called psycho-analysis, which has been hailed by certain learned men as the copestone of scientific achievement. Had this new cult remained in a select professional circle, we should be glad to leave it there and pass it by in silence and horror. Unfortunately a vigorous propaganda has been entered upon, and the subject has been promulgated in popular journals, so that its phraseology has come into the market-place.

It is not merely that psycho-analysis is among the most difficult scientific problems of the day.' There are also 'many serious difficulties which interfere with a clear interpretation of the matter. I am not capable,' says C. G. Jung, 'of giving you a complete doctrine elaborated both from the theoretical and the empirical standpoint. Psychoanalysis has not yet reached such a point of development.'

If such were the views of a chief priest of the cult in 1915, the task before an outsider may be imagined. The intervening years have added very greatly to the literature on the subject, and the divergence of the different sects of psycho-analysts has become still more marked. But it is not the absence of an authoritative treatise, or the obscure verbiage which darkens most of the articles on the subject, which is the most formidable difficulty it is the impossibility of fully describing for lay readers the new science without an affront to decency.

It is not here necessary to trace the descent of psycho-analysis back beyond the time of Mesmer. This Viennese physician had translated ‘vital force' into the new scientific term of magnetism, and upon this basis had elaborated methods which caused scandals that brought about his expulsion from the Austrian Empire. In 1778 he came to Paris, where the circumstances of the time favored him. He made a sensation and he started a school. Some physi

cians joined his standard; but for the most part his followers were outside the profession. The record of the divisions in his camp and the embittered disputes between him and his disciples need only be mentioned here as a sort of anticipation of what has happened between Freud and his followers. Gradually the vogue of animal-magnetism or mesmerism passed, though later on individual attempts at resuscitation were made. The most important perhaps was that of Braid of Manchester, through whom the phenomena in question came to be called hypnotism. About 1880, public attention was again directed to the subject, mainly through the experiments of J. M. Charcot at the Salpétrière in Paris. Professional opinion was still skeptical, and of the crowds who followed the course of experiments a large proportion were artists, journalists, and others on the outlook for a new sensation or exciting 'copy.' It is right to add that Charcot attempted to approach the matter in a scientific spirit and so avoided the ridiculous extravagances of Dr. Luys, afterwards trenchantly exposed by E. Hart. One thing he clearly proved the close similarity, if not identity, between the phenomena of hypnotism and those of hysteria.

Among those who had attended the Salpêtrière cliniques was Dr. Breuer, who, on his return to Vienna, experimented on his own account. Through him, Sigismund Freud, in 1883, then a student, came to be interested in the subject. After graduation he and Breuer worked together for a little; but, possibly somewhat shocked at the trend of Freud's thoughts, Breuer withdrew from the partnership. Freud thereafter gradually developed his views until they were sufficiently matured to be given to the world. The occasion he chose for the declaration of his great epoch-making discovery was the most

suitable one that could have been found - a meeting of the Vienna Neurological Society, under the presidency of Krafft-Ebing, author of the notorious Psychopathia Sexualis. Freud has himself recorded his astonishment at the reception given to his paper. It was heard in stony silence. The distinguished audience had been stricken dumb. Vienna would not discuss his discovery, far less accept it; and even now the professional attitude there has scarcely changed. Freud had to wait years before his earliest works were published. Even then reviewers for the most part passed them by without a comment.

However, publication was achieved; and the written word stimulated certain minds to seek out the master and get the fullness of the new knowledge at the fountain head. Freud had no public hospital appointment, so that the little coterie that gathered around him from 1902 onwards had to be content with formal expositions in the privacy of his own home. As with Mesmer and Charcot, probably the majority of his adherents were outside the medical profession. As these students returned to their homes they set up fresh centres of the cult, and the existence of these seemed to justify a general congress. This event was probably hastened by the fact that Bleuler and Jung, of Zurich, men with hospital appointments, had begun to apply the doctrine publicly. Accordingly, in 1908, a private gathering of the friends of Freud took place at Salzburg. No doubt it was facility of access which determined the locality, but it was a significant choice, this selection of the resting-place of Paracelsus, since Freud was determined to resurrect the Archæus of that innovator, and extend its empire beyond the mere physiological acts of the body, so that it was to control absolutely every conscious thought. The following

year was marked by a public invitation to Freud and Jung to lecture at an anniversary celebration at Clark University. The occasion was the first sign of academic interest in the new theory, and Freud recorded his satisfaction that 'even in prudish America one could... discuss freely. . . all those things that are regarded as offensive in life.'

