I need not dilate upon the enormous importance of this discovery: it is obvious that when you have found the source of a malady you are more than half way to finding its cure. Nor is it necessarysince I do not wish, in this article, to devote too much space to the pathological aspects of the subject-that I should give copious illustrations of this discovery. I will only quote the classic case of the old woman in an asylum who for year after year spent the whole of her waking time in the mechanical performance of the actions of a shoemaker at his work. Investigation proved, first, that her insanity dated from the time when, as a girl, she had been jilted; secondly, that the faithless lover was a shoemaker. What had happened was that the circumstances connected with the breakingoff of the woman's engagement, forming a complex conflicting with the rest of the contents of her mind, has been repressed into the Unconscious. This repression had not, however, destroyed the complex, which had, on the contrary, displayed such subterranean activity as to make the woman insane and revealed itself in a disguise easily pierced when-but only when-the details of her history were known.

In the light of these facts, we are now in a position to appreciate the real bearing of psychoanalysis on the problem of sin. It warns us, in a word, of the incalculable dangers of repression. Now, it is clear that a sin deliberately faced and acknowledged before man and God in the confessional has, to say the least, far less chance of being repressed and forming a dangerously active complex in the Unconscious, than one slurred over and dismissed only half-repented. Let me give what I believe to be a very important illustration. Every priest, on the one hand, knows very well that there are certain solitary sins of the body to which young people, especially boys, are extraordinarily prone. On the other hand, few things are more striking, in the pathological records of psychoanalysis, than the frequency with which neuroses of various kinds are ultimately traceable to the beginnings of indulgence in these habits. I shall not, I hope, be accused of laxity if I suggest that (in England at any rate) we have given to these sins a somewhat disproportionate place in the scale, exalting them into a kind of special bogey in a class by themselves. The result has been that in children as a class they are subject, inevitably, to something like "mass repression." If we bear in mind the experience, just mentioned, of the

priest on the one hand and the psychoanalyst on the other, we are surely justified in pointing out the immense benefit which a far more general use than at present prevails among young people of the practice of auricular confession would bring to the mental and spiritual health of the whole community.

It is also worth while, perhaps, to draw attention to the obvious fact that a sense of guilt in itself inevitably produces a condition of mental conflict, and disturbs our psychic peace to a degree proportionate to our sense of the sinfulness of sin. The peace which comes from the certainty that we are forgiven, and the guilt of the past removed, effectually destroys the potentialities for harm inherent in a sense of guilt repressed into the Unconscious-ignored and forgotten-because of its unpleasantness. Statistics on such a point are from its very nature probably unobtainable, but it would not surprise me to learn that certain cases of "religious mania”— the delusion of having committed the "unforgivable sin,” for example-are found to be persons whose past spiritual life, whatever its other qualities, has not been characterized by a real acknowledgment of personal sin.

We must next observe that the discoveries of psychoanalysis, in regard to this question of repression among others, have an important bearing upon the normal as well as the abnormal activities of the mind. It is well-known that we owe much of our knowledge of the ordinary functions of the body to the study of physical disease: and the case is similar with regard to the psychic part of man's nature. The Unconscious is the receptacle of many ideas and complexes which have been repressed for slighter reasons than those involved in cases which subsequently became pathological. There is, in fact, in the minds of all of us, a strong tendency to rid ourselves of all and sundry ideas, problems, associations, memories, anxieties, etc., which by their presence in consciousness help to produce just that condition of conflict which by our very nature we are impelled to try and avoid. Repression is not the only means we adopt to attain this end; but it is the one most frequently used, the consequence being that the Unconscious of every individual is full of what may be called minor repressions. These, also, like the more serious ones referred to, seek to "return to consciousness." This they can only do like the others, in disguise. In pathological cases, as we have seen, a repressed complex expresses itself as a

symptom. Modern psychological research suggests that a large number of the trivial and otherwise inexplicable happenings of daily life-slips of the tongue or pen, forgetting of past names or incidents, failures to remember appointments, and similar unimportant mistakes of various kinds-are in reality the indirect manifestation of minor repressed complexes. This is a very fascinating subject, with which, unfortunately, I have no space to deal adequately here. I must refer readers to the classic treatment of it in Prof. Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life. A good deal of Freud's work impresses the critic as more ingenious than convincing, but no unbiased reader of that extraordinary book can deny that he makes out a strong case for what at first sight seem the most preposterous theories as, for example, that we never forget anything but what, unconsciously, we wish to forget; or that when on the spur of the moment we "think of a number" there is a quite definite reason, ascertainable by certain methods, for the particular number which arises to consciousness; or that every trivial mistake in speaking and writing is similarly "determined." Only on a strictly deterministic basis can such theories be accepted in toto, but with a little knowledge of psychology the average man can find illustrations in his own case of the truth of some of themor, perhaps, of the element of truth in all of them. Thus, until recently I found myself over and over again, when emptying the pockets of a suit of clothes which I was changing for another, forgetting to take out my cigarette-case with the other articles. Obviously, this might be explained as the expression of my conviction -a conviction repressed because of its unpleasantness!—that I smoke too many cigarettes. Or, again: my wife tells me that when returning the calls of strangers who have called on her a duty she rather dislikes-in nine cases out of ten, when the servant opens the door to her, she has forgotten the name of the person whom she has called to see!

