It may be that Dauvit has a strong mother complex. He often talks of his mother, and more than once I have heard him say that she was the best woman he had ever known. It may be that he was unconsciously looking for the mother in Maggie and the other girls, and failed to find her. Maggie's remark about the sunset and the dress was not enough to stifle his love declaration. The soul he longed to find in Maggie may have been the soul of the mother he knew as an infant . . . the soul of his ideal woman.
The more I see of men the less importance I pay to their conscious reasons for attitudes. "I hate Brown; he never washes"; "I dislike Mrs. Smith; she uses bad language." "Murphy is a rotter; he has no manners." Statements like these are rationalisations; the real reason for the dislike lies deeper in every case.
The law courts have re-introduced flogging for criminals. To the best of my knowledge no member of the law profession has protested. If there is a reform movement within the law I never heard of it.
The curse of law is that it works according to precedent, and it is therefore conservative. Our judges hand out sentences in blissful ignorance of later psychology. Last week a boy of eleven was birched for holding up another boy of nine on the highway and demanding tuppence or his life. The attitude of the bench is that fear of another flogging will prevent that boy from turning highwayman again. I admit that fear will cure him of that special vice, but what the bench does not know is that the boy's anti-social energy will take another form. Every act of man is prompted by a wish, and very often this wish is unconscious. And all the birching in the world will not destroy a wish; the most it can do is to change its form.
Without an analysis of the boy no one can tell what unconscious wish impelled him to turn highwayman, but speaking generally a boy expresses his self-assertion in terms of anti-social behaviour only when his education has been bad. I believe that all juvenile delinquency is due to bad education. Our schools enforce passivity on the child; his creative energy is bottled up. No boy who has tools and a bench to work with will express himself by smashing windows. Delinquency is merely displaced social conduct; the motive of the little boy who turned highwayman was essentially the motive of the boy who builds a boat.
Ah! but we have Industrial Schools for bad boys!
I spent an evening with an Industrial School boy of thirteen not long ago. It was an unlovely tale he told me of his life in school. I got the impression of a building half-prison, half-barracks. No one was allowed to go out unless to football matches when the school team was playing. Punishment was stern and frequent.
"One old guy, 'e sends you to the boss for punishment and says you gave 'im an insubordinate look, and you ain't allowed to deny wot 'e says."
"Look here, Jim," I said, "suppose I took you to a free school to-morrow, a school where you could do what you liked, what's the first thing you would do?"
A wild look came into his eyes.
"I'd lay out the blarsted staff," he said tensely.
"But," I laughed, "what would be the point of laying me out if I gave you freedom? What have you got againstme?"
"Oh," he said, "I thought you meant if I got freedom in the IndustrialSchool!"
That school is condemned; if a school produces one boy who hates and fears its teachers, it is a bad school.
I think of the other way, the Homer Lane way.
Homer Lane was superintendent of the little Commonwealth in Dorset. He attended the juvenile courts and begged the magistrates to hand over to him the worst cases they had. He took the children down to Dorset and gave them freedom. He refused to lay down any laws, and naturally the beginning of the Commonwealth was chaos. Lane joined in the anti-social behaviour; he became one of the gang. When the citizens thought that their best way of expressing themselves was to smash windows, Lane helped them to smash them. His marvellous psychological insight will best be illustrated by the story of Jabez.
Jabez was a thoroughly bad character; he had been thief and highwayman, a bully who could fight with science. He came to the Commonwealth and was astonished. He found boys and girls working hard all day, and making their own laws at their citizen meetings at night. Jabez could not understand it, and not understanding he felt hostile.
The citizens lived in cottages, and one night Lane went over to the cottage in which Jabez lived. They were having tea, and Lane sat down beside Jabez.
"What are you always grousing about, Jabez?" he asked. "Don't you like the Commonwealth?"
"No," said Jabez viciously.
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's too respectable for me," said Jabez, and his eyes wandered to the table. "Them fancy cups and saucers! Wot's the good o' things like that to me? I'd like to smash the whole lot o' them."
Lane rose from the table, walked to the fireplace, took up the poker and handed it to Jabez.
"Smash them," he said.
