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VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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(2) BOYD, W. The Work of Educational Clinics. Journ. of Brit. Assoc. Meeting,

Glasgow, 1928.

(3) BRAIN. The Inheritance of Epilepsy. Quart. Journ. Med. XIX, 299. 1926. (4) BURGESS. Study of the Delinquent as a Person. Amer. Journ. Sociology. 1923. (5) BURT. The Young Delinquent. 1925.

(6) COLLIER. The Pathogenesis of Cerebral Diplegia. Proc. R. S. M. 1924. (7) CREW. Organic Inheritance in Man. 1927.

(8) DANDY and BLACKFAN. Internal Hydrocephalus. Amer. Journ. Dis. Child. VIII, 406. 1914.

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(10) DAVENPORT and WEEKS. A First Study of the Inheritance of Epilepsy. Journ. Nerv. Ment. Dis. XXXVIII, 641. 1911.

(11) DAVIES, S. P. Social Control of the Feebleminded. New York, 1923.

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(13) FORD. Cerebral Birth Injuries and their Results. Medicine, p. 121. 1926. (14) FRANZ. Rehabilitation and Re-education. Mental Hygiene, p. 33. 1919. (15) FRAZER and DOTT. Hydrocephalus. Brit. Journ. Surg. x, 165. 1922–3. (16) FREEMAN. Tuberous Sclerosis. Archiv Neurol. Psychiat. vm, 614. 1922. (17) GILLESPIE, R. D. Estimation of Character and Temperament in the Light of Psychological Medicine. Journ. of Brit. Assoc. Meeting, Leeds, 1927, p. 65. (18) GODDARD. Feeblemindedness: its Causes and Consequences. New York, 1914. (19) GUYER and SMITH. Transmission of Induced Eye Defects. Journ. Exp. Zool. XXXI, 171. 1920.

(20) HAMAIDE, A. The Decroly Class. 1925.

(21) HOLLINGWORTH, L. S. The Psychology of Subnormal Children. 1923.

(22) LINDSAY, M. N. A Modified Dalton Plan in a Special School. Mental Welfare. Jan. 23, 1927.

(23-25) Mendelism and the Problem of Mental Defect. Cambridge University Press. Vol. I. HERON. A Criticism of Recent American Work. 1913. Vol. п. PEARSON and JAEDERHOLM. The Continuity of Mental Defect. 1914. Vol. III. PearSON. On the Graduated Character of Mental Defect, etc. 1914.

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(31) SACHS, B. Hereditary Factors in Amaurotic Family Idiocy. In Heredity in Nervous and Mental Disease. Published by P. Hoeber. New York, 1925. (32) SACHS, B. and HAUSMANN. Nervous and Mental Diseases from Birth through Adolescence. New York, 1926,

(33) SCHWARTZ. Erkrankungen des Zentralnervensystems nach traumatischer Geburtschädigung. Zeitschr. f. d. ges. Neur. u. Psych. xc, 263. 1924.

(34) SOUTHARD and JARRETT. The Kingdom of Evils. 1922.

(35) SPEARMAN. The Abilities of Man. 1927.

(36) STOCKARD. Developmental Rate and Structural Expression. Amer. Journ. Anat. XXVIII, 115. 1920-1.

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Experimental Production of Degeneracy. In Heredity in Nervous and Mental Disease. Published by P. Hoeber. New York, 1925.

(38) TERMAN. The Measurement of Intelligence. 1919.

(39) THOм. Inheritance in Epilepsy. Boston Med. and Surg. Journ. CLXXIV, 573. (40) TREDGOLD. Mental Deficiency. 1922.

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The Education of Handicapped Children. 1924.

(43) WATERS, MIRIAM VAN. Youth in Conflict. 1925.

(44) WERTHEIMER and HESKETH. Physical Constitution in Mental Disease. Medicine, p. 375. 1926.

