it. It must be remembered that the object of analysis is not the mere recollection of incidents, but the working off of painful emotion associated with unpleasant incidents. This removal of emotion cannot however be effected until the incidents in question are recollected: continued free-association usually suffices to bring about the other result.

Also the results are not obtained by conscious searching-anything of this nature would probably tend to put them in the background. They are gradually realised by the mind during the process of freeassociation when the thoughts are allowed to wander as much as they wish. They thus come up along with very many relevant, and apparently non-relevant, free-associations the therapeutic effect of which is far greater than that of the isolated specific results. Many of the results may seem to be pathological. However, if any unanalysed person examines his own mind carefully he will be surprised at the amount of pathological material which it contains and which would be better removed.

Discovery of the Origin of an Interest in Antiques (cleared up

after 11 hours).

For a number of years the writer had been interested and had collected antiques. He was only interested in those older than the usual maximum span of human life (i.e. about 80 or 100 years) so that the people who made them were certain to be dead. This interest in antiques was traced down in the course of free-associations to its earlier stages when it was confined to old oak chests such as are frequently seen in antique shops. These, he found, had represented coffins to his unconscious mind, and the interest in them had satisfied a repressed and unconscious partial death-wish caused by certain unhappy events which had occurred just before this interest in old chests developed. When the painful emotion associated with these unhappy events was eventually removed by free-association, the death-wish founded upon it disappeared, as also did the interest in old chests. Along with this the interest in antiques generally, as antiques, also vanished. The writer is now only interested in such objects if they possess some quality which appeals to him other than mere age. The former desideratum that the object must be older than the maximum span of human life is interesting in view of the fact that the objects were satisfying an unconscious death-wish. For years before the latter fact was discovered the writer had occasionally wondered what could be the explanation of the first fact.

Origin of an Interest in Astronomy (cleared up after 17 hours' work). Ever since his schooldays the writer had been interested in astronomy and had purchased a small equatorial which he sometimes used for examining celestial objects. If anyone had asked him the cause of this interest he would have replied that it arose because he felt that it was the duty of any educated person to know something about the latest ideas concerning the universe in which we live. This rational explanation of the interest in this subject would certainly have been entirely erroneous however although it would have been given quite honestly. During the process of the free-associations this interest was traced back through the nursery rhyme, "Twinkle, twinkle little star," down to admiration of, and interest in, the white flower of a specimen of the plant "Star of Bethlehem" (Ornithogalum umbellatum) which grew and flowered for several years near a garden in the country which he used to tend when about 10 years old. The white flower of this plant certainly looked strikingly beautiful amongst the tall green grasses of the roadside; but undoubtedly his great interest in it, and the reason he remembered it, was because of the name "Star of Bethlehem." The freeassociations then immediately passed on with undiminished interest to the "Star in the East" and the account of the birth of Christ as given in the New Testament. Undoubtedly his great specific interest in the "Star in the East," and ultimately in other stars generally, arose as a sublimated form of a very great repressed childhood interest in the stated facts concerning the birth of Christ which had also helped to solve the earlier problem of his own origin.

APPENDIX.

A Talking-to-Oneself Derivative of the Note-Writing Method.

As mentioned already, the writer tried dictating free-associations to an electric recording machine fairly early; but found that this process of dictation to an inanimate object apparently had no therapeutic effect and did not succeed in removing emotion from the material dealt with.

This was apparently largely due to a partly unconscious feeling that "even walls have ears" and to the spoken associations not being entirely free as a result of this. Also the dictation to the inanimate object did not have at all the same effect as the writing down of associations for oneself to see.

After about 120 hours of note-writing, however, he found that he had dealt with and completely removed the fears associated with the

feeling that "even walls have ears" and that, after this, he could then utter free-associations to himself in a quiet room, and that this process. then had the same effect as the previous note-writing, in addition to being much quicker. For some time he used note-writing alternatively with the talking-to-oneself method in order to be quite sure of not missing any advantages which the note-writing might have; but subsequently he employed the talking-to-oneself method alone.

The writer is somewhat doubtful of the advisability of giving these facts in case anybody should feel tempted to start with a talking-tooneself method straight away in view of the apparent saving in time by doing so. It is therefore advisable to state that it is probably absolutely necessary, when working alone, for anyone to commence with a notewriting method and to continue this process until all the existing fears against uttering thoughts have been completely removed.

A friend of the writer considered this difference interesting and thought that a lawyer, for example, would probably find stronger resistances in committing thoughts to paper than in merely uttering them. This is, however, probably not so. The writer eventually found that most of the resistance against uttering thoughts aloud in his own case came from unconscious repressed fears resulting from repressed memories of punishments, and fear of punishment, in early childhood. These had resulted through expressing one's opinion about various matters, asking questions, etc., too frankly, or without regard to the opinions of stronger adults, and were partly a result of the general attitude that "children should be seen and not heard." This has probably much to do with the origin of the Freudian 'censor'-i.e. a desire to avoid punishment. Note writing, however, unlike quiet speech, does not involve the possibility of 'being heard' and it is a very useful sort of back-door method of getting out these particular thoughts without encountering the unconscious resistances, founded upon the repressed fears, which the other method involves. It is a method which could not have been followed at the time of the original repressions, for most of the early infantile deterring punishments occur before one is able to write.

ABSTRACTS

Arch. Gen. di Neurologia, Psichiatria e Psicoanalisi, vol. VIII, 19 March, 1925.

