METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTIONS IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
There are three reasons why psycho-analysts do not more often encounter this variable element, this Hidden Z. First, such dreams as they elect to deal with, are mostly sexual. Second, they do not apply the methods of individual differences which have been made so familiar and so useful by Professor Cattell in this country.[*] Thirdly, their type of culture leads them to study the dream extensively rather than intensively and all the while in apparent disregard of those conceptions of physiological psychology which we now associate with the work of Wundt, of Ladd and of Woodworth, and with the psychopathology of Prince.
[*] The writer's present psychophysiological theory of dreams was first broached in public, at a series of meetings on the subject of Individual Differences, held in honor of Professor Cattell, at Columbia University, in the Department of Psychology, in April, 1914.
To be sure, Jung's recent utterances before the Psycho-Medical Society of London, demonstrate his dissatisfaction with the Freudian conception of the dream; but he is still far from those studies of specific mental and nervous dispositions to which psychology has slowly come, and for which we now have a tool in the shape of Prince's conception of the neurogram. In psycho-analytic work a more vague use of "dream material" is preferred and it is only by good luck that the real settings-of-ideas come into account. Jung, no less than Freud, has forgotten that philosophy has become mechanistic since Descartes'[21] famous year of 1637, and Jung would throw us back to the early seventeenth century, with his energic conception of the Libido, or the Ur-libido, now called Horme and sometimes merely elan vital. And this, fifty years after Herbert Spencer's tremendous emphasis on specific studies in reflex-action![22]
Fontenelle, the wittiest of Cartesians, writing in 1686, gives us a classic tableau of this sort of speculative temper. [23] He pictures worthies like Pythagoras, Heraclitus; Empedocles, as being invited to witness Lulli's opera "Phaeton," at the Paris Odeon. In characteristic fashion, each in turn tries to explain the spectacular aerial flight of the actor in the title-role, from the floor of the stage to the ceiling. One says, that Phaeton is able to fly by the potency of certain numbers of which he is composed; another, that a secret virtue carries him aloft; still another, that Phaeton travels through the air because he abhors to leave a vacuum in the upper corner of the stage; and so on, with a hundred and one speculations which, as Fontenelle remarks, should have ruined the reputation of antiquity. Finally, he pictures Descartes coming along and saying: "This actor is able to rise from the floor because he hangs by a cord, at the other end of which is a counterpoise, heavier than he, which is descending." This is mechanistic . . . If Freud and Jung had been of the party, can it be doubted that the one would have ascribed Phaeton's aviation to a wish-fulfilment of the flying-dream type, derived from a reminiscence of erotic motion-pleasure[24] in childhood, or that Jung, for his part, would have said Phaeton was levitated by the energic force of a sublimation of the Ur-Libido, alias elan vital, alias Horme!
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VARIETIES OF DREAM INTERPRETATIONS
Let me illustrate these points of criticism of the psychoanalytic methods, by the analysis of a sample dream; speaking first as the dreamer giving the simple narrative; next as Freud applying the reductive method; then as Jung employing the constructive method; and finally explaining the dream, as I would myself prefer, by the use of what I may call the reconstitutive method. The dream itself, for reasons, that will be obvious, I call the "Scratch-Reflex Dream."
"I was looking down upon a microscope from the right side of the lens-tube, and could see, laid upon the stage, a glass slide. Under the cover-glass, in place of an ordinary specimen, there was supposed to be a new reflex,—one of those discovered by my friend the neurologist, Dr. X., whose scrawly handwriting I recognized on the label. I was anxiously trying to decipher what he had written, and was having the same trouble with it that I had experienced in real life with the record of some of his dreams, which I had interpreted successfully. The handwriting on the label, as I gazed, appeared less and less like script and more like disconnected, scratchy lines or hachures, owing to the formation of lacunae in the inky traces. It became scratchier and scratchier as I wakened. On coming to my senses . . . "
"That is enough," we hear Dr. Freud saying, "It is obvious what kind of reflex-action you have in mind! The word 'slide' is of a punning nature, and in conjunction with the easy moveability of the microscope-barrel suggests a meaning akin to that of dreams of skating and sliding, which are usually sexual. From the standpoint of symbolics, the geometric forms and relative positions of cover-glass and microscope suggest allusions to the generative powers of nature—like the phallicism of the ancient Egyptian religion, whose sacred emblems of sexual objects still confront the explorer and the tourist. Here, the 'stage' of the microscope refers obviously to the theatre, so often the scene of exhibitionistic activities. Your dream represents the male and the female principles in such a manner that it must mean a survival of infantile curiosity related to the mystery of parenthood. Sir, this proves your Libido to have been fixated at the 'voyeur' level."[25]
"Not so fast," says Dr. Jung, while the dreamer remains nonplussed at the foregoing example of the reductive method. "It is not good for the health to overvalue the past, as my colleague does. Nous avons change tout cela, in Zurich. Your curiosity, according to the constructive method, is a demand for satisfaction in new and better ways than those of infancy. I will prove this to be so, by an investigation of the dream material. This Dr. X., what of him and his handwriting?"
The dreamer then explains that Dr. X. had consented to have his dreams analyzed, and that the outcome had been the uncovering of his secret intention to be married; the dreamer also states that Dr. X. had written some very original papers on periosteal reflexes.
"Ah," says Dr. Jung, as it were, making quotations from his own writings, (as indicated in italics) "one has only to hear this dream material in order to understand at once that the dream is not so much the fulfilment of infantile desires as it is the expression of biological duties hitherto neglected because of . . . infantilism.([6]) To be sure these are sexual objects that you are looking at in the dream, as Freud would have it. But your interest in them is not so primitive as it would seem. For do you not, symbolically speaking, 'look down upon' them in your fancy. And moreover, since you are looking at these emblems of parental union 'from the right side,' does it not therefore mean that you are contemplating something legitimate; namely, marriage on your own account— not exhibitionism on the part of others. One infers you wish to put away childish sex-curiosity and fulfil your destiny as a parent. In this case symbolical value, not concrete value must be attached to the sexual phantasy."
At this point, the dreamer makes free to admit that he is a bachelor, and that he would not be averse to marriage if he could manage to take a wife and at the same time keep up his research work.
"Precisely," Dr. Jung might say, rapidly turning these clues to account, "your interest in future advancement is clearly reflected in your anxiety to decipher the handwriting of Dr. X., with whom you have identified yourself. You desire to emulate his scientific achievements; his published work on reflexes excites your ambition. The handwriting on the label, which perplexes you, is an allusion not only to his authorship but to the difficulties in the way of your own contribution to the science of dream interpretation. By imitating Dr. X's triumph you wish to make your marriage possible. Your Horme or elan vital is pushing you to evolve new and higher forms of the Libido. You are sublimating!"[26]