Connected with forgetting are what Freud calls symptomatic acts. I
leave my stick or gloves behind when I am calling at a house: I
conclude that I want to go back there. I go to dinner at the
Thomsons', and at their front door I absent-mindedly take out my
latch-key. This may mean that I feel at home there; on the other hand,
it may mean that I wish I were at home. It is dangerous to dogmatise
about the unconscious.
I was sitting one night with Wilson, an old college friend of mine. We
talked of old times, and I remarked that he had been very lucky in his
lodgings during his college course.
"Yes," he said, "I was in the same digs all the five years. She was a
ripping landlady was Mrs.--Mrs.--Good Lord! I've forgotten her name!"
He tried to recall the name, but had to give it up. Two hours later,
as he rose to go, he exclaimed: "I remember the name now! Mrs. Watson!"
"What are your associations to the name Watson?" I asked.
"Associations? What do you mean?"
"What's the first thing that comes into your head in connection with
the name?" I asked.
He made an effort to concentrate his mind, then suddenly he laughed
shortly.
"Good Lord!" he cried, "that's my wife's name!"
I felt that I could not very well ask him anything further, but I
suspected that Wilson and his wife were not getting on well together.
* * * * *
Macdonald's self-government scheme has fizzled out. Yesterday his
scholars besought him to return to the old way of authority.
"They were fed up with looking after themselves," explained Mac to me.
"They were always trying each other for misdemeanours, and they got
sick of it."
I tried to explain to Mac why his attempt had failed. Self-government
always fails unless it is complete self-government. Mac was the
director and guide; it was he who decided the time-table; it was he who
rang the bell and decided the length of the intervals. The children
had nothing to do but to keep themselves in order, hence they came to
spy on each other. All their energies were directed to penal measures.
Their meeting degenerated into a police court. That was inevitable;
Mac, by laying down all the laws, prevented their using their creative
energy on things and ideas. Naturally they put all the energy they had
into the only thing open to them--the trial of offenders. In short,
they were employing energy in destruction when they ought to have been
employing it in construction. Mac seems indifferent now. "The thing
is unworkable," he says.
* * * * *
Duncan came over to-night. I decided to let him do most of the
talking, and he did it well. He has been doing a lot of Regional
Geography, and I learned much from his conversation. As the evening
wore on he became very affable, and he treated me with the greatest
kindness. When Mac was seeing him out Duncan remarked to him: "That
chap Neill isn't such a bad fellow after all." Now that I have shown
Duncan that I am his inferior in Geography he will listen to me with
less irritation.
After supper I went over to see Dauvit. His shop was crowded.
Conversation was going slowly, and Dauvit seemed to welcome my entrance.
"Man, Dominie," he said, "I am very glad to see ye, cos the smith here
has been tellin' his usual lees aboot the ten pund troot that he nearly
landed in the Kernet."
"I doot ye dreamt it, smith," said the foreman from Hillend. "I ken
for mysell that the biggest troot I ever catched were in my dreams."
"Dreams is just a curran blethers," said the smith in scorn.
Dauvit looked at him thoughtfully.
"That's a very ignorant remark, smith," he said gravely. "There's
naebody kens what a dream is. Some o' thae spiritualist lads say that
when ye are asleep yer spirit goes to the next plane, and that maks yer
dreams."
The smith laughed loudly.
"Oh, Dauvit! Why, man, I dreamed last nicht that I was sittin' we a
great muckle pint o' beer in my hand. Do ye mean to tell me that there
is beer in heaven?"
There was a laugh at Dauvit's expense, but the laugh turned against the
smith when Dauvit remarked dryly: "I didna mention heaven; I said the
next plane, and onybody that kens you, smith, kens that the plane
you're gaein' to is the doon plane."
"Naturally, a muckle pint o' beer will be the exact thing ye need doon
there," he added.
"It's my opeenion," said old John Peters, "that dreams is just like a
motor car withoot the driver. Or like a schule withoot the mester; the
bairns just run aboot whaur they like, nae control as ye micht say.
Weel, that's jest what happens in dreams; the mester is sleepin' and
the bairns do all sorts o' mad things."
"Aye, man, John," said Dauvit, who seemed to be struck with the idea,
"there's maybe something in that. Just as bairns when they get free do
a' the things they're no meant to do, we do the same things in oor
dreams. Goad, but I've done some awfu' things in my dreams!"
Here Jake Tosh the roadman began to cough, and Jake's cough always
means that he is about to say something.
"You're just a lot o' haverin' craturs," he said with conviction. "If
ye had ony sense ye wud ken that the dream is just cheese and tripe for
supper."
Dauvit's eyes twinkled.
"And does the cheese wander frae yer stammick up to yer heid, Jake?"
"I wudna go so far as that," said Jake seriously, "but what I say is
that a' the different parts o' the body work thegether. If the
stammick has to work a' nicht to digest the cheese, the heid has to
keep workin' at the same rate, and that's why ye dream."
"Aye, man, Jake," said Dauvit, "it's a bonny theory, but wud ye jest
tell me exactly what work yer toes and fingers and hair are doin' a'
nicht to keep upsides wi' yer stammick?"
Jake dismissed the question with an airy wave of his hand.
"Onybody kens that," he said; "they grow. Yer hair and yer nails grow
at nichts, and that's why ye need a shave in the mornin'!"
"What if you don't dream at all, Jake?" I asked.
"Ye're needin' some grub," said Jake shortly.
On thinking it over I feel that Jake's theory throws some light on
Jung's theory of the libido.