In an article on Sexual Symbolism in Mystic and Profane Dreams Professor M. Levi Bianchini traces human symbolism from the earliest times of primitive humanity, dating it before spoken language.

"The Symbol, first element of the primitive mental evolution, is an engram, the direct object (or signification) of which more or less conceals a second and different object, or signification."

Primitive man formed his symbols from the limited objects of his acquaintance, and from the limited instincts of his earliest development. Psychoanalysis has demonstrated the fact that the dreamer reproduces this early symbolism unconsciously, and that it is reproduced by all dreamers, identical in form and in the hidden meaning. Many symbols may indicate one object, and vice versa:

(1) From imitative, analogical reasoning (imagination, fantasy).

(2) From the relative positions of the individual and his environment— physical, psychic, or mixed.

The author considers that the 'engrammatic sediment' of primitive symbolism is part of the reflex pattern of human cerebration, handed down unchanged from early times; and that as man develops he is also developing other forms of symbolism, on the same mechanism, especially with regard to moral and social conduct and the Ego Ideal. He ascribes the great preponderance of sexual symbols in dreams to the fact that during the Christian era sex was specially repressed in the waking life. Hunger (which otherwise would have manifested itself in equal degree) not being repressed, there was not the same necessity to escape the censorship by means of hunger symbols. The first love of man was carnal, and on the narrow and limited symbolism of this purely carnal emotion it has therefore been necessary to build the most exquisite poetry and refined spirituality. The love of God becomes a sublimation, but has always as a base the earthly conception of love and its consequent symbolism-carnal and material.

So psycho-analytic psychology appears as a true embryology of cerebration. The ontogenesis of human cerebration recapitulates the phylogenesis of the 'psychism' fixed during the evolution of preceding generations, and reproduces not only the engrams and archaic symbols, but also the instincts and complexes and modes of reaction by which it was determined.

He gives in detail, and minutely analyses, two dreams, one (described by herself in his 'Life') of an Ecstasy of Saint Theresa of Avila, at the age of 44, in 1559; the other from the analysis of a neurotic woman patient of the author's. In both the same symbolism appears in unmistakeable form (confirmed by free association in the case of the patient) the apparition of a youth with burning countenance, holding in his hand a dart or dagger, shining and tipped with fire (Eros with bow and arrow), with which he pursues the dreamer; with other symbols of an obviously erotic character.

Other visions of Saints and neurotic dreams of patients are described and compared, with analysis.

"Saint Theresa of Jesus' is called the Holy Mother Theresa of Jesus, and founded the Order of the Carmelite Nuns. Of their mystical Union is born the new Order; thus reproducing the archaic mystery of the Trinity, human and divine; of the Sacred and profane families-father, mother and child."

"The ecstasy of Saint Theresa is therefore a sexual dream-that of defloration. It is not necessary to be a psycho-analyst to appreciate this on studying the facts without prejudice, for no human being, either Saint or unbeliever, materialist or dreamer of the sublime, can escape the force of what Schopenhauer defined as 'The Genius of the Species'."

N. H. M. BURKE.

Psycho-Analysis and the Psychic Disorder of General Paralysis, by STEPHAN HOLLÓS and S. FERENCZI. Translated by GERTRUDE BARNES and GÜNTNER KEIL. First appeared as Beiheft Nr. 3 to Internationaler Zeitschrift für Psycho-Analyse under title "Zur Psychoanalyse der paralytischen Geistesstörung," 1923. Translation in The Psycho-analytic Review, XII, 1925, pp. 88-107 and 205–233.

The authors begin with a review of current theories of the psychic disorder in G. P. I. The delusions of grandeur have been attributed to over-nourishment of the cortex (Bayle); Weichbrodt attributes it to the toxins of the Treponema pallida; euphoria to central hyperaemia (Baillarger, Gubler, Meschede, Voisin, Meyhert and others); Krafft-Ebing, Sully and Aubon take the middle ground and say that paresis transforms perceptions into active phantasy productions-the sun rises because the patient wishes it to do so, etc., the confusion is due to the destruction of understanding of simple logical relationships. Kraepelin takes into account endogenous, constitutional, characterological, biological and psychical factors and originates a 'structural analysis'; Kretschmer speaks of diagnosis in more than one dimension, of a stratum diagnosis. Bonhoffer goes a stage further and refers to the difficulty in classifying psychoses owing to admixture of endogenous and exogenous symptoms; Neisser takes the contrary view and regards disease as a break with the past. Bumke makes a sharp differentiation between functional diseases which are psychologically intelligible and are related to the norm, and gross organic or exogenous diseases. According to Seelert the psychic individuality may influence the symptoms, a paretic with a manic constitutional complex develops mania easily, but as the organic disease increases the manic symptoms decrease owing to the defect caused by the brain lesions.

'Organic psychiatry' is unable to explain the psychic disorders. It remains to be seen what results follow from the employment of psycho-analytical interpretation in organic diseases; such interpretations will be a supplement to the problem of G. P. I. Bleuler in 1906 proved that 'Freudian mechanisms' existed even in organic psychoses, and Feldmann showed that even in the psychoses the fixation of libido development is important. In the attempt now made, Hollós and Ferenczi see whether some of the symptoms of paresis can be made intelligible by means of psycho-analysis.

The authors consider whether (1) the dementia, (2) the loss of memory, (3) the grandiose ideas, (4) the statement of numbers, are as arbitrary as they