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CRITICAL NOTICE

The Future of an Illusion. By SIGMUND FREUD, M.D., LL.D. Translated by W. D. ROBSON-SCOTT. London, 1928. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Pp. 98. Price 6s. net.

To Freud the universe seems unfriendly and the heart of man desperately wicked. Nature is sublime, pitiless, inexorable, and all men have destructive, anti-social and anti-cultural tendencies. The conquest of nature is the goal of culture and civilization, and in the course of the struggle culture has to ensure the regulation of human affairs and relations. Communal life imposes restraints on man's instinctive desires and activities, and security is obtained at the cost of frustration and sacrifice. But restraints and the suppression of the instincts arouse dissatisfaction among the masses, for they are not easily convinced that renunciation of instinctual desires is a necessity of civilization. Only by the influence of those whom they recognize as their leaders can they be induced to submit to the restrictions imposed upon them by culture, and since these leaders are a small minority, they must have at their disposal means of enforcing their authority. The work of civilization is impossible without coercion; but coercion leads to rebellion, and the masses develop hostility towards culture and resistance against its institutions.

Although the masses reject the claims of culture and rebel against its restrictions, they cannot defend themselves against the supremacy of nature and the fate that threatens them, unless they accept the means of salvation provided by culture; namely, belief in a divine father who will be their refuge and their strength in time of trouble, and will recompense them, in an after-life, for all that makes this life hard. This belief is the illusion whose future Freud discusses in this essay.

The term illusion is used here in a sense somewhat different from that which it has in general psychology. Freud says: "we call a belief an illusion when wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation, while disregarding its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself does" (p. 54). At the same time he says "the illusion need not be necessarily false, that is to say, unrealizable or incompatible with reality." Although he holds that religious doctrines are all illusions, he confesses that of the reality-value of most of them we cannot judge. It does not lie within the scope of his enquiry to estimate the value of religious doctrines as truth. He is content to recognize them, psychologically considered, as illusions. Nevertheless, he makes it plain that his recognition of them, psychologically considered, as illusions has strongly influenced his attitude to the question of their objective truth.

Freud suspects, however, that other cultural beliefs besides religious doctrines may prove to be illusions when subjected to the same kind of critical examination. He boldly asks "whether there is any better foundation for our conviction that it is possible to discover something about external reality through the applying of observation and reasoning in scientific work" (p. 59). He thinks that such an examination would at least partially justify

his suspicions, but he confesses that he has not the means to undertake so comprehensive a task. This is to be regretted, for a demonstration of the illusory nature of scientific knowledge, by Freud himself, would remove the impression of bias against religion which is produced by his confining his scepticism to the field of religious doctrines. In the end, however, his philosophical scepticism leaves him and he closes his essay on this positive note: "No, science is no illusion. But it would be an illusion to suppose that we could get anywhere else what it cannot give us.”

One of the most noteworthy characteristics of Freud's writings is the acuteness of his criticism of his own views. In this essay his ability to see all round a question has prompted him to set up an imaginary opponent who disagrees with his arguments and criticizes them. The exposition at times takes the form of a dialogue in which Freud replies to the criticisms which he himself has put into the mouth of this opponent. The objections put forward are no mere pseudo-criticisms put up in order to show how easily they may be overthrown, but are real objections, often supported by arguments so forcible that one sometimes feels that Freud's Frankenstein has worsted his creator.

The most general statement of Freud's attitude towards religious doctrines and their future fate is contained in his comparison of religion to an obsessional neurosis. As "the human child cannot well complete its development towards culture without passing through a more or less distinct phase of neurosis," so the whole human race in its development passes through an analogous phase, and religion is "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity." And just as the obsessional neuroses of childhood are usually overcome spontaneously as one grows up, so in mankind as a whole "the abandoning of religion must take place with the fateful inexorability of a process of growth." Freud believes that we are now in the middle of this phase of development.

