It will be seen from this brief description of the deeper meaning of the analytic process that it is a work of the greatest complexity and difficulty and not to be entered into lightly. It demands a reverent and serious attitude towards life and towards one's self. The value and benefits gained depend entirely upon the capacity and attitude which one brings to the work.

I do not for a moment wish to convey the impression that the serious process I have discussed is necessarily what is popularly known as being analyzed. Analysis lends itself to the needs of the individual and does not force anything upon him. He may have some special symptom or problem for which he wishes the aid of analysis, and when this is relieved, so far as he is concerned, the analysis is over. Or, he may simply want to satisfy his curiosity about a subject which has become popular, too popular at the present time whereupon he can find an analyst from whom he can obtain just that for which he is looking. There are many degrees of analysis, and the deep searching and fundamental work referred to in this paper is only for those who are really seeking a new attitude towards life, a new attitude towards themselves, and who are willing to seek for the solution within their own souls rather than in the external changes of form and society. However, psychoanalysis is no panacea or magic wand by which the ills of humanity are suddenly to be healed. It makes great demands upon the individual, and can brook no deception nor pretence of any kind, for any playing or pretending with so serious and potent a weapon can only bring disaster. Neither is it applicable to all people; it requires a certain development and capacity for understanding, and it is the business of the analyst to recognize in the beginning whether or not a person is fitted to undergo this treatment. It is not an intellectual training nor primarily an education, but an emotional experience, although coincidentally the intellect can be set free from its emotional connection. This fact accounts for the great difficulty experienced in trying to give any clear and general understanding of the psychoanalytic process, for it is an individual experience. dependent for its specific features upon the particular needs of the patient, and guided along such lines as his individual development suggests.

I am well aware that the drawing of an analogy between the religious teachings of Christianity and the emotional experience passed through in analysis, will evoke small thanks either from psychoanalysts who are striving to obtain the consideration of objective science, or from those strictly scientific workers who have no interest in anything which cannot

be counted and measured, and who will feel that their worst fears of this 'dogma' are justified, and that it is nothing but' a religious matter after all.

Well, we might as well admit-if Kant's restriction of empiric science is accepted that psychoanalysis is not a science, for it deals with and its conceptions are based upon, purely subjective phenomena which cannot be perceived through the senses. Nevertheless, it makes use of a scientific attitude towards the material, although no rigid formulation can apply to a work which involves the reactions and attitudes of the human organism as a whole, instead of one of its parts. Perhaps some understanding of its relation to science may be found in the objectification which it brings to subjective experience, and the discovery of the springs of action; on the other hand, it allows the possibility of a new recognition of the significance and validity of the spiritual phenomena insisted on by religion. Thus it stands as a bridge between science and religion, holding with one hand to science, and with the other stretching out to clasp those human experiences, which belong to a psychological reality and which have hitherto been relegated to the domain of mysticism.

As a method it attempts to reproduce that deepening, broadening and developing of personality through a conscious willed effort at selfcreation, which should be the result gained by man through the significant experiences of life. Such a development, painfully and slowly achieved has often caused man's tragic lament, "now that I have learned something of how to live, it is time for me to die."

Analysis attempts a short-cut to this achievement, so that a man may find himself ready to understand life while understanding is still a joy, and able to live while life is yet full within him.

J. of Psych. (Med. Sect.) I

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230

TWO CASES OF WAR NEUROSIS1.

BY JAMES YOUNG.

As the field of the war neuroses is such a wide one, it is not possible to deal with it in anything like a comprehensive way in a discussion such as this 2. Perhaps the best thing I can do will be to give a short description of two cases. In this way I hope to indicate in more or less rough outline the Jungian interpretation of some of the phenomena of the war neuroses, which I understand is my function in this discussion. Both belong to the type called anxiety neurosis. The chief characteristics common to them are violent fear and vascular disturbances such as palpitation, feelings of flushing followed by cold sensations, bursting feelings in the head and undue sweating. The first man T.S., aged thirty-nine, was a private with the same battalion in France for almost four years. This is an exceptionally long time to be with a battalion without 'going sick.' Some little time before the armistice he began to show signs of wear and tear and was forced by his N.C.O., much against his own will, to 'go sick.' He has never been right since, to use his own words. When I first saw him some six weeks ago he looked pale and ill, with mask-like face and trembling lips. His eyes filled with tears and his voice shook when he spoke, or was spoken to. He complained that his own thoughts about the most trivial matters gave him palpitation.

