okkulter Phänomene.[1] I am obliged to refer the readers to this book, as it would lead me too far should I attempt to enter into this special domain. Flournoy[2] has at least indicated the complex-roots of the dreams of the familiar Helene Smith. For an understanding of the problems here touched upon I consider a knowledge of these phenomena indispensable.
The conscious psychic activity of the patient restricts itself to the creation of a systematic wish-fulfillment, as it were, as an equivalent for a life of labor and deprivation and for the depressing effects of an unhappy family milieu.
On the other hand the unconscious psychic activity is totally under the influence of the repressed contrasting complexes, on the one side under the complex of injury and derogation, on the other under the remaining fragments of normal censorship.[3] The entrance of fragments of these dissociated series into consciousness asserts itself principally in the shape of hallucinations in the manner described by Gross and from psychological roots as conjectured by Freud.
The associative phenomena correspond to the expositions of Pelletier, Stransky and Kraepelin. The associations, though following a vague theme, are without any directing presentation, and therefore show all manifestations of the "abaissement du niveau mental" of Janet, viz., liberations of automatisms (thought-deprivation and pathological fancies) and the diminution of attention. The result of the last is inability for clear presentations. The presentations being indistinct, no proper differentiation takes place and hence there result many errors—condensations, contaminations, metaphors, etc. The condensations result principally according to the laws of similarity of picture or sound, through which the connections of meaning are quite completely abolished. The metaphoric variations of the complexes result in a near analogy on the one side to the normal dream, on the other to the wish-dreams of hysterical somnambulists.
The analysis of this case of paranoid dementia therefore confirms in extenso the theoretical hypotheses set forth in the antecedent chapter.