In 1910, it was felt that the time had come to organize the new cult, and to set up an authoritative body which would preserve the true tradition, and would give ex cathedra definitions as to what was real psycho-analysis and what was not. The indifference of Vienna prompted Freud to punish it by seeking headquarters at Zurich. For reasons which may be surmised later, Freud did not consider himself as a suitable president; so Jung was chosen and the International Psycho-analytical Association was launched, and an official journal inaugurated. The attempt to formalize the new teaching was, however, a conspicuous failure. There is a well-known epigram to the effect that every great man has his disciples, but it is always Judas that writes his biography. To avoid this contingency Freud has published (1917) an autobiography. In name it is a History of the Psycho-analytic Movement. In fact, it is a frank criticism of his followers, and incidentally it throws considerable light on his own psychology. This revelation of his personality is not a very pleasing one. Possibly Judas might have brought out a few lighter traits if only to give artistic variety to the portrait; as it is, one gathers the impression of a sour man, lacking in any real capacity for friendship, indisposed to expect either affection or gratitude from his disciples, selfcentred, inordinately proud of having 'disturbed the world's sleep,' prone to jealousy. He candidly confesses that my confidence in the honesty and dis

tinction of my opponents was always slight'; on the other hand, 'my faith in my own judgment was not small.' He claims to criticize calmly. 'I can revile and rave as well as any other, but I am not able to render into literary form the expressions of the underlying effects and therefore I prefer to abstain.'

One thing seems certain, the psychoanalysts were from the beginning an unhappy family. Breuer, Freud's earliest associate, sinned against the light, was dishonest. The private circle at Vienna was not more satisfactory: 'I failed to establish among them that friendly relation which should obtain among scientific men . . . nor could I crush out the quarrels about the prior ity of discoveries.' Many of them drifted permanently away. Adler, the president of the Vienna group, formed a new theory, and we hear of the 'mean outbursts of anger which distort his writings... the ungovernable mania for priority which pervades his work.' Jung also fell away, and he is described as 'incapable of tolerating the authority of another, still less fitted to be himself an authority. . . whose energy was devoted to an unscrupulous pursuit of his own interests.' There is no need to delve deeper into this chronique scandaleuse. The extracts given sufficiently indicate the character of the individuals who arrogate to themselves the power of reading the souls of other men, and who pose as having no other end in view than the advancement of science.

We must now turn our attention to the important contribution to knowledge which they profess to have discovered. It may be shortly summed up in five words: the omnipotence of the unconscious. Not merely does the unconscious direct the automatic processes of digestion, circulation, growth, etc., it also controls every conscious thought. The unconscious is teeming with feelings and thoughts ('phantasies' seems

to be the technical expression) and only some of these reach consciousness. Even these do not bubble up spontaneously into recognition. There is a something called a 'Censor,' which is neither god nor demon, neither beast nor human, a mere automaton which regulates and controls the crossing. Some thoughts may burst into consciousness in spite of the censor, but almost always it can transform them into symbols, so that consciousness does not recognize them for what they really are. On the other hand, the censor may lay hold of a conscious experience and drag it down into the unconscious (repression' this is called), out of which it never will emerge again unless the psychoanalyst reveals it! As might be expected, the unconscious phantasy is apt to overflow into the semi-consciousness of a dream. But the censor never sleeps; and though the dream is perhaps the nearest approach to the unconscious, the censor usually is able to disguise the unconscious thought so that it appears in the dream as a mere symbol.

It is quite clear that the meaning attached to the word 'unconscious' in this connection is very different from that held by ordinary mortals; but beyond the general description such as is given above, it evades exact determination. Dr. Constance Long, a British publicist in the cause of psycho-analysis, has indeed defined it as 'the psychological contents which form the background of consciousness'; but this is a mere juggling with words. We may well wonder how it is possible to know that phantasies exist in the unconscious if we are not conscious of them. Psycho-analysis, it is true, professes the ability to evoke these phantasies; but here again we may ask what certainty have we that they were in the unconscious if we are unable to recognize them, or how can we be sure that they have not been simply aroused in con

sciousness by the persistent suggestion of the method employed? To these very pertinent queries no satisfactory answer has yet been vouchsafed.

