aspects of the unconscious are so often represented by a striving towards the mother, they can easily be misinterpreted in terms of concrete reality instead of as a psychological reality.

The final example is more difficult; it belongs very much more to mythological themes. "I was out in a field and a wolf came to me. He seemed to know me and caught hold of my wrist and tried to urge me to go with him. I went with him and we came to a grey rock through which we seemed to pass magically to the interior in which there were two caves. I remained in the outer cave, while the wolf went into the inner cave with me, because I was somehow two persons. I thought that the wolf was teaching something to this other person who was myself in the inner cave." This dream contains the idea of a major rebirth. More properly, it deals with the preparatory stages of a major rebirth. The going into the rock and the coming out of the rock are mythological themes. In myths the god is sometimes born out of the rock. The god Mithra is observed by the shepherds emerging from the rock. I must say a word here about the significance of the 'god' in mythology. Rebirth leads to the development of individuality and of psychological regeneration. This is one aspect of the 'god.' In the dream above the patient passes into the rock and there splits up into two personalities and one of these is related to the wolf, who appears to be teaching it in the inner cave. The emergence from the rock will be the act of rebirth-that is, the birth of the individuality. The rock is the same thing as the sea. It is the same thing as the womb of Sheol or the Hades of Christ. It is the same thing as the mountain which rests on Jonah. It is the same thing as the belly of the whale. From these situations, which are psychological and represent the movement of the libido into the unconscious, comes the resurrection. If we manage to undergo a psychological regeneration we throw off old attitudes and so become renewed. Part of the libido leaves the old values that we have worked with consciously, and goes down into the deep (rock, hut, mountain, whale, etc.) of the unconscious, where it finds the new symbol waiting, and re-emerges under a new attitude to life. This is the underlying idea in the treatment of all neuroses by psychological analysis as I understand it. When such a dream as the one I have just quoted occurs in patients it marks an important crisis. By analysis, we have to find out the necessary task, the new attitude. As I have said, there appear to be dreams dealing with the motif of rebirth in a minor way and others dealing with it in a major way. When the major symbolisms appear then the psychological development is at an extremely critical stage, and requires careful handling.

I have given dream examples dealing with the going into the wombthe first movement in the drama of rebirth. The emergence from the womb is the third act in the rebirth drama. Its treatment by the unconscious is extremely complicated. The idea that something is gained after the rebirth is put variously in myth and ritual; as a magic substance, a stick, a jewel, a new faculty of vision, a new power, a new protection from enemies, etc. In myths of higher culture, the thing gained is often expressed as divinity or immortality. This follows the release of the hero from the womb, and he may carry in his hand the magic thing— e.g. the heart of the monster, which is, psychologically, the new-born libido. The idea is well expressed thus in a dream of a patient of Dr James Young's. "The patient knew there was a dangerous monster under the sea-it was like a submarine. People were all waiting in fear. Then up from the depths came a man. He had come out of the submarine, destroying it by so doing. He was borne upwards by a parachute, which he held in his upraised hand, and rose into the air."

Here is the motif of the rebirth of the hero out of the womb, with the magical power in his hand. The ship under the sea is the whale of Jonah. Such a dream marks an important phase. It is potential. But I cannot enter into this enormous field in this short paper.

I have given some suggestions concerning the significance of the mother and of the little child in dreams, regarded from the constructive or anagogic standpoint, and I would conclude by making a suggestion about the significance of the father in this respect. You are familiar with the Oedipus myth, in which Oedipus, the swollen-footed one, murdered his father and his father's charioteer and was confronted by the Sphinx. It is only after guessing the riddle of the Sphinx that he can pass into Thebes and marry Jocasta, his mother. This myth is very wonderful and contains many difficult points and it has been used in analysis chiefly as showing the tendency that is found for the striving towards the mother after the overcoming of the father. It has been only used in an objective relationship. The overcoming of the father is a theme that appears in the dreams of adults, especially when the need for individuality is strongest. The enemy in the dream frequently is connected with the idea of the father or with the idea of authority. With the development of individuality, when the power lies within, the motif of the father and of the enemy ceases. Psychologically we only overcome the father in ourselves through a rebirth of values in ourselves, and this is the development of the human spirit in all functions that are individual, and not merely a collective imitation. We give

