"I think they were," I said, "for they merely repressed their animal
life. They thought that they had conquered it, but they only buried
it. The real saint is the man who faces his flesh boldly and loves it
too, just as much as he loves his God."
Then the minister fled.
The interpretation of dreams is one of the most fascinating studies in
the world. The method as evolved by Freud is simple, although the
interpretation is anything but simple. Obviously the average dream has
no meaning. You dream that a horse speaks to you, and then it turns
into your brother. It is all nonsense, yet behind the nonsense is a
serious meaning. Not long ago I was analysing a girl of sixteen.
About a week after the analysis began she brought a dream which began
thus: "I am invisible, and I have a tail that I can take off or put on."
Following the method of free association I said to her: "What comes
into your mind about being invisible?"
"Oh, I've often wanted to be invisible, for then I could do what I
liked; then I would be free."
Being invisible therefore meant being free.
Then I asked her associations to the tail part.
"Tail . . . monkeys at the Zoo; they are poor things always kept behind
bars. Just like me. I forgot to say that my tail wasn't on in the
dream."
Tail therefore meant something associated with confinement and
restriction. It is significant that her tail was unattached. I took
it to mean a wish-fulfilment dream; in it she got free from her
neurosis.
The following night she dreamt that she was being driven in a motor car
by a swanky chauffeur. They came to the bottom of a hill, and the car
stopped, and she got out and walked. Her first association was: "The
chauffeur had a big green coat on, one just like the coat you wear."
"So I was the chauffeur?" I asked.
She brightened at once.
"I see it!" she cried. "The car is the analysis; you are driving me
away from my old life!"
"Excellent!" I said, "but don't forget that the car stopped at the
bottom of the hill. What does the word hill give you?"
"Something difficult to climb. I hated climbing it and thought it a
shame that the motor didn't take me up."
"Well?"
"I've got to climb to get better, haven't I?"
"That's right," I said. "I told you the other night that no analyst
should give advice, and I refused when you asked me for it. In your
unconscious you realise that the chauffeur is not going to take you up
the hill; in other words you've got to do most of the work."
Freud holds that there is a censor standing between the conscious and
the unconscious. Primitive wishes seek to come from the unconscious,
but the censor holds up his hand. "No," he says, "that's too
disgusting; the conscious mind couldn't stand that; it would be
shocked. You must disguise yourself in harmless form!" And so the
infantile sex wish is changed into a harmless dog or cycle. But if
this is the case why should my little girl dream of me as a chauffeur?
There was nothing disgusting about me, nothing that her conscious mind
could not face.
I prefer Jung's theory. He says that we dream in symbols because
symbolism is the oldest language in the world, and, as the unconscious
is primitive it uses this language. We all dream of shocking things,
and if the endopsychic censor were really on duty he would never allow
these disgusting dreams to get through.
If I dream that my father is dead the Freudians declare that I either
wish or, in the past, have wished unconsciously for my father's death.
But surely so alarming a wish would be changed into a harmless form if
there were a censor. One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray,
was dead. The first association to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of
chap." I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely
my own laziness symbolised. The dream was a hint to me to be up and
doing, for I had been neglecting a task that I should have undertaken.
There is what might be called the cheese-and-tripe supper theory of the
dream held by many people.
"There's nothing in dreams," they say, "nothing but the disorders
following late supper."
A cheese-and-tripe supper will cause queer dreams, but the advocates of
this theory cannot explain why a tripe supper should make me dream
of--say--a tiger. Why not a lion or a mouse?
It is an accepted fact now in psychology that the dream is the working
of the unconscious. Some theosophists claim that during sleep your
spirit leaves your body and seeks the astral plane, but I have never
seen anything resembling evidence of this. It may be a fact for all
that.
Concerning the prophetic aspect of dreams I know nothing. I have heard
that the night before the Tay Bridge disaster a woman dreamt that it
was to take place, and she persuaded her husband not to travel by that
ill-fated train, but I cannot vouch for the story. I believe, however,
that the dream is prophetic in that the unconscious during the night is
working out the problems of the next day. The popular saying about
sleeping over a problem shows that there is a real belief in this
aspect. I know a lady who was undergoing analysis. She was suffering
from a father complex, that is, her infantile fixation on the father
had remained with her, and unconsciously she was approving or
disapproving of every man she met according as he did or did not in
some way resemble her father.
For a few weeks after the analysis began she was always dreaming that
she was back in her childhood home, and in her dreams she was always
trying to get away from home and her father was always restraining her
from going. Often the figure in the dream was not the father, but the
associations always showed that the figure was standing for the father.
One night the figure was the King, and her first association was: "The
King's name is George. . . . That's father's name too."
This seems to be a case where the unconscious is striving to find a
solution.
The way the unconscious does things is wonderful. I remember one night
listening to a lecture by Homer Lane. He brought forward a new theory
about education, and it was so deep that I did not quite grasp its
meaning. At the time Alan, Homer Lane's youngest child, was one of the
pupils in the school in which I taught. That night I dreamt that I was
standing before a class. Alan was sitting in the front seat, and
behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest
child." The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's
younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest. Here again I cannot see
why any censor should change a theory into a child.
* * * * *
In my _Log_ I make a very, very poor statement about sex instruction.
I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory
of birth until the age of nine. That was a wrong belief, but then at
that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll. I see now that the
child should be told the truth about sex whenever he asks for
information. But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have
sexually educated their child when they tell him where babies come
from. The physiological side of sex is the less important; you can
take a child through all the usual stages--pollination of plants,
fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find
no help in these informations when he faces his sex instinct at
adolescence. Sex instruction should be psychological; it should deal
with the sex instinct as one form of life force or libido. The child
should be led to face it openly. It should be entirely dissociated
from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.
Who is to give the instruction? That is the difficulty. Most parents
and teachers cannot do it because their own sex instinct is all wrong.
Make a remark about sex in the company of adults, and it will be
reacted to in two ways; some will grin and laugh; others will be
shocked. I hasten to add that the shocked ones are worse than the
laughers. The laugh is a release of sex repressions; the shocked
appearance is a compensation for an unconscious over-interest in sex.
Anyway neither type is capable of talking about sex to children, and
since humanity is roughly divided into prudes and sinners (not saints
and sinners), there is little hope of a frank sex education for kiddies.
Many people say: "Oh, leave it to the doctors," but personally I
haven't enough faith in doctors. Their attitude to sex is usually no
better than the attitude of the layman. I know doctors who could give
excellent instruction to children on the physiology of sex, but the
only doctors of my acquaintance who could teach the psychological side
are psycho-analysts or psycho-therapists of some sort.
Teachers can tackle the sex problem negatively. Sex activity is a form
of life force or interest, and if a child is not finding life
interesting enough there is a danger that he will regress to what is
called auto-eroticism. When we remember that the sexual instinct is
the creative instinct, and that creation in dancing or music or poetry
or art of any kind is sublimated sex, that is sex raised to a higher
power, we can readily see that one of the most important parts of a
teacher's job is to provide ways and means for creation. I realise
that this is not enough, but, as I say, I cannot see the way to a good
sex education, until every teacher and parent has discovered his or her
own sex complexes. Co-education helps, for then the commingling of the
sexes affords a harmless and unconscious outlet for sex interest. But
co-education is no panacea, for the sex problems of the individual
child in a co-educational school are almost as immediate as those of
the child from the segregated school.