throughout the paper I have used the term 'prelogical psyche' as a comprehensive term covering both the primitive psyche and civilized unconscious mentality. I am unable to discover any essential difference between these two forms of psychic activity. If we disregard the difference of content, we find precisely the same character and the same spontaneous, a-rational mode of activity. The superior differentiation of civilized mentality is certainly represented in the unconscious by a subtler elaboration of material and in general organization. But these are questions merely of degree. It is in the conscious function that the enormous difference lies. The conscious, however, only represents the apex of the pyramid. There is an increasing depersonalization of content. the further we recede from the threshold of consciousness; so that the main character of the unconscious is impersonal or collective. Moreover, every instinct has two tributaries, of which the deeper and more determining is always the impersonal.

The point of view I have attempted to outline to-night is concerned with man, not as a more or less isolated unit moved by typical mechanisms, but as an individual leaf, so to speak, of the tree of life; yet a leaf whose real nature cannot be understood until it is also viewed as a function of the whole. The attempt to formulate the integral psychological relation between the individual and his total inner and outer environment necessitates the use of concepts whose implications are not readily grasped by a purely intellectual consideration. Concepts such as the collective unconscious, mystical participation, collective representations, and the like are essentially intuitional. They are admittedly provisional, since the phenomena they embrace are still to a large extent unexplored. General psychological concepts, which can embrace the totality of the individual with the infinite range and complexity of his ancestral and impersonal determinants, have very largely still to be made. But if we were to shrink from this necessity, which lies directly in our path, because of the extreme difficulty and complexity of the problems involved, we should be condemned to that same neurotic inferno from which we daily try to extricate our patients.

A purely intellectual or analytical approach, which can only see life piecemeal, is obviously incompetent to perform this task. But fortunately we have also at our command the synthetic function of intuition, and it is my belief that we shall never possess a psychology worthy of the dignity of man, until we are able to confer upon our intuitonal conclusions the same authority that we give to our rational deductions.

I am fully aware that this step would involve the final overthrow of the mechanistic conception of vital phenomena, and the establishing of psychology as an independent science. All honour to Jung for laying the first axe to this relic of nineteenth century materialism.

But it would be a mistake, I think, to regard this as merely a question of the relative value of the views of Jung, or Freud, or Adler, or Rivers or whoever it may be. It is a question of the fundamental assumptions upon which the science of psychology can be soundly built. No more fitting conclusion to this evening's paper could be found than the words of one of the most impartial and critical minds of the day. In his summing-up of a fine review of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Dr T. W. Mitchell makes this weighty criticism: "The pessimism which hangs like a cloud over the whole of this essay is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a belief, however achieved, in a mechanistic theory of life; and perhaps the criticism which will, in the end, invalidate Freud's arguments, may come, not from those who dispute the accuracy of his deductions, but from those who question the fundamental assumption on which all his reasoning rests--the assumption that all the phenomena of life and mind can be interpreted in terms of the physical sciences. Freud has invoked the myth of Aristophanes in aid of his speculations; is it permissible to appeal to the other myth in the Symposium, the discourse of Diotima? What then is Eros? is he mortal? Nay, Mortal he verily is not'." In these words our president cuts down to the very marrow of the problem, where constructive criticism must always strive to reach. But Freud after all, is not the originator of this fundamental assumption. It is, indeed, doubtful whether, until quite recently, he even stopped to examine it. It is an inheritance naturally adopted from the physical sciences, and for this reason a certain ancestral magic clings to it. By following the purely empirical and analytical method of the older sciences we have produced an unparalleled dismemberment of the human organism. We have regarded man from the embryological, anatomical, morphological, physiological, pathological, histological, biological, and sociological points of view and have amassed a prodigious aggregation of physical data, which certainly extends our knowledge but has not, correspondingly, deepened our wisdom. Is not the time ripe when these immense, but rather sterile labours of the intellect should become integrated in a new and living synthesis? And by what spiritual force will science be moved to a comprehensive understanding of man as a totality, if not by the breath of that Immortal whom the ancients called Eros?

Med. Psych. IV

4

CRITICAL NOTICE

A Critical Examination of Psycho-Analysis. By A. WOHLGEMUTH, D.Sc. (Lond.). London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.; New York: The Macmillan Company. 1923. Pp. 250. Price 10s. 6d.

