"What's that?"
"The sex aspect. Sex life possesses, according to Freud, a far higher significance in our mental household than traditional psychology is willing to admit. And I don't know as I would say I'd go the whole distance with Freud, either." He paused contemplatively. "Yet there is much that is true about his sex theories. Take an example. There's much about married life that can be learned from dreams. Thus, why John Doe doesn't get along with his wife has always been a matter of absorbing interest to the neighborhood. Conversation is taken up by it; yellow journalism is founded on it. Now, psychology—and mainly dream analysis—can solve the question—often right things for both John and Jane Doe and set the neighborhood tongues at rest. Sex and sex relations play a big rôle in life, whether we like to admit it or not."
"I see," I nodded. "Then you think that that's what Lathrop meant when he said he strongly disagreed with the theory?"
"Without a doubt. That is perhaps the part of the theory from which he reacted—or said he did. You see, Freud says that as soon as you enter the intimate life of a patient you begin to find sex in some form. In fact, he says, the best indication of abnormality would be its absence.
"Sex is one of the strongest of human impulses," Craig continued, as impersonally as if he were classifying butterflies, "yet the one impulse subjected to the greatest repression. For that reason it is the weakest point in our cultural development. However, if everything is natural there ought to be no trouble. In a normal life, says Freud, there are no neuroses."
"But how does that all apply in this case?" I asked. "You must mean that we have to deal with a life that is not normal, here in the Wilford case."
He nodded. "I was convinced of it, the moment Leslie called on me here. That was why I was interested. Before that I thought it was just an ordinary case that had stumped him and I was not going to pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him. But what he said put it in a different light. So did what Doyle told me, especially that sonnet he found. They didn't know it—don't know it yet—won't know it until I tell them. That doesn't alter the fact that it promises to be a unique case."
He paced the floor a few moments, as though trying to piece together the fragments he possessed.
"Let me proceed now with a preliminary psychanalysis, as the Freudians call it," he resumed, still pacing thoughtfully, "the soul analysis of Honora Wilford, as it were. I do not claim that it is final. It is not. But on such information and belief, as the lawyers say, as we have already, we are warranted in drawing some preliminary conclusions. They will help us to go on. If any of them are wrong, all we need to do is throw them overboard. Later, I shall add to that stock of information, in one way or another, and it may very greatly modify those conclusions. But, until then, let's adopt them as a working hypothesis."
I could only wonder at him. It was startling in the extreme to consider the possibilities to which this new science of dreams might lead, as he proceeded to illustrate it by applying it directly to a concrete case which I had seen.