Jabez had all eyes turned towards him. He seized the poker and smashed his cup and saucer.
"Excellent!" cried Lane, "Jabez is making the Commonwealth a better place," and he pushed forward another cup and saucer. These were at once smashed, and Lane proceeded to shove forward the other dishes. But by this time Jabez was beginning to feel queer. Breaking dishes was good fun when you were breaking laws, but here there was no law to break, and Jabez felt that he was doing a foolish thing. He wanted to stop, but he could not see how he was to stop with dignity. Fortunately one of the other inmates of the cottage came to his aid.
"It's all very well for you, Mr. Lane," she said, "but this isn't your cottage, and you are making Jabez break our dishes."
Jabez hailed the idea with delight; he now had an excellent excuse for stopping.
"Right you are!" cried Lane cheerfully, "Jabez will break something else," and he took out his gold watch and placed it on the table.
"Smash that, Jabez."
"No," said Jabez, "I won't smash your watch."
Now Jabez had a saying that if a man were dared to do a thing and he didn't do it he was a coward.
"I dare you to smash the watch."
Jabez seized the poker again.
"What! You dare me!"
"Yes, I dare you."
He looked at the watch for a few seconds; then he threw down the poker and rushed from the room.
Poor Jabez was killed in France. I saw the letters that he wrote toLane from the front, and they were the letters of a decent, good boy.
The early history of Jabez was one of constant suppression. Authority was always stepping in and saying: "Don't do that!" As a result Jabez at the age of seventeen was psychically an infant. The infantile desire to break things was suppressed, but it lived on in the unconscious, and years later Jabez found himself behaving like a child of three. The cure was to encourage him to act in his infantile way; by smashing a few cups Jabez got rid of his long pent up infantile wish to destroy. Discipline would have kept the childish wish underground; freedom led to the expression of the wish.
Homer Lane is the apostle of Release. He holds that Authority is fatal for the child; suppression is bad; the only way is to allow the child freedom to express itself in the way it wants to. And because I count among my friends boys and girls who once went to the Little Commonwealth as criminals, I believe that Lane is right. I also believe that the schools will come to see that he was right . . . somewhere about the year 2500.
* * * * *
Conversation to-night in Dauvit's shop turned on Spiritualism. Dauvit is a firm believer, and he often goes to Dundee and Aberdeen to attend séances.
"It's just a lot o' blethers," said Jake Tosh contemptuously. "When ye're deid ye're deid, and that's a' aboot it. Na, na, Dauvit, them that sees ghosts is either drunk or daft."
"That's just yer ignorance, Jake," said Dauvit. "Do ye ken whaurBrazil is?"
"Wha is he?" asked Jake puzzled.
"It's no a he; it's a place. I asked ye that question just to prove that a man that doesna ken his ain world canna speak wi' ony authority o' the next world. Yer mind's ower narrow, Jake; ye've no vision."
"Na, na, Dauvit," laughed Jake, "it winna do. Spooks and things is just a curran nonsense, and no sane man wud believe in them. What do you say, dominie?"
"I am willing to believe that the dead do communicate," I said.
Jake was thoroughly amused.
"It's a queer thing," he said musingly, "that the more eddication a man has the more he believes in rubbish. Here's Dauvit here, a man that reads Shakespeare and Burns and Carlyle, and the dominie there that went through a college, and the both o' you believe things that I stoppit believin' when I was sax year auld. Then there's Sir Oliver Lodge, and Conan Doyle. Oh, aye, the Bible was quite richt when it said: Much learning hath made them mad."
"What do you think happens to the dead, Jake?" I asked.
"As the tree falleth so it lies," quoted Jake. "There's only the twa places after death; if ye're good ye go to Heaven; if ye're bad ye go to Hell. And that's why I say that thae messages from the deid are rubbish, cos if a man's in Heaven he's no going to leave a place like that to come doon to speak to a daft auld cobbler like Dauvit in a wee room doon in Dundee. And if a man's in Hell the Devil will tak good care that he doesna get oot."