Dr Wohlgemuth differs from most other critics of psycho-analysis in that he is whole-hearted in his condemnation. With him there is no question of qualified approval or disapproval: psycho-analysis does not err merely through exaggeration,' 'one-sidedness,' 'far-fetchedness,' 'over-emphasis of sex,' or any of the similar attributes which form the burden of so many criticisms; for him the whole doctrine is, rather, utter nonsense from beginning to end; it does not possess a single redeeming feature which should entitle it to a moment's consideration or toleration at the hands of scientific psychologists. In his exposure of "the inherent absurdity of Freud's teaching," Dr Wohlgemuth takes the view that "ce n'est que le ridicule qui tue" and consequently adopts deliberately as his most cherished weapon the reductio ad absurdum. But this does not mean that we are not to take his criticisms seriously. Dr Wohlgemuth feels very strongly on the importance of exposing the frauds that have been so impudently practised in the name of science, and he expresses his feelings with such vigour that the book is very far from being the "dispassionate examination" that the publishers' cover announces it to be. But what it may lose in dignity from this cause it certainly makes up in force and liveliness, so that, whatever may be its qualities or defects in other directions, Dr Wohlgemuth's criticism has undoubtedly the merit of being very readable. In certain respects too the book undoubtedly forces the reader to get to grips with some of the main problems involved in the acceptance or rejection of the results of psycho-analysis; problems which are very probably destined to play a large part in the history of psychology in the near future. Dr Wohlgemuth approached psycho-analysis as a student of experimental psychology-a branch of science in which he has done work of a high order and his judgment of psycho-analysis probably gives expression in an extreme form to doubts and difficulties that are felt in some degree by many others whose activities have lain chiefly in the field of experimentation; doubts and difficulties therefore which are worthy of careful consideration, especially by those who would like to see a rapprochement between the psychologists of the laboratory and those of the consulting room.

Dr Wohlgemuth's chief and constantly reiterated complaint is that in the writings of psycho-analysts he can find only 'assertions,' never any 'proofs.' It is to be regretted that he does not indicate more clearly what he would be prepared to regard as valid proof of the contentions of the psycho-analysts. There is here undoubtedly a very real difficulty-one to which Freud himself has clearly drawn attention in the first of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (a work which, like nearly all the more recent contributions to psychoanalysis, Dr Wohlgemuth has not thought it worth his while to read). Psychoanalysis is, it must be granted, in a singularly disadvantageous position with regard to furnishing evidence that can be easily collected or evaluated. It is admitted that conviction is most easily obtained by carrying out analyses—in

the capacity, first of analysand, and then of analyst. But conviction obtained in such a way is, Dr Wohlgemuth maintains, quite worthless, as by the time that assurance is reached, the investigator has been subject to a long and subtle process of suggestion. There is of course, as Freud points out, the alternate method of auto-analysis. Dr Wohlgemuth has tried this method and gives us some of his results-largely, it would seem, with a view to producing the effect of a reductio ad absurdum. But in these he in his turn will certainly fail to convince the psycho-analysts. In the first place it would seem pretty clear that the motive of discrediting psycho-analysis was a factor in Dr Wohlgemuth's mind at the time of undertaking the analysis (similar motives are of course not unfamiliar to analysts in the case of actual patients) and such absurdity as there may be in the analyses here recorded may be due to the unconscious operation of this motive. Secondly it is evident that again perhaps under the influence of this motive-Dr Wohlgemuth has often failed to abandon the conscious control of his thoughts; and has furthermore failed to distinguish the results obtained under conscious guidance from those obtained by free association in the psycho-analytic sense. This is strikingly the case in dealing with Silberer's treatment of symbolism in folk-tales. After criticising Silberer's 'analytic' and 'anagogic' interpretations, he himself contributes two further, as he claims, "more complete and more thoroughgoing" interpretations of his own, the "oneirocritic" and "creopolic" interpretations, and adds:

If any of my readers is suffering from ennui and his time hangs heavily on his hands, instead of solving the chess problem in his Sunday paper, let him try another interpretation of the story, according to his tastes; it may be a 'cricketecritic' or a 'footballic' interpretation. He will be delighted with the ease with which it can be done, and he may be sure it is correct, for are we not told over and over again that such a solution is a proof in itself of its correctness, and that such an agreement cannot be due to chance? (p. 143).