The ordinary interests of life had failed him or had assumed a hostile significance. He was exceedingly sensitive to the noise made by his three children. He was, in his own words, a "mass of nerves" to such a degree that, although unhappy, he felt best when in a room by himself. I soon discovered that he was glad to talk about the war, and that he was proud of having stuck to one battalion so long. I found, however, that such reminiscences always led to the subject of 'schemers.' By 'schemers' he meant men who 'went sick' on the smallest pretext and thus avoided facing the music. In my own experience a more common term was 'skrimshankers.' Since the war he 1 Read before the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, 14 December

1921.

2 At this meeting the Freudian point of view was given by Dr G. H. Fitzgerald in his paper entitled "Some aspects of the War Neuroses," published in the January number of this Journal, p. 109.

had met men who had once been in his battalion and for one reason or another he had found them all wanting they were all 'schemers.' This was bitter in itself, but the bitterness was increased by the fact that these men had been in good spirits and prospering, while he himself was struggling with unemployment and a general difficulty to make ends meet. His first dream was that he was covered with 'scabs' and that I, the analyst, was going to cure him with high power electricity. In my experience dreams of this type have to do with what may be called the problem of evil. They are always accompanied by a great sense of inferiority. In this case this is due to the fact that the patient has the 'schemer' in himself. Now we understand his great preoccupation with 'schemers' in general. His preoccupation is the result of an unconscious identification. 'Schemers' represent for him fear, cunning, ruthlessness, etc. They are embodiments of evil. His concern is with evil existing at present. It is not a harking back to specific incidents in connection with malingering in himself or others, an idea so beloved of the 'Puzzle, find the buried memory' school. 'Schemers' became for him the symbol of all those forces subversive of society, which he has become aware of in himself and in others as forces acting in humanity in general. He says, with a hopeless gesture, "The Germans were just as good as we were; just as good soldiers, just as good men." This from a man who fought them for four years with whole-hearted determination! Here the patriotic view becomes swallowed up in a wider vista. The suspicion is expressed that all men are in the last resort the instruments of blind and uncontrollable forces. The field of conflict is a very wide one and embraces the deepest moral and religious questions. The conflict has to do with the acceptance of and adjustment to those forces of evil in the world which for him are immoral and irrational.

He needs a new orientation. He can take no temperate view of his own nature or that of others. He, so to say, will not allow himself a quantum of human failings. He is devoid of a sense of humour. He is inhuman, or rather I should say, not averagely human. In other words, the personality is very narrow and limited, although at the same time conscientious to the last degree. The keynote of the personality is duty. He was a pre-eminently good soldier. His whole ideal of himself was orientated to one purpose only-the fighting of Germans. No situation. could be equivocal with such concentration of purpose. He always knew what to do and so the happiest period of his life was that spent in the army. Without doubt his was the type which won the war. Nevertheless it must be pointed out that with this spotless, devoted, in some ways

sublime, personality, is bound up his self-love. The persona, as Jung calls the personality, is in my opinion essentially narcissistic. Standing firm in the persona or clad in it (because the persona in dreams is often represented by costume of a certain type) we vindicate ourselves. The persona may be said to be the external attitude or surface contact with reality and as such may be represented in the unconscious by the clothes or even by the skin. With the persona, let us say, of the doctor, our self-love tends to writhe and wriggle if we are mistaken for a bookmaker's clerk. It tends therefore to love only that which mirrors itself. It is the persona, then, which in this case is represented as being covered with scabs. It is possible to regard this invasion of the spotless persona by the loathsome skin disease as the incursion of those unconscious forces in himself which are repugnant to his conscious standards. The psychological process thus represented, takes place in accordance with the general law that sometime, somewhere, everything must meet with its opposite. This is the law of enantiodromia. In connection with it the common saying 'Extremes meet' occurs to the mind. It is the inevitable result of the morbid one-sided development of the personality to which Jung refers in his article on "The Question of the Therapeutic Value of Abreaction," in vol. II, part 1, of the Journal of this Section. Such dreams are indicative of a psychological deadlock. A struggle is being maintained between the persona and the unconscious. There is little libido available for objects and relationships in the outside world. These now only elicit forced or even negative interest. There is little rapport and there may be delusions of reference. In the case in question, there were suicidal ideas at this time. This is understandable when one considers that the inviolable persona is beset and in danger of being overwhelmed both from within and without. The menace from the unconscious has its counterpart in the menacing appearance of the everyday world. They are both aspects of the same thing. The patient finds evil within and without. The teeth and lips are more firmly set. The expression becomes more mask-like. The same resolution is summoned which he used against the Germans. Now, however, he cannot find a point of application for it as the enemy is an intangible one. The effort therefore simply serves to drain him of energy and the concomitants of this are the obscure vascular and other disorders of function to which I have referred.

His next dream was of "black men coming to kill him in the most blood-thirsty and savage manner." This is another representation of those primitive unconscious forces with which he is beset. The question