birth to the father in ourselves and pass from what I would term the first psychological orientation to the second, and so enter a new mythcycle. Just as the child stands between the mother and the father, so does the libido of the adult stand between the world of the magical unconscious and the world of stern reality-between the world of the germinating and becoming, and the world of fixed values. To overcome the psychological father (which always has a special meaning for each person and denotes a special use of a function) before the psychological mother (which always contains a special value for each person) can be reached means a sacrifice of that part of the libido which is held to fixed attitudes and old ways of thinking or feeling. To remain, however, 'in the mother' is disastrous as disastrous as it was to Oedipus, who made himself blind. In giving these suggestions and interpretations I am aware that they are only outlines drawn from one angle, but they offer new avenues of approach to the subject of symbolism in dreams— avenues of approach that were originally opened up by Carl Jung. I think they are well worth following even though they lead into the most complicated mysteries, for the solution of which we have to turn to the records of folk-lore, mythology, religions and primitive culture. But the unconscious is primitive mind, and to understand it we must study the history of man, and the myth of man, which nowadays requires to be discovered afresh.

STUDY OF A SEVERE CASE OF OBSESSIONAL

NEUROSIS

BY JAMES YOUNG.

THE patient came to me eight months ago complaining of obsessions of such severity that his life was a misery to him. He had often thought of suicide and had given up all hope of cure. He is aged thirty-three. He is the son of a Yorkshire manufacturer-a self-made man. Until the age of nine he was at a ladies' school. He was rather delicate and was a good deal at home due to illness. Later at a grammar school he took very badly to the more robust methods of both boys and masters.

To continue in his own words:

"At the age of thirteen I left school and gradually became interested in my father's business. I used to be with him a large portion of my time. A clothier's shop was opened for my brother who unfortunately did not give it the attention he might have done. So here I used to spend hours with father, often on Saturdays until ten and eleven o'clock. He thought a great deal of me and I of him. This state of affairs was continued for a few years.'

There is a history of a well-marked desire for exhibitionism about the age of puberty, gratified on two or three occasions. Masturbation also began about this period. Later developed the obsessive desire to micturate when about to engage in any activity which called for resolution or determination. This was specially liable to occur if this undertaking were something a little outside of the ordinary routine. At the age of nineteen he fell in love with a girl who accepted him as her fiancé. At this period obsessive emotions developed. If she lent him a book and he returned it, he always doubted whether he had returned it. He sometimes actually had to write the question "Have I returned so-and-so," and she had to write the reply "Yes." Verbal assurance was not enough. The patient destroyed not long ago a large sheaf of written questions and answers belonging to that period. The girl apparently was long-suffering, but after three years the association was broken off. The following summer he suffered from hay fever and has done so every summer since. This summer, however, it has troubled him much less than usual, whether due to vaccine treatment or in consequence of the

general psychological improvement I am unable to say. The range of the obsessions gradually increased. He had to refer the settling of the most trivial details to his parents. He could with the greatest difficulty leave home even for a holiday, and his life became restricted to the narrowest of circles.

At length came the war. He was exempted from military service many times on the ground of neurasthenia. Finally he was accepted and served in Mesopotamia and India for eighteen months, when he was invalided---utterly broken down by the force of his obsessions. A typical one which occurred in India was as follows. Although there was a strict rule that topees should be worn on all occasions, once or twice he had run out of his tent without putting on his topee. The fear was that if anyone should die from sunstroke through not wearing a topee it would be due to his example.

The most striking feature in the above history is the obsessive desire to pass water at all sorts of inconvenient times. It was this for which he chiefly sought relief, because it restricted his wanderings to within a few miles of his home. It is notable that the desire did not have compulsive force if the patient felt free to gratify it at any moment. But in practically any circumstances where there was not easy or immediate access to a urinal, the compulsion would occur. The usual places were theatres, church services, clubs and railway compartments. Before going to keep an appointment he also always found it necessary to empty the bladder. Always in his mind he had the idea that he must be a success, that he must come up to his conscious estimate of himself as an intelligent and really rather an important man. If he could have felt indifferent, no compulsion would have occurred. He was always orientated by the idea of success-the philosophy of his father. It was as if he carried the competitive spirit of his business life into all the other relations of life. There was always the desire to be adequate or to dominate the situation. If at a meeting he spoke freely and successfully all compulsive desire to micturate vanished. He had been adequate in that situation.

If on entering a railway carriage he met with people with whom he could ‘chat'—to use his own term-freely and as he might do at home or in his own circle of friends, there was no compulsion.

If, however, he could establish no rapport and so was left to his own resources, the compulsive desire to pass water occurred. If it were a corridor train with the usual toilet accommodation it mattered little, but if it were a closed compartment, the desire to micturate gradually