discovery of a comprehensive scheme, firmly established, and capable of being applied in a uniform manner to the most varied problems; secondly, in that one lays an excessive value upon certain general ideas, and, consequently, upon the word-symbols designating these ideas, wherefore an analysis of word-meanings comes, in extreme cases, to be an empty subtlety and splitting of hairs, instead of an investigation of the real facts from which the ideas are abstracted."
19 The concluding passage in "Traumdeutung" was of prophetic significance, and has been brilliantly established since then through investigations of the psychoses. "In the psychoses these modes of operation of the psychic mechanism, normally suppressed in the waking state, again become operative, and then disclose their inability to satisfy our needs in the outer world." The importance of this position is emphasized by the views of Pierre Janet, developed independently of Freud, and which deserve to be mentioned here, because they add confirmation from an entirely different side, namely, the biological. Janet makes the distinction in this function of a firmly organized "inferior" and "superior" part, conceived of as in a state of continuous transformation.
"It is really on this superior part of the functions, on their adaptation to present circumstances, that the neuroses depend. The neuroses are the disturbances or the checks in the evolution of the functions—the illnesses depending upon the morbid functioning of the organism. These are characterized by an alteration in the superior part of the functions, in their evolution and in their adaptation to the present moment—to the present state of the exterior world and of the individual, and also by the absence or deterioration of the old parts of these same functions.
"In the place of these superior operations there are developed physical, mental, and, above all, emotional disturbances. This is only the tendency to replace the superior operations by an exaggeration of certain inferior operations, and especially by gross visceral disturbances" ("Les Névroses," p. 383).
The old parts are, indeed, the inferior parts of the functions, and these replace, in a purposeless fashion, the abortive attempts at adaptation. Briefly speaking, the archaic replaces the recent function which has failed. Similar views concerning the nature of neurotic symptoms are expressed by Claparède as well ("Quelques mots sur la définition de l'Hystérie," Arch. de Psychol., I, VII, p. 169).
He understands the hysterogenic mechanism as a "Tendance à la réversion"—as a sort of atavistic manner of reaction.
20 I am indebted to Dr. Abraham for the following interesting communication: "A little girl of three and a half years had been presented with a little brother, who became the object of the well-known childish jealousy. Once she said to her mother, 'You are two mammas; you are my mamma, and your breast is little brother's mamma.' She had just been looking on with great interest at the process of nursing." It is very characteristic of the archaic thinking of the child for the breast to be designated as "mamma."
21 Compare especially Freud's thorough investigation of the child in his "Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben," 1912 Jahrbuch, Pt. I. Also my study, "Konflikte der kindlichen Seele," 1912 Jahrbuch, Pt. II, p. 33.
22 "Human, All Too Human," Vol. II, p. 27 and on.
23 "Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre," Pt. II, p. 205.
