tendencies. If there were no conflict the old complex 

 would emerge wholly; that it emerges in indirect and symbolic ways is 

 additional proof of the conflict which is going on. One must, then, 

 have reached a certain stage of ethical development, must have repressed 

 old tendencies, in order to develop a neurosis. 



It is of course true that this repression of the lower by the upper is 

 in general good for the organism; it is well that consciousness should 

 be left free. The fact that it miscarries at times and a neurosis or a 

 nightmare ensues is only because of the relative strength of the com- 

 plexes, and not because of a defect inherent in the system itself. 



Thus for Freud the most real part of the drama of the soul goes on 