But in normal persons it is in dreams that the Unconscious really comes into its own. The interpretation of dreams has been one of the favourite methods employed by wizards and dabblers in the occult for thousands of years: and it is interesting to reflect that the content of the magic and superstition of other ages has become the content of science in our own. The scientific study of dreams is still very young, but its foundations have been laid by

Prof. Freud, whose work in this department represents, perhaps, his most valuable contribution to psychology. The Freudian theory of dreams is by no means easy to grasp completely: but its main principles may be shortly summarized. First, the great majority or dreams perhaps all the dreams of adults are the symbolic expression of repressed wishes. Secondly, the real meaning of a dream is never to be found in the dream as recollected and related on waking. Behind this "manifest content," which consists of symbols and disguises imposed on the repressed wish by the censor, is the "latent content" of the dream, and this "latent content" must be discovered if we would know the dream's real significance. Thirdly, this "latent content" can be discovered-by the technique for which the word psychoanalysis ought in strictness to be reserved. In this process, the dreamer allows his mind to dwell in turn on each incident and object in the dream as he recollects it (the "manifest content"), rejecting nothing that "comes into his head" during the process: then, sooner or later, the underlying complexes and wishes symbolized by those objects and incidents are discovered-the "latent content" and real meaning of the dream revealed. I say, "sooner or later": the "latent content" of the dreams of healthy, normal people can very often be discovered without much difficulty-and very fascinating work it is to "analyze❞ one's own dreams (I do it frequently while shaving!); but the dreams of neurotics are a different matter.

There are two facts which emerge from the modern investiga

"The word "wish" in this connection is used by Freud in a special sense. It is a more general word than "desire," because known impossibility of attainment will inhibit desire, while the wish may still remain. By "wish" Freud means this general appetitive tendency, but he means more than this. The general appetitive tendency we call "wish" always implies for us a certain fairly high degree of mental synthesis, since it implies the existence of personal consciousness. It is "we" who wish, not the tendency itself. In the case of successful repression of an appetitive tendency we should not say that we still wish the satisfaction of the tendency. On the other hand, Freud would include under the term the tendency itself seeking its satisfaction in such a case. Hence in the Freudian theory "wish" is to be understood of individual tendencies and complexes, as well as of the self as a whole. (W. Drever, op. cit. p. 140.)

tion of dreams to which I would call particular attention. I shall have more to say about them both in a moment: at this point I only want the reader to observe the facts. The first is that the "latent content" of an enormous number of dreams is sexual in charactergrossly sexual, by the standards of our waking conscious judgment. And the second fact is that there are a large number of what may be called "typical" dreams-dreams which occur in the sleep of most of us at some time or other; and that psychoanalysis suggests that these typical dreams always conceal, no matter who dreams them, the same "latent content."

I heard the other day of a lady doctor, an able woman, whose study of psychoanalysis had completely undermined her faith as a Christian. After a recent course of lectures on psychoanalysis in London, one of the audience, a girl of about twenty-five, told a friend of mine what a relief it was to her to feel that she need not go on uselessly reproaching herself for a certain bad habit: the lecturer had made it perfectly clear that the habit in question emanated from her Unconscious, that it was probably due to the instinctive repression of some unpleasant experience in childhood, and that she herself as a conscious being was in no way responsible for it. The reader who has followed the argument of the present article up to this point will be able, perhaps, to understand such cases as these, which are by no means rare. It is indeed obvious that a thoroughgoing application of Freudian principles, such as Freud himself maintains in the book already referred to, must result in a wholly materialistic philosophy, and the elimination of all belief in "free will" or in any supernatural Power capable of aiding and reinforcing human thought and conduct. Freud himself does not shrink from this conclusion: indeed, he insists on it. The following extract from the final chapter-the climax to which the rest of the book leads of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life will make this clear:

"As is known, many persons argue against the assumption of an absolute psychic determination by referring to an intense feeling of conviction that there is a free will. This feeling of conviction exists, but is not incompatible with the belief in determinism."

It is clearly impossible, in an article of this length, to deal ex