than anything else to the fact that even the most ugly fashions in women appear, after a very short time, quite attractive to men. The crinoline is probably too distant in time for most of my readers, but many will doubtless remember the bustle or tournure and the concertina or leg of mutton sleeve, and how soon their repulsive unsightliness changed into pleasant attraction which was possibly mistaken by some for an aesthetic emotion. The eternal feminine remains always attractive and pleasant -this is a biological necessity-and the pleasure is soon transferred to the most hideous devices that can be imagined by women to disfigure themselves or hide their gracefulness.

To be more general: a consequence of the fact expressed in the above 'rule' is that if a cognitive experience A is invested with, or accompanied by, an emotional process with a pronounced feeling-tone and is also accompanied by another cognitive experience B with no feeling-tone or a feeling-tone of the same or of the opposite kind, but of less intensity, then, on subsequent occasions, when a cognitive experience B' occurs, the predominant feeling-tone, or the emotional process, of the conjoint experience of A and B is likely to be aroused again. Let the sign + indicate one feeling-tone and the sign the opposite feeling-tone, and let the number of these signs indicate the intensities of the feeling-tones, then we have on a 'first occasion' (A + + + ... +, B −), and on a 'subsequent occasion' B'+++.

The oftener the 'first occasion' is repeated and the greater the intensity of the feeling-tone of A, the greater will be the feeling-tone of B on the 'subsequent occasion.'

It is hardly necessary to point out that the experimentally established fact which I have called "transference of feeling" has nothing whatever in common with the Freudian "transference or displacement of an affect.”

III.

The rule just quoted from my research on the feeling-elements I shall now employ in the elucidation of the 'synthesis' of an incipient neurosis or phobia.

During the whole duration of the war I stayed in London, and did not miss one of the many air-raids to which we were unfortunately subjected. Especially during the year 1917 and the early part of 1918 they were particularly frequent and I do not think that we were ever spared during any of the periods of quiet moon-light nights. Rainy and stormy nights during the waxing and waning of the moon were welcomed by Londoners as a special intervention of providence and the still and quiet nights, when the gentle moon was shedding her floods of silvery light over the peaceful housetops of London, gave rise to dreadful suspense and anxious anticipation. "We'll have them over again to-night,"

used on such nights to be the observation accompanying the usual exchange of greetings, instead of the formerly customary remarks about the weather. And so the weary weeks wore on until the period before and after the new moon gave a short spell of relief, when the cycle of suspense and anxiety began afresh.

It must have been during the latter half of 1919 that I began to notice a sort of restlessness and incipient anxiety taking hold of me during bright moon-light nights and the emotional disturbance seemed the greater the quieter and more peaceful was the scene. The soothing grandeur of the full moon, I became aware, was no more, the restful ecstasy was gone. It did not take me very long to discover the cause of this change, for the associations with the air-raids were still fresh and the air-raids had been experiences too important and too numerous to be forgotten, that is, no longer to be thought of. But the fact of this knowledge did not appear to make any great difference at first, it was only by degrees that moon-light scenes regained their pristine beauty and impressive sublimity. All unpleasure has by now disappeared from the perception of the disc of the moon, but when memory-images or thoughts of air-raids crowd in by association these still possess an unpleasant feeling-tone. Had I not been trained in self-observation and had I been hereditarily more predisposed, it is quite possible that this incipient nervousness, which was nipped in the bud, might have developed into a full blown anxiety neurosis or a phobia.

IV.

The important point which is brought out by the two preceding paragraphs is this. Looked at from the 'synthetic' angle and in the light of 'Rule 49,' how simple, scientifically sound, and free from all mysticism and mythology does the whole occurrence appear, and how mystic, cabalistic, and occult it becomes in the hands of the so-called 'New Psychology'1.

Take, for instance, Rivers' case of claustrophobia2. The case was that of a medical man, who from childhood had suffered from a dread of being in an enclosed space, and especially of being under conditions which would interfere with his speedy escape into the open. When Rivers

1 It may perhaps be advisable to mention here that my research was finished by the beginning of 1917. It is, therefore, probable that my knowledge of 'Rule 49' has helped me to discover the connection between my incipient phobia and the air-raids, but not

vice versa.

2 W. H. R. Rivers, Instinct and the Unconscious, Cambridge University Press, 1920, Appendix II.

Med. Psych. v

7

met him first the patient's earliest memory of the dread went back to the time when at the age of six he slept with his elder brother in what is known in Scotland as a box-bed. Before coming under Rivers' care the patient had been treated by a follower of Freud, but with no result. By telling the patient that his phobia was probably due to some forgotten experience, and causing him to concentrate his thoughts in that direction and by making him record his dreams, Rivers was at last able to revive the memory of an incident which occurred at the age of four. This was a visit to an old rag-and-bone merchant when the boy found himself in a dark passage with its door shut which he could not open and the exit at the other end barred by a growling dog.

