mind is the subject of investigation. It is not at all easy to perceive at the first glance where the aim of superiority comes in in cases of depression and melancholia. Let us try to show it in a case of 'manicdepressive insanity.'

A man forty years of age, of an athletic build and with a long nose and oval face, lamented that for the third time he had fallen into a state of melancholia. Everything was distasteful to him, he could occupy himself with nothing, and for the past eight months, since the 'black' mood set in, his sleep had completely deserted him, as it did on the other two occasions when he had suffered from melancholia. All day and all night he was wretched, nothing gave him any pleasure and, erotically, he had no sensibility whatever. Everything appeared to him as dirt. In the year 1918 he had had a phase of mania, which came upon him with the intoxicating effect of champagne. He then thought that he must save his country, that he was chosen for this purpose and was to become ruler of the realm. Moreover, he attempted to pave the way for various negotiations and had worked out huge plans for colossal buildings, until his family placed him in an asylum. Some weeks later he fell into a state of depression, which lasted for nine months and ran exactly the same course as his present state.

No sooner did he feel better and begin once more to think of regular work than mania set in again for about the same period as the first attack, to be succeeded by the melancholic phase. Upon this there followed almost immediately the symptoms of the third manic phase and this in its turn gave place to his present condition of melancholia.

It was hardly possible not to see in this history a manifestation of complete discouragement. The man's life-story gave ample temptation for such a condition and afforded sufficient confirmation of it. He was the child of rich parents and his god-father was a high dignitary in the State. His mother who had an ambitious, artistic temperament, when he was barely out of his cradle declared him to be a genius, head and shoulders above everyone else, and goaded his ambition to a preposterous extent. Great preference was shown to him above his brothers and sisters, and thus his childish phantasies were altogether extravagant. He liked best of all to play at being a general, when he would summon other boys together by beating a drum, and he made a hillock on which he stood as general and directed the battles. Both in childhood and later in the secondary school which he attended he was deeply wounded if he could not do everything brilliantly and without effort. From that moment he began to shirk his tasks and frittered away his time, chiefly with clay

modelling. We shall see how these games of his young days determined his choice of a profession. Later on he entered the army, but soon left it in order to devote himself to sculpture. When he found that in this profession also he did not immediately win honour and glory he once more changed his mind and took up farming. In this capacity he managed his father's estates, embarked on all manner of speculations and one day found himself faced with complete financial ruin. On being blamed for his foolhardy undertakings and called an idiot for entering upon them, he threw up the sponge and went into retirement.

Then came the great turn in trade after the War and all the undertakings which he had entered upon so recklessly and had believed to have failed began to look up. Money poured in and put him beyond the reach of any care. It appeared, too, that his prestige was re-established and he could once more have devoted himself to useful work, but again he was attacked by mania which put a stop to all his activities. When the good time came it found him already in a state of complete discourage

ment.

He remembered that in his youth he had a strong feeling of predestination; he even entertained presumptuous thoughts that he was like the Deity. The walls of his room were plastered with pictures of Napoleon, which we may regard as evidence of his striving for power.

I once suggested to him as an illustration of the trend of his mind that he bore in his breast a hero whom, since he had lost courage, he no longer dared put to the test; whereupon he was quite taken aback and told me that he had a saying of Nietzsche's put up over the door of his work-room and that it ran as follows: "Bei allem was dir heilig ist bitte und beschwöre ich dich: wirf den Helden in deiner Brust nicht von dir." ("By all that thou holdest holy, I implore and conjure thee that thou reject not the hero in thy breast.")

In one of the chief questions of a man's life, namely, that of his profession, we can see clearly the progressive discouragement which sprang from his unsatisfied and insatiable ambition. And even while we disapprove of it we can yet understand it. How was it with the second main problem in life: the social ties between man and man? It is easy to predict that here again he was bound to come to grief, that his arrogance must make him incapable of contact with others, so that on the whole he led an isolated existence without affecting anybody in one way or another. Even his brothers and sisters and his companions were as cold towards him as he was to them. Only at times, when he made a new acquaintance, he showed a certain amount of interest at first, but

it soon evaporated again. He knew only the bad side of his fellowcreatures and held himself aloof from them. This fact and his aim to be superior to others showed in his satirical and cutting remarks.

In the third main problem of his life he had been badly shipwrecked. He had really loved nobody and woman was to him merely an object. Thus it came about that while still young he contracted lues and, without his noticing it, this was followed by slight symptoms of tabes. This contributed in no small degree to his further discouragement. Now he saw himself cut off from all the triumphs which at other times he had won in his relations with women, in boxing, swimming contests and climbing.