I wondered to find that Dauvit had no answer to this. I guessed that Dauvit's silence was due to his early training. He was brought up in the old stern Scots way, and although he has now rejected the old beliefs intellectually, his unconscious still clings to them emotionally. I fancy that if I were very very ill I might go back to my childish fear of Hell-fire, for, in illness old emotions return, and intellect flees. Dauvit would no doubt react in the same way.
* * * * *
Many people seem to have a decided fear of psycho-analysis. A mother writes me from London saying that she would like to send her girl to my new school, only she is afraid that I shall attempt to analyse the children.
The fear of psycho-analysis comes from the general belief that Freud traces every neurosis to early sex experiences. Whether Freud is right or not does not concern the teacher; he deals with normal children, and to try to analyse a normal child appears to me to be unnecessary. The teacher's job is to see that the children are free from fear and free to create; if he does his task well he is preventing neurosis.
A neurosis is the outcome of repression; the neurotic is a person whose libido or life force is bottled up; he can be cured only by letting his pent up emotions free. The aim of education is to allow emotional release, so that there will be no bottling up, and no future neurosis; and this release comes through interest. The boy who hates algebra and has to work examples is getting no release whatever, for his mind is divided; his attention goes to his quadratic equations, but his interest is elsewhere.
Hence I do not think analysis is necessary when children are being freely educated. In an exceptional case a little analysis will do good. If I see a child unhappy, moody, anti-social, a thief, a bully, I consider it my job to make an attempt to find out what is at the back of his mind. With a young boy it is not advisable to tell him the whole truth about himself; the teacher discovers the truth by watching the child at play, by studying his wishes as expressed in his writing, by noting his attitude to his playmates. When he has made his diagnosis the teacher can then make the necessary changes in the boy's environment.
I recall the case of Tommy, aged ten. His class was constructing a Play Town after the fashion set by Caldwell Cook in his delightful bookThe Play Way. Tommy worked with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm, for he pinched the girls' sand for his railway track. The girls objected, and a regular wordy battle took place. Tommy felt that he was beaten, and he ceased work.
I was not very much surprised when the girls came and told me that Tommy was shying bricks at the railway line he had been so keen on constructing. Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten yards of Play Town. Tommy grinned maliciously. That night the town appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake.
I went to Tommy.
"Why don't you like the Play Town?" I asked.
"Because the girls are too bossy," he said. "It was my town; I began it, and I don't see why they should be in it at all."
"And you want a Play Town all to yourself?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Right ho," I said easily. "Why not start to build one?"
His eyes lit up, and away he ran to lay his foundations. He worked eagerly all day, but at night he seemed dissatisfied.
"I haven't got any railway or houses; Christo won't lend me a bit of his railway, and Gerda has all the houses."
I left him to work out his problem. In the morning he solved it; Christo wouldn't lend him any rails, but if Tommy liked he, Christo, would run his line up to Tommy's town from the class town. Tommy readily agreed. In a week's time Tommy's town was a suburb of the bigger town, and Tommy was appointed President of the whole state. He spent many an hour building his bridges and digging his tunnels. At first he would allow no one to enter his suburb, but in a few days he ceased to claim it as his own, and he worked as a member of the gang.
I think that most anti-social children are like Tommy: when their self-assertion is threatened they react with hostility. The cure for them is to direct their self-assertion to things instead of people. No boy will try to break up a ball game if he has a rabbit hutch to construct.
The danger is that the teacher will often step in when the boy ought to be left to his companions. The gang is the best disciplinarian.
One day a class and I were writing five-minute essays. I would call out a word or a phrase, and we would all start to write. The children loved the method; it allowed so much play for originality. For example, when I gave the word "broken" one girl wrote of her broken doll, another of a broken tramp, another of a broken heart; a boy wrote a witty essay on being stoney broke, another wrote of a broken window.
On this day Wolodia, a boy of eleven, did not want to write essays. I called out a word, and we started to write. Wolodia began to talk loudly.
"Stop it, man," I said impatiently, "you're spoiling our essay."
He grinned and went on talking.
"Oh, shut up!" cried Joy.
"Shan't!" he snapped, and he went on talking.
Diana rose with a determined air.