The validity of this analogy is not clear to the general reader, for no account is given of the process of the recovery which occurs spontaneously in the obsessional neuroses of children. He wants to know what the factors are on which such recovery depends. Does the child need to give up his cultural or religious inhibitions, such as they are, before he gets rid of his neurosis? Or is it by accepting the universal neurosis (religion) that he gets freed from his personal neurosis? Or can it be said of the child that his spontaneous recovery from neurosis is due to his having "to replace the consequences of repression by the results of rational mental effort"? This is the course foretold for humanity if it is to continue the process of growth which will inevitably lead to the abandoning of religion, but the reader unversed in the details of psychoanalytic doctrine is unable to judge how far the analogy of the childhood neurosis and the universal neurosis holds good in respect to the process of recovery.

Although Freud views the abandonment of religion without fear and without regret, he shows considerable apprehension concerning the effect which this may have on culture. He says culture has little to fear from the educated or from the brain-workers, but he thinks it is quite otherwise with the uneducated and suppressed who have every reason to be enemies of culture. He thinks the masses obey cultural laws only because these laws are believed to have divine sanction. Their belief that God is the author of these laws is not, however, a result of personal belief in God's existence, but is rather due to the knowledge or assumption that the cultured minority hold this belief: "So long as they do not discover that people no longer believe in God, all is well" (p. 68).

When they do discover that 'people' no longer believe in God, then Freud fears that their deep-seated hostility to culture will have no check and they will break all cultural commandments and "kill without hesitation." Freud puts the cultured minority' in the position of the country gentry who go to church for the sake of example,' and there is a fine Tory flavour in his suggestion that one of the ways of dealing with the situation would be to secure "the most rigorous suppression of these dangerous masses and the most careful exclusion of all opportunities for mental awakening."

One feels that in what he says about the masses and their attitude towards culture and religion, Freud's eyes are all the time fixed on "the great cultural experiment that is at present in progress in the vast country that stretches between Europe and Asia"; for much of what he says cannot truthfully be said of the masses' of Western Europe. It would rather seem that his alternative solution-"a fundamental revision of the relation between culture and religion"—has long been in progress among all the world's peoples who have been brought up in an atmosphere of freedom. Knowledge of the rational motivation of cultural laws is no longer confined to the cultured few. Religious motives for civilized behaviour are already being "unobtrusively replaced by other and secular ones," not only by the cultured few who have abandoned religion, but also by many of the uncultured who have no religion; and also indeed by many, both cultured and uncultured, who have retained some sort of religious belief.

An interesting climax in Freud's train of thought is reached when he reminds himself that the rational motivation of civilized conduct is, after all, only a rationalization, and that the historical basis of cultural laws is essentially 'religious.' The murder of the primal father and the emotional reaction which followed and gave rise to the commandment "thou shalt not kill," were on Freud's own showing the original source of religious behaviour. The primal father was the prototype of God and the prohibition of murder was due to primitive man's notion of God rather than to his recognition of what was necessary for society.

Since he has shown that religious ideas have their origin in human wishes, Freud cannot believe that they correspond to any reality. He thinks it odd that all the fundamental conceptions of religion-God as creator and benevolent providence, a moral world-order, and a future life-should, if true, be just as we should wish it ourselves; and he thinks it still odder that all these riddles of the universe should have been solved by our savage ancestors.

It may be pointed out, however, that something equally odd is accepted by Freud without surprise or comment. He has shown how our basic cultural laws the prohibition of incest, cannibalism, and murder-are historically derived from primitive religious notions, and it seems odd that laws or prohibitions based upon illusions should be so completely in accord with those that are "the final result of reflection" of the most cultured peoples. What is there in the nature of the intellect that it should so faithfully confirm practices determined by illusory beliefs? Is there, perhaps, behind the illusory beliefs, some reality which determines the form the illusion takes, and provides the rational justification of the conduct based upon it?

His recognition of the religious basis of cultural laws does not prevent Freud from desiring to exclude religious doctrines from the motivation of civilized behaviour. The admission of illusions into the motivation of conduct is incompatible with that education to reality' which he regards as the most

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