Just as he had alienated himself from his fellow-men, so he now felt himself an alien in life, with which he could find no point of contact. He was not able to perceive his error or to correct it. Certainly his pride, the 'hero in his breast,' hindered him from doing so. Thus I found in him a man who, after attacking a situation in a brilliant, even fanatical, fashion, had invariably let go as soon as his ambition took fright.

When once I recognized the rhythm of his life-how it had been produced by the pressure of his ambitious striving-I knew also that all his mental performances would necessarily display the same rhythm. To test this I asked him to show me his handwriting:

дета

gemanort in der Erde Stetzt dei Form aus Betzen

Sebrannt

One can see here again, without being an expert in interpreting handwriting, the strong attack and the consistent diminution in the size of the letters in every word.

No less striking is the evidence of the two opposite poles in his mental trend as afforded by his choice of subjects for his sculpture. He wanted to represent a sun-worshipper with outstretched arms reaching after the highest, and Grief bowed to the ground and mourning her lost happiness. But he never even reached the preliminary stages of his work. His ambition continued to live, but it had become impotent and hid itself.

The picture of his psychosis showed what this impotent ambition could still bring about, particularly when contact with the outside world

was lost. The disease begins with the wave of elation in mania, the shouting aloud, as it were, of his courage in action; the very impetuosity of it, however, and its illogical character betray discouragement. In the intoxication of his lust for power he goes madly on his way, compelling the people around him to correct his errors, to look after him and to check him, none of which things he may do for himself because his wounded ambition cannot tolerate any course of action according to the dictates of common sense.

There follows the dwindling of his expenditure of energy at the compulsion of the governing principle of his life. In the melancholic phase discouragement is plainly revealed. What has happened now to his ambition? Everything is stale, nothing can move him or give him pleasure, nothing has any effect upon him. His attitude to everything is cold and alien, much as it began to be even in his earlier years. The nothingness of all things earthly, the futility of all human beings and of all human relations-these are the reflections with which his wounded ambition takes its revenge and with which he withdraws himself from every sort of influence or power belonging to others, denying the very existence of such power.

And the more he laments over this loss of values, the more clearly does he establish it. Instead of raising himself he brings down others. Reality opposed unsurmountable difficulties to the aim of his early childhood-an aim pitched all too high. Only in transports of phantasy or in moments of easily and rapidly won triumph were his courage and endurance sufficient. According to the standards of Individual Psychology he was always a type of the discouraged. His manic-depressive insanity is the expression of a profound discouragement whilst the rhythm of his guiding principle remains the same.

In a later work I propose to give some further explanation of the cyclic course of this disease.

PRIMITIVE MENTALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS1

By H. G. BAYNES.

THE point of view I propose to bring before you is liable to cause misunderstanding because it impinges against certain fundamental assumptions, which have been taken over from the physical sciences without any question as to their validity in respect to psychology. I would ask you, therefore, not to prejudge the issue by applying to my arguments certain criteria to which they do not attempt to conform.

To what extent we are agreed that primitive mentality provides us with a model of our own psychological background we shall doubtless see later. But at the least it will be admitted by all, that there exists some analogy between the representations which move the savage mind and our own unconscious processes.

My object, then, is to try to discover whether that insight into the mind of the primitive, which anthropological research has put into our hands, can help us to a more sympathetic understanding of the complicated problems of our own amphibious psychology; whether, in short, we are entitled to form synthetic or intuitional conceptions of the unconscious, based on analogies with primitive notions and behaviour.

A common feature that seems to link the primitive psyche to our own unconscious processes is a certain prelogical or irrational character. This fact is responsible for the almost insuperable obstacles in the path of a rational appraisement of primitive ways and views of life, or a scientific evaluation of our own dreams. On the one side the credulous ignorance of the savage, or the inconsequent irrationality of dreams may provoke our intellectual disdain. On the other side, like the spiritualists to the rather low-grade libido-phenomena of the séances, or like Savanarola to the incoherent utterances of his imbecile dwarf, we may be tempted, by the eternal enigma of the unconscious, to ascribe to dreams or primitive beliefs, a kind of heaven-sent wisdom which it would seem invidious to criticize.

It would take us too far away from our path to discuss the psychological causes of this ambivalent attitude towards prelogical psychic activity. It is enough for my purpose to point out that the customary

1 Read before the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, Jan. 23, 1924.