CHAPTER VII. _in Which We Go to the Root of the Matter_

In which we go to the root of the matter

THE REAL TROUBLE

PIONEERS

=Following the Gleam.= Kipling's Elephant-child with the "'satiable curiosity" finally asked a question which seemed simple enough but which sent him on a long journey into unknown parts. In the same way man's modest and simple question, "What makes people nervous?" has sent him far-adventuring to find the answer. For centuries he has followed false trails, ending in blind alleys, and only lately does he seem to have found the road that shall lead him to his journey's end.

We may be thankful that we are following a band of pioneers whose fearless courage and passion for truth would not let them turn back even when the trail led through fields hitherto forbidden. The leader of this band of pioneers was a young doctor named Freud.

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

=Early Beginnings.= In 1882, when Freud was the assistant to Dr. Breuer of Vienna, there was brought to them for treatment a young woman afflicted with various hysterical pains and paralyses. This young woman's case marked an epoch in medical history; for out of the effort to cure her came some surprising discoveries of great significance to the open-minded young student.

It was found that each of this girl's symptoms was related to some forgotten experience, and that in every case the forgetting seemed to be the result of the painfulness of the experience. In other words, the symptoms were not visitations from without, but expressions from within; they were a part of the mental life of the patient; they had a history and a meaning, and the meaning seemed in some way to be connected with the patient's previous attitude of mind which made the experience too painful to be tolerated in consciousness. These previous ideas were largely subconscious and had been acquired during early childhood. When by means of hypnosis a great mass of forgotten material was brought to the surface and later made plain to her consciousness, the symptoms disappeared as if by magic.

=A Startling Discovery.= For a time Breuer and Freud worked together, finding that their investigations with other patients served to corroborate their former conclusions. When it became apparent that in every case the painful experience bore some relation to the love-life of the patient, both doctors were startled. Along with most of the rest of the world, they had been taught to look askance at the reproductive instinct and to shrink from realizing the vital place which sex holds in human life.

Breuer dropped the work, and after an interval Freud went on alone. He was resolved to know the truth, and to tell what he saw. When he reported to the world that out of all his hundreds of patients, he had been unable, after the most careful analysis, to find one whose illness did not grow from some lack of adjustment of the sex-life, he was met by a storm of protest from all quarters. No amount of evidence seemed to make any difference. People were determined that no such libel should be heaped on human nature. Sex-urge was not respectable and nervous people were to be respected.

Despite public disapproval, the scorn of other scientists, and the resistance of his own inner prejudices, Freud kept on. He was forced to acknowledge the validity of the facts which invariably presented themselves to view. Like Luther under equal duress, he cried: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

=Freudian Principles.= Gradually, as he worked, he gathered together a number of outstanding facts about man's mental life and about the psycho-neuroses. These facts he formulated into certain principles, which may be summed up in the following way.

1 There is no chance in mental life; every mental phenomenon--hence every nervous phenomenon--has a cause and meaning.

2 Infantile mental life is of tremendous importance in the direction of adult processes.

3 Much of what is called forgetting is rather a repression into the subconscious, of impulses which were painful to the personality as a whole.

4 Mental processes are dynamic, insisting on discharge, either in reality or in phantasy.

5 An emotion may become detached from the idea to which it belongs and be displaced on other ideas.

6 Sex-interests dominate much of the mental life where their influence is unrecognized. The disturbance in a psycho-neurosis is always in this domain of sex-life. "In a normal sexual life, no neurosis." If a shock is the precipitating cause of the trouble, it is only because the ground was already prepared by the sex-disturbance.

Freud was perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the word "sex," which has so many evil connotations; but as he found no other word to cover the field, he chose the old one and stretched its meaning to include all the psychic and physical phenomena which spring directly and indirectly from the great processes of reproduction and parental care, and which ultimately include all and more than our word "love."

=Later Developments.= Little by little, the scientific world came to see that this wild theorizer had facts on his side; that not only had he formulated a theory, but he had discovered a cure, and that he was able to free people from obsessions, fears, and physical symptoms before which other methods were powerless. One by one the open-minded men of science were converted by the overpowering logic of the evidence, until to-day we find not only a "Freudian school," counting among its members many of the eminent scientists of the day, but we find in medical schools and universities courses based on Freudian principles, with text-books by acknowledged authorities in medicine and psychology. We find magazines devoted entirely to psycho-analytic subjects, besides articles in medical journals and even numerous articles in popular magazines. Not only is the treatment of nervous disorders revolutionized by these principles but floods of light are thrown on such widely different fields of study as ancient myths and folk lore, the theory of wit, methods of child training, and the little slips of the tongue and everyday "breaks" that have until recently been considered the meaningless results of chance.

=A Searching Question.= We find, then, that when we ask, "What makes people nervous?" we are really asking: "What is man like, inside and out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every hour of every day?" We are asking for the source of human motives, the science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a disturbance of the sex-life. There has already been a change in the public attitude toward things sexual.

Training-courses for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the fallacy of our old hypersensitive attitude. Since the war, some of us know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called shell-shock by the first observers. We know, too, more about the constitution of man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.

=What about Sublimation?= On the other hand, it has been stated in