The last sentence shows clearly enough that he has failed to keep in mind the above mentioned all-important distinction between 'free' and 'consciously controlled' associations. Associations carried out with the avowed intention of providing an interpretation of a particular kind-'cricketecritic' or otherbelong of course to the latter category. If the reader endeavours to carry out a real psycho-analysis by the free association method, it is probable that he will be very far from being "delighted with the ease with which it can be done." On the contrary, it will then turn out that the interpretation of the simplest dream is often a task of extreme difficulty requiring much patience and perseverance in the face of obstacles; if successful however the auto-analyst will be rewarded by discovering some motive which he did not recognise before as operative, at any rate as operative in the particular case under consideration. A perusal of his book is calculated to make one doubt whether Dr Wohlgemuth's analyses have ever been sufficiently whole-hearted to enable him to experience a discovery of this kind. Most analysts have encountered patients who produce consciously elaborated dream analyses similar to the interpretations here attempted by Dr Wohlgemuth. They have learnt to treat such conscious elaborations as an upper stratum which must be circumvented or worked through before the analytical work proper can begin. They know too, that these elaborations often serve as resistances to the exploration of the unconscious, in much the same way as Dr Wohlgemuth uses his interpretations to prove the futility of further preoccupation with analysis.

Another feature of Dr Wohlgemuth's analytic methods is also familiar to analysts through clinical experience, namely the desire on the part of patients to exchange rôles and turn the tables on the analyst by becoming far more interested in the personality of the latter than in their own concerns. Thus Dr Wohlgemuth advises his readers to have no hesitation in telling their dreams; the interpretation will afford "a sure indication of the type of mind of the interpreter" (p. 95).

=

The root of Dr Wohlgemuth's unwillingness to see anything of value whatsoever in psycho-analysis lies, it would seem (so far as it permits of formulation in purely intellectual terms), in his inability to understand or use the concept of the Unconscious. His objections to the Unconscious follow the lines adopted by most previous critics. Having defined the psychic as the conscious, it is easy for him to show that the Unconscious' 'Unconscious consciousness,' which is absurd. He does not show however that it is necessarily absurd to suppose that the conscious is not co-terminous with the psychic, and yet, since many eminent thinkers have adopted this supposition quite independently of psycho-analysis, it is to this point that any sound criticism of the 'Unconscious' should really be directed. It would be itself an interesting psychological problem to determine why it is that the Unconscious seems quite a permissible and useful concept to some psychologists and quite absurd to others. In Dr Wohlgemuth's case the proximate cause of the attitude adopted would seem to lie in what may not unfairly be called a materialistic bias; to him it seems so very self-evident that, where introspection fails, any attempted explanations must be made in physiological terms. To the present reviewer it does not seem clear why hypotheses concerning neural dispositions are any more scientific than explanations in terms of unconscious processes. Let us attempt both methods by all means; either will be justified in so far as it enables us to understand and control conscious phenomena. For the present it appears to many of us that psychological hypotheses are in many cases the more illuminating. In the future the position may be reversed; but while we are awaiting the hoped for advances in the physiology of the central nervous system, let us see what can be done with the view that the many gaps in consciousness are somehow filled up by processes which, although not conscious, can nevertheless be regarded as in certain important respects analogous to consciousness, so that we can apply to them the terms descriptive of the various aspects of consciousness. In the realm of the functional neuroses at any rate this view has, in the opinion of many students, proved itself the more helpful in the present state of our knowledge; and, after all, it is closely similar to the views of physicists, when they use such concepts as 'atoms,' 'molecules' or 'ether waves'; entities which have never been perceived (just as the Unconscious has never been introspected) but which are regarded as analogous to certain perceptual phenomena.

It would be impossible even in a very long review to deal with all Dr Wohlgemuth's detailed criticisms, covering, as these do, a very wide field which embraces 'Dreams,' 'Symbolisms,' the 'Oedipus Complex,' 'Homosexuality,' 'Method and Suggestion,' 'Numbers,' 'Slips of the Tongue or Pen,' etc. The reader will have to pass his own judgment upon the validity of most of these criticisms. Some indication however of the nature and profundity of these criticisms must be attempted here.

Among the objections brought forward there are some which are very difficult to understand, inasmuch as they seem fairly to play into the hands