Comment is almost unnecessary on such an excellent. piece of introspection as the following:

"I started out in the usual way as passive as possible, but soon became conscious that I was failing essentially, and I stopped at No. 1. I then decided that it was perfectly legitimate to start out with 'brown,' and that led me to an interesting complex in the medical school, of some two weeks before. I had been doing dissection work on an unusually 'ripe' old stiff, and when I had removed the skin and superficial fascia from the face, I came upon a badly diseased and decayed parotid gland. There was a brown clot on the surface of it running down in a malignant decay to the jaw itself. That brown I remember at the time was especially disturbing and repulsive to me, and I stood looking at it for some time at that time I had quite

forgotten my particular complex for 'brown.' Then I felt in the pocket of my laboratory coat for my rubber gloves before continuing the dissection of the superficial muscles of the face. When I reached point No. 2 (in list of words) the whole thing dawned on me or at least I believe what may be the complex came to mind.

"It reverts to childhood, just the year I cannot say, but it was between the age of seven and ten. I was visiting my grandmother (summer time), and a swing had been constructed in the barn, where I and my two playmates spent most of our time. As I look back now that barn was a most mysterious place to me very mysterious full of pits and rats. Yet in the daytime we explored it without fear. Late one afternoon, while I was swinging alone, one of the ropes broke and I took a bad fall backwards, hitting my head a glancing blow on a floor support. I remember, now, distinctly, my dazed condition as I turned to look at what I had hit, and saw drops, several of them, of reddish-brown blood. Brown, I suppose, because I was somewhat dazed. I quickly put my hand to the back of my head and found it wet. I had given myself a rather severe cut on the scalp, and it was bleeding badly. I remember the unusual feeling of my fingers as they touched the bruised spot wet with blood. It was the first time, so far as I can recall, that I had personally come in contact with blood. In real childhood fear, I jumped up, crying, and rushed to my grandmother. When I went to the barn next day those spots were brown, and it is that way and from that strong emotional experience of childhood that I look to an explanation for my distaste for brown.

"The words coming after No. 2 are merely a conscious. effort on my part to put down in the sequence of the moment the associations as they came to mind after the flash of recognition which embodied a fairly clear visual picture of that childhood tragedy."

It is interesting to note that this little piece of work illustrates in an experimental way on the normal individual some of Freud's work. During the course of another investigation several such cases occurred, but in them the subjects were able after some effort to trace them back to

early emotional experiences. They all show an inhibiting effect on other mental material. The same happened in this instance. In a series of colors exhibited, those most intensely remembered were the browns to the exclusion of practically all else. A feeling of hatred accompanied this remembrance which spread itself over the whole experiment with colors. This is all the more remarkable as the subject is something of an artist, and colors as colors are not distasteful to him.

It seems altogether probable that the account given by the subject is correct and that the dislike dates from that vivid experience of childhood. The original experience had been completely and entirely forgotten, but the emotional effect remained to color future impressions. Unless the word emotion is given a broader meaning than at present we require a wider and more inclusive word to express the condition or state when such an experience is awakened without the original cause being present in memory. A word is needed to cover emotion, instinctive action, organic action, feeling. The best at present would seem to be psychophysical attitude. It would include practically all reactions of the organism, those which have a conscious content of their own (in the current use of the word consciousness) and those which have it indirectly, such as reflex actions and organic feelings, etc. It is true that the word consciousness should cover all these and then the term attitude. can be used to differentiate a region within consciousness. This is coming, for one can now proceed with some success to analyze all reaction into a sum of reflexes, some of them accompanied by self-consciousness and some not. The point here is that these so-called vague attitudes, organic feelings and reactions play a larger part in the ordering of our mental life than we are aware. They are the background or foundation on which all the rest of the reactive edifice is built. They often decide what we shall remember and what we shall not remember; in fact, they are the main causes for suppressed complexes.

NOTE ON THE EDIPUS SAVING PHANTASY

ERNEST JONES, M.D., M.R.C.P. (LONDON)

Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

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MATTER established by experience in dream analysis is that all dreams of the same night are concerned with different aspects of the same theme. During the investigation of one dream it often happens that the memory of a second one, which has been forgotten through repression, is recovered as soon as the repressing resistance that caused it to be forgotten has been overcome through psycho-analysis of the first. The following dream analysis' is a striking example of this, and as it presents other features of general interest it would seem to be worth relating. It should be mentioned that the subject of the analysis, a university teacher of a branch of biology, is quite normal, and presents no neuropathic traits.

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The subject dreamed that he was in a dark cave full of water; it had two openings, side by side. Opposite to him was a puppy whining to come out. Coming behind the puppy were two cats. He set out to rescue the puppy, which during the procedure seemed to fuse into his personality. He was in great danger of drowning, but clung to some bushes which were at the side of the cave, and at last safely emerged. Standing outside was his father, who was quite unconcerned. He wondered that his father had not helped him, and supposed it was because he had not realized the extent of the danger. He impressed on his father the danger he had come through, and boastfully told him that he had saved himself without any help.

The dream belongs to a class that can almost be called typical; any one practised in dream analysis can at once

'It will be understood that in the following account most of the steps of the actual analysis are not mentioned, it not being the purpose of the present article either to expound the technique of dream analysis or to defend its reliableness.

interpret it without any trouble. Emergence, after great difficulty, from a dark chamber containing water, is a very usual way for unconscious thoughts about the birth act to be expressed; the dark cave in the dream, with its two openings, represents the mother's body, or womb, enclosing the uterine waters. In mythology the situation is more often reversed by the hero being placed in an enclosing chamber and put into, or on to, water,' such as with Moses in the bulrushes, Noah in the ark, and so on; as a rule the more important the hero, especially when he is made the ancestor of all mankind, the more extensive is the flood of water. The subject of the present dream and his wife ardently desire a child, but their parental longings have to be content with a puppy dog, to which they are very much attached. On the "dream-day," i.e., the day immediately preceding the dream, this dog got accidentally shut up in a distant room, from which the subject, notified by the whining, released him, an incident which doubtless served as one of the instigators of the dream.

Behind this simple wish, however, which was, of course, in no way repressed — though it was invested with a painful feeling-tone because it could not be fulfilled lay deeper and older thoughts. In the dream the subject identified himself with the dog; it was thus a question of his own birth. This explains the subsequent appearance of the two cats, an uncomplimentary reference to his younger sisters, who have a marked propensity to quarrelling. Dreams and phantasies concerning one's own birth are very common, especially in childhood, and are generally connected with the desire to have children of one's own. The phantasies in question are of considerable importance in psychopathology, since they constitute the basis of such phobias as those of being buried alive, of being shut in an enclosed space (claustrophobia), and many others. The whole range of morbid anxiety phenomena, indeed, stand in an intimate relation to the actual birth event, which is the first anxiety

'See Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. 1909. S. 69-72. This symbolism had an older source, less ungallant, in the fact that, like so many other children, the subject used to regard all dogs as male and all cats as

female.

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