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"I dissent vigorously from some of Freud's conclusions," he hastened. "Let me state them first," resumed Craig. "Dreams, says Freud, are very important. They give us the most reliable information concerning the individual. But that is only possible" Kennedy emphasised the point "if the patient is in entire rapport with the doctor.
When we read of Freud's long struggle in an attempt to find something which he felt surely was to be found, we see that he had abundant opportunity to acquire almost an obsession. The long years since, which he has spent in analyzing dreams and making them all come out right some way, would serve to more firmly ground his conviction, and the same is true of his disciples.
And therefore there must be some prior cause in the subject which makes just this particular impression so injurious; and here is the point of Freud's fundamental discovery, which for the layman appears on the surface to have little probability but which has proved of greatest consequence for clinical work.
Primitive social control; Its rigidity; Its necessity; Universality of this control in the form of taboos; Connection between the universal attitude of primitive peoples towards woman as shown in the Institutionalized Sex Taboo and the magic-religious belief in Mana; Relation of Mana to Taboo; Discussion of Sympathetic Magic and the associated idea of danger from contact; Difficulties in the way of an inclusive definition of Taboo; Its dual nature; Comparison of concepts of Crawley, Frazer, Marett and others; Conclusion that Taboo is Negative Mana; Contribution of modern psychology to the study of Taboo; Freud's analogy between the dualistic attitude toward the tabooed object and the ambivalence of the emotions; The understanding of this dualism together with the primitive belief in Mana and Sympathetic Magic explains much in the attitude of man toward woman; The vast amount of evidence in the taboos of many peoples of dualism in the attitude toward woman.
Now I think these new myths of Freud's about life, like his old ones about dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously about ourselves. The human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in trouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of anxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. It is born, as another wise myth has it, in original sin.
Freud is an Austrian Jew, a physician, and one that soon specialized in nervous and mental diseases. Hysteria has played so important a role in human history, and Freud's ideas are permeating so deeply into modern thought that I deem it advisable to devote a chapter to them. Hysteria was known to the ancients and in fact is as old as the written history of mankind.
One must reject all hastily formed causal laws to the effect that C is the sign of A in every case. Otherwise absurd conclusions must result, as in Freud's theory of the birth-phantasies. For the same "symbol" may proceed from entirely different significations according to the set-of-the-mind or apperception-mass.
We have no obligation or even excuse for accepting such a theory on the mere presumption of the originator. And that Freud's theory is weird and fantastic is a self-evident fact. Perhaps the Clark University student who very carefully worked it up a few years ago went a little too far when he said it was a chaotic inferno, but at any rate, it is far removed from celestial harmony.
Complete sexual anæsthesia is, however, so rare a state that it may be practically left out of consideration, and as the sexual impulse, if it exists, must by physiological necessity sometimes become active in some shape even if only, according to Freud's view, by transformation into some morbid neurotic condition we reach the conclusion that "sexual abstinence" is strictly impossible.
Kronfeld, in a most valuable criticism, says that in comparison with Freud's conception of the vorconscious and its work, Henroth's Demonomania appears a modest scientific theory. The attitude of the Freudians is, itself, worth noticing. They are very prone to consider any criticism as very personal, and fly to the rescue with all the fervor of a religious fanatic.
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