"We'll chuck him out," she said grimly, and the class seized him and heaved him out. Then they barricaded the door with desks. Wolodia made a big row by hammering on the door, and as a result we could not proceed with our writing.
"Let him in," I suggested.
The class protested.
"He'll sit like a lamb for the rest of the period," I said.
They took away the desk and Wolodia came in. He went to his seat . . . and not a sound came from him during the rest of the period. This incident impressed me greatly; my complaint, Joy's complaint did not affect him, but when the gang was against him he was defeated. It was a beautiful instance of the force of public opinion.
Cases of stealing should be treated by analysis. Moral lectures are useless; the cause lies in the unconscious, and the moral lecture does not touch the unconscious. Nor does punishment affect the root cause of the delinquency. The teacher must dig down into the child's unconscious in order to find the cause.
An illuminating book for all teachers and parents to read is Healy'sMental Disorders and Misconduct. He shows that stealing is very often a symptomatic act. The mechanism of many cases is something like this: a child has been punished for sexual activities; later he breaks into a store and steals an article. Sex activities and thieving have this in common, that they are both forbidden, but the boy has found that much more ado is made about sex activities than about stealing. So when he is actuated by a sexual urge he dare not indulge it; but his sexual wish finds a substitute; it goes out to the associated forbidden thing . . . the article on the store counter.
We see the same sort of mechanism in the neurotic patient; she fears her own sex impulses, and because she dare not admit her sex wishes into consciousness she projects her fear on to dogs or mice or rats. All phobias—fear of closed places, fear of open places, fear of heights—are displaced fears; the sufferer is really afraid of his own unconscious wishes.
I do not say that all juvenile stealing is due to repressed sex. Stealing may mean to a boy a method of self-assertion; it may mean that thus he rebels against authority of father and teacher; it may be the result of any one of a dozen causes. But whatever the cause stealing is always associated with unhappiness, and the teacher must try to cure the unhappiness.
In myDominie's LogI confessed that I liked to cheat the railway company, and I excused it on the ground that "a ten-mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world." That was a delightful bit of rationalisation. The real reason for my delinquency lay in my unconscious. As a child I impotently rebelled against the authority of parents and teachers. Later in life I unconsciously identified the railway company with the authorities of my infancy. Authority said: "Don't do that or you will be smacked"; the railway company put up a notice saying: "Don't travel without a ticket or you'll be fined forty shillings."
My rebellion was really a rebellion against authority. This may seem to be a far-fetched explanation, but the fact remains that now that I have discovered the reason I have no more desire to cheat the railway company.
* * * * *
Old Jeems Broon was buried to-day, and Dauvit went to the funeral. He came back chuckling.
"What's the joke, Dauvit?" I asked.
"The burial service," laughed Dauvit. "You ken what sort o' a man Jeems was; an auld sinner if there ever was a sinner in Tarbonny, a bad auld scoondrel. Weel, Jeems hadna been at the kirk for twenty years, and of coorse the minister didna ken ony thing aboot him. So when he gave the funeral prayer he referred to auld Jeems as 'this holy man whose life stands as an example to those still tarrying in the flesh.' Goad, but I burst oot laughin'! I did that!"
"Had I been the minister," said I, "I should certainly have made a few inquiries about Jeems."
"But there's a better story than that aboot the minister," went on Dauvit with a laugh. "Mag Currie's little lassie had the diphtheria, and at the end o' the week the minister was asked to come oot to tak' a burial service in Mag's bed room. Man, he was eloquent! He spoke earnestly aboot this flower plucked before it had reached its full bloom, this innocent life so sadly cut off; he was most touchin' when he turned to Mag and her man and said: 'Mourn not for those hands that never did wrong, the lisping tongue that never spoke evil, the wide pure eyes that looked their love for you.'"
"I suppose the parents broke down at that," I said.
"Not they!" chuckled Dauvit, "for the corpse wasna their lassie ava; it was auld Drucken Findlay the lodger."
I always like to hear Dauvit talk about ministers, and I encouraged him to go on.
"It's a very queer thing, dominie, that a body ay wants to laugh at the wrong time. In the kirk and at a funeral—that's when I want to laugh.