Discussing the theoretical aspect of the case Rivers says:

What is needed here is some definite explanation of the process by which the acute and fully conscious terror of the child became converted into forgotten experience which was only restored to manifest consciousness after many years. What can have been the nature of the process by which the fully conscious and vivid terror of the infant of four was converted into something unknown and unsuspected, working in subterranean fashion to reproduce a vague state of dread or terror whenever the patient was exposed to conditions similar to those of his infantile experience?1

What is easier of explanation? Where is "a fully conscious and vivid terror converted into something unknown and unsuspected working in a subterranean fashion"? The boy described by Rivers was in a narrow passage and his exit barred by a growling dog. He was terror-stricken until eventually released. The whole situation was highly unpleasant and gave rise to the emotion of fear. When later the situation was partly reinstated, that is when the patient was in an enclosed space, the fact of being in an enclosed space, or even the mere thought of an enclosed space had acquired, according to 'Rule 49,' the unpleasant feelingtone with tendency to anxiety, or an incipient emotion of fear. There was no necessity to ekphore ever again the incident of the dog and the dark passage, which incident, being once terminated, had, quâ incident, no more importance for the boy than the breaking of a cup or the loss of a pocket-knife, probably less. The tracing of the association of fear with enclosed space to the incident in the dark passage with the dog had simply the effect of giving the patient an intelligent understanding of his case which cured him. This may be looked upon as pithiatism, or suggestion, or re-education. There is absolutely no necessity whatever for having recourse to such fanciful inventions as 'repression' or the 'unconscious,' and such like2.

1 Loc. cit. pp. 180 sqq.

2 It has been suggested that the incident of the boy's visits to the rag-and-bone merchant had not been merely forgotten on account of their triviality, but the memory of them had

That the tracing of a phobia, or of an anxiety state, back to its formation does not, however, ipso facto, cure the neurosis is evidenced by Pierre Janet's well-known case of Marie1. Here it had to be suggested to the patient that all the discovered pathogenic incidents happened differently from the way they really did occur.

The difference in the results of the discovery of the forgotten pathogenic experiences in Pierre Janet's and Rivers' cases emphasizes the untenability of the 'New Psychology' view and confirms my contention. The different levels of culture and intelligence of the two patients accounts for the different effects. Rivers' patient, a cultured and intelligent physician, could be re-educated by the knowledge, but not so Pierre Janet's patient who was a dull ignorant peasant-girl.

A great deal of this obfuscation is due, I believe, to loose terminology. The tracing of the stigma to its source is spoken of wrongly, as we have seen, as ‘analysis.' But an analysis must be an analysis of something, we must analyse something, and in pops at once the 'unconscious,' the asylum ignorantiae of psycho-analytic speculation.

V.

I did not intend in this paper to touch upon the question of 'Repression,' as I am discussing it in another paper. It having, however, been raised in discussion and being, I believe, advanced as a quasi-proof of the existence of the 'Unconscious,' to which I shall revert presently, it is as well to say a few words about it. I am, of course, referring here only to 'Repression' as asserted by the so-called 'New Psychology'; an unconscious, i.e. not knowingly intended, forcible prevention of an idea, or train of ideas, from becoming conscious, because this would be productive of unpleasure. The case of Rivers' patient just discussed is an instance of the alleged repression of a 'complex' and so is that of Ross' patient. Ross says 2:

.I was face to face with the fact of repression in the Freudian sense of the word, and there seemed to be no escape from its overwhelming causal importance....I refer to anxiety states in which the symptoms seemed to appear as the distorted form of a repressed complex. For example, a patient would feel uncomfortable when he heard an electric train, he could give no reason for this until it transpired by the

been repressed,' because the boy had been conscious that he was committing a sin in disobeying the order of his parents. Apart from seeming rather far-fetched I can find no indication of such disobedience in Rivers' account.

1 Pierre Janet, L'Antomation psychologique, Paris, 1889, pp. 463 seq.

2 T. A. Ross, "Some points about Repression," Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1922, vol. xv (Section of Psychiatry), pp. 31.

method of free association that the sound of a car resembled that of a distant shell. This carried him back to some experience where he had been either ashamed or terrified, and which he had repressed, so it seemed, because his behaviour in it was in conflict with the high ideals of his personality.

As the author says "so it seemed" I take it that he wishes merely to make the suggestion in order to find a reason for the 'repression.' This case of Ross' is on all fours with Rivers' and is fully 'explained' by 'Rule 49,' i.e. by known and independently ascertained laws. There is no necessity to invent an unknown and unverifiable function, viz. repression, and assume still further a likewise unknown and unverifiable reason for it, viz. the conflict.

There is, however, another class of cases where, it is asserted, and apparently quite rightly, 'Rule 49' does not apply. Ross' dream is an instance of this. Ross writes1:

In the winter of 1917-18 I dreamt that I was in a railway station; there was a half-empty train, on to which we were not allowed because there had been an accident in the tunnel. I offered two shillings to a fat-faced boy in the crowd to get what I wanted, but it was no use.

Ross could trace all the ingredient parts of the dream, the two shillings, the half-empty train on which he was not allowed and the accident in the tunnel, but he could not trace the fat-faced boy which appeared to him the clearest thing in the dream. "I recognised his face as very familiar but I could not place him," says Ross, although he tried his best. Three days later he came across him in the wards, and he adds, immediately the meaning of the dream became plain. He was a patient with whom I had a lot to do. On the Saturday before I went out, I had an interview with him in which I had lost my temper and been very rude. He turned to me and said with a very sweet smile, "You know, Sir, I am little more than a child." This had made me ashamed of myself and I had solved the problem promptly by extremely thorough epression...the point to be emphasized now is the total suppression of the recognition of the very excellent photograph which the dream showed to me.

Here is no induction of feeling in a concomitant experience as is dealt with in 'Rule 49,' so that 'repression' in this case cannot be explained as in the other cases and the problem has to be attacked from another side. Let me examine whether Ross' reasoning in this instance has been rigorously scientific.

To begin with, we may classify our cognitive experiences into (a) those with unpleasant feelings,

(b) those not with unpleasant feelings.

Such a classification by dichotomy is simple and exhaustive.

The facts of the case are these: (1) Ross did not recognise a dream face; (2) it was found that it had some unpleasant experience connected

1 Loc. cit. p. 35.