Over the 'Censor' we need waste no words; for the idea so utterly transcends all common sense that any attempt to criticize it would be an insult to the intelligence. We may, however, hazard the question, Why should there be any need for a censor to prevent the unconscious overflowing into the conscious? To this, indeed, a reply is given and the answer brings us to the third article of the psycho-analytical creed. It is because of the frightful nature of the contents of the unconscious; something so dreadful that the mind would be unhinged by the sight, unless, indeed, the contemplation were made under the direction and enlightened by the explanation of a trained psycho-analyst. The loathsome dragon that wallows in the unconscious is the 'Libido.' Every child that is born into this world brings with it, not merely a body, limbs, organs and potentialities of various kinds, but in particular and especially, a libido crammed with portentous energy. In infancy this imperious passion has to work with rudimentary organs, but somehow it manages. Over the body, Freud tells us, there are 'erogenous zones' through which the libido can find sexual gratification. With the advent of consciousness the libido is able to project itself into the world around. At puberty, it is true, it usually takes the line suggested by the sex organs; but no perversity, not even the fixation on one's own body (Narcissism), can be regarded as other than quite natural. That these sex perversions are not more common is due to the censor. By this mechanism the perversion is repressed, thrust down into the unconscious. But the utmost strength of the censor cannot keep it there. The libido is constantly breaking through into

consciousness, and all the censor can do is to mask its native brutality. In youth it often dissipates some of its energy in games. Later on it may be induced to set the poet's eye with fine phrensy rolling, to breathe life into cold marble, or to render beauty a joy for ever. In a word, civilization is the outcome of the 'sublimation' of the libido. But not even the alchemy of Lullius can transform it wholly; some of it must find a sexual outlet, otherwise it will be revenged on the body through paralysis, loss of memory or a neurosis of some kind. Thus absolute continence is unnatural and incompatible with bodily or mental health.

We could wish that with the explanation of this lascivious farrago of nonsense the theory of psycho-analysis

we had reached an end of the subject. But the method still remains. The chief claim of the psycho-analyst is that he is an empiricist, that he simply takes facts as he finds them. The theory of the unconscious, the libido and the censor, is merely advanced as the most reasonable explanation of the 'facts' revealed by his method. To understand the genesis of the psycho-analytical method we must return for a moment to Charcot, who found that his hysterical patients usually ascribed the development of their symptoms to some emotional or nervous shock (trauma). In certain instances, however, the trauma which was alleged appeared too slight to have entailed such serious consequences. In such cases Charcot tried to find out under hypnotism whether there had not been a shock in earlier life which might have rendered the nervous system so unstable that it was easily unbalanced by a slight later trauma. Revelations were readily evoked even from childhood, but many of them were so patently false - lurid descriptions of impossibly early seduction that he regarded his experi

ments as worthless. Freud was not so easily discouraged. He reasoned thus: 'If hysterics refer their symptoms to imaginary (sexual) traumas, then this fact signifies that they create such scenes in their phantasies; and hence psychic reality deserves to be given a place next to actual reality.' Very soon he reached the conviction that 'these phantasies serve to disguise the autoerotic activities of the early years of childhood, to idealize them and place them on a higher level, and now the whole sexual life of the child makes its appearance behind these phantasies.'

It is upon this basis of lies, then, that Freud has erected his monstrous system. Of course, he explains them away as 'symbols' or 'psychic realities.' In his grossly materialistic creed there can be no such thing as a lie, since he believes that a brain-cell secretes a thought just as a liver-cell secretes bile, and that the individual has no more responsibility in the one case than in the other. This is the nemesis of Free Thought, that it ultimately leads its votaries to deny that thought can ever by any possibility be free.

This, then, is the method proposed by psycho-analysis for the cure of disease. Cure, indeed, may be effected in certain cases; but it can be only by fixing a per

manent moral obliquity in the mind. Similar cures have been wrought by the more reputable methods of charlatans in every age; and many cures appear spontaneously without any method at all, or through the normal means of sane medicine. The moral peril cannot be exaggerated, and the adepts plainly state that a necessary stage in the cure is the transference of the libido to the person of the analyst. The case of children certainly demands legal intervention.

Its

But psycho-analysis is far from limiting its activities to the domain of medicine; it is out to conquer the world. It is striving to set the seal of its interpretation upon religion and morals, history, mythology and folk-lore. method is being advocated by teachers for use in schools, and is already applied to the elucidation of poetry and the fine arts. To facilitate its more ready and general acceptance, the propagandists are prone to tone down the tenets or to clothe them with vague pseudo-scientific verbiage. Freud himself has been frank enough to denounce these attempts to minimize sexuality. That psycho-analysis is a real danger to society is my serious conviction; and this alone has sustained me in the invidious and painful task of showing it for what I believe it really is.

BOUTIN was standing on the pavement on the boulevard of Saint-Germain when I turned into it from the rue de l'Odéon, just exactly as if he had been waiting there for me for twenty years. It seemed quite natural for us

to meet there, and in spite of the ravages which twenty years make in men's faces, we recognized one another without any hesitancy.

'You're going home,' I said to him, and put my arm through his. 'I will go