"I mind when the minister was awa' for his holidays, and there was an auld minister frae the Heelands cam' to tak' his place. This auld man had a habit o' readin' a verse and syne stoppin' to explain it to the congregation.
"Weel aweel, wan Sunday he was readin' a chapter frae the Auld Testament, and he cam' to the words: 'And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto Hosea.' So he looks at the congregation ower his specs and he says: 'The Angel of the Lord appeared unto Hosea.' Now, prethren, we must ask ourselves this important question: Was Hosea afraid? No, Hosea was not afraid.Youwould have been afraid, prethren; I would have been afraid. You and I would have begun to quake and tremble, but Hosea was not afraid; he was a prave man, a pold man. When we are in trouble let us remember that Hosea was not afraid.'
"So the auld man he turns ower the page and reads the next verse: 'AndHosea was sore afraid.'"
"What did he say then?" I asked.
"He was a cunnin' auld deevil," said Dauvit, "for he gave a bit cough and says: 'Prethren, that is a wrong translation from the original Hebrew.'"
"I don't think you like ministers, Dauvit," I said.
He paused in his efforts to place a new needle in his sewing-machine.
"No, man, I do not," he said slowly. "Nowadays the kirk is just a job like anything else; men go in for it for the loaves and fishes mostly, and their prayers never get past the roof. And as for the congregation, the kirk is just a respectable sort o' society. I tell ye, dominie, that releegion is deid. At least, Christianity is deid. That was bound to come; flowers, folk, hooses, trees, horses, aye, and nations, have a birth, a youth, middle age, auld age, and then death. It's the law o' nature, and a religion is no exception."
"True, O philosopher!" I said, "but there is always new life, and new life comes from the old. The flower dies and its seed lives; man dies and his seed inherit the earth. Christianity dies and—and what?"
"That may be," he said thoughtfully. "It may be that the new religion will grow from the seed o' the deid Christianity; that I canna say. What I do say is that ministers are oot-o'-date; they are doin' useless labour . . . when they're no fishin' and curlin'."
Duncan came over to-night, and he asked my advice about books.
"What books would you advise a teacher to buy?" he asked.
"There are scores of good books," I replied, "but no teacher can afford to buy them."
"I know," he said crossly; "I've had a row with the Income Tax people. I asked for a rebate of ten pounds for necessary school books, and they wouldn't allow it, although I'm told that if a London merchant buys a London Directory he gets a rebate for the amount."
"I agree that it is unjust," I said, "but the new Income Tax proposals allow twenty pounds a year for teachers' books."
"Just tell us what you would advise a teacher to spend his twenty quid on," said Macdonald.
"It depends on his tastes," I said. "If his subject is History he will buy history books; if his subject is behaviour, he'll buy psychology books."
"Give us an idea of your own library," said Duncan.
I sat down and wrote out a list from memory.
It ran as follows:—
BOOKS ON EDUCATION:—The Play Way, by Caldwell Cook.The Path to Freedom in the School, by Norman MacMunn.What Is and What Might Be, by Edmond Holmes. Montessori's three volumes.An Adventure in Education, by J. H. Simpson.
BOOKS ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGY:Freud'sInterpretation of Dreams, Psychopathologyof Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.Jung'sPsychology of the Unconscious, Studiesin Word Association, Analytical Psychology.Frink'sMorbid Fears and Compulsions.Maurice Nicoll'sDream Psychology.Morton Prince'sThe Unconscious.Pfister'sThe Psycho-analytic Method.Ernest Jones'Psycho-analysis.Ferenczi'sContributions to Psycho-analysis.Wilfred Lay'sThe Child's Unconscious Mind.Moll'sThe Sexual Life of the Child.Adler'sThe Neurotic Constitution.Bernard Hart'sThe Psychology of Insanity.
CROWD PSYCHOLOGY:—The Crowd in Peace and War, Martin Conway.Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, Trotter.The Crowd, Gustave le Bon.
GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY:—Psychology and Everyday Life, Swift.Textbook of Psychology, James.The Boy and His Gang, Puffer.Mental Conflicts and Misconduct, Healy.The Individual Delinquent, Healy.Rational Sex Ethics, Robie.Social Psychology, McDougall.The Play of Man, Groos.
"That's too much for me," said Duncan. "I couldn't afford a quarter of these books. What books would you recommend if you had to choose half a dozen for a hard-up dominie?"
I thought for a little, and then I replied: "Bernard Hart'sThePsychology of Insanity, two bob; Frink'sMorbid Fears and Compulsions,a first-rate book on analysis, a guinea;The Crowd in Peace and War, bySir Martin Conway, eight and six; Healy'sMental Conflicts andMisconduct, ten and six; and Wilfred Lay'sThe Child's UnconsciousMind, ten and six."
"But," cried Duncan, "I don't want to set up an asylum! What's the good of books on insanity and morbid fears to a teacher?"
I explained that the titles of Hart's and Frink's books were misleading, although the difference between the mind of the lunatic and the mind of the average man is merely one of degree. Bernard Hart shows that the lunatic has the same faults as we have, only more so. Frink's book is badly named; it is an excellent work on mind mechanisms. Any teacher who reads these six books with understanding will never again use a strap on a pupil. If I were Education Minister, I should present every school in Britain with a copy of each of the six.
Macdonald asked if I had any books on hypnotism and suggestion.
"No," I said, "but I have read them through a library. I don't believe in either because they do not touch root causes. We are all suffering from bottled up infantile emotion, and analysis goes to the root of the matter; it makes what is unconscious conscious, and enables the patient to re-educate himself, to use the old repressed emotion up in his daily life. Analysis means release. Suggestion does not touch the root repressed emotion, and I fancy that after suggestion the symptom merely changes. A man has a phobia of cats. By suggestion I can dispel his fear of cats, but the fear is transferred to something else, and he then has an exaggerated fear of catching tuberculosis. Unless the ancient cause becomes conscious it is not released.
"We see suggestion working in our schools daily. By suggestion parents and teachers force the child to inhibit his gross sexual wishes, and in a short time the child accepts the ideals of his masters. At first he inhibits a desire because father thinks it naughty; later he inhibits it because he himself thinks it naughty. But the gross sexual wish lives on in the unconscious . . . hence the neurosis, hence the respectable old men who are imprisoned for showing gross pictures to children, hence the frequent indecent assaults on children. All these unfortunate people are suffering from the results of early suggestion—the suggestion that sex is sin. That primitive sex impulses can be sublimated I admit, but the teacher's job is not to preach that sex activities are evil; his job is to help the child to use up his primitive sex energy in creative work."
* * * * *
What is education's chief aim? The reply generally given is that education's aim is to help a child to live its life fully. Yet it seems to me that that reply does not go far enough; I think that the aim should be to help a child to live its cosmic life fully, to live for others. Every human is egocentric, selfish. No human ever rises above selfishness, only there are degrees of selfishness. I buy a motor-cycle because I am selfish; and you found a hospital for orphans because you are selfish. It is my pleasure to have a Sunbeam; it is yours to help the poor. Your selfishness has become altruism; that is, in pleasing yourself you have managed to please others. The aim in education is not to abolish selfishness; it is to educe the selfishness that is altruistic. Hence it may be said that education's chief aim is to teach one how to love. No, that won't do; no one can teach another how to love; the teacher's job is to evoke love. This he can do only by loving. If I hate my pupils I evoke hate from them; if I love them I evoke love from them in return.
Is it possible to love your neighbour as yourself? It is when you know yourself. You hate in others what you hate in yourself, and you love in others what is lovable in yourself. So that in loving your neighbour you are loving yourself.
If, then, the teacher's first aim is to evoke the love of his pupils, he must know himself, and knowing must love himself. Every day pupils are suffering because of the teacher's hatred of himself.
Dominie Brown rises in the morning surly and unhappy. He complains about the bacon and eggs at breakfast . . . no, the red herring; dominies cannot afford bacon and eggs . . . and Mrs. Brown makes unpleasant remarks. Brown crosses the road to school with thunder on his face, and the children shiver in terror all morning.
If Brown could sit down calmly to think out his bad mood, he would realise that he was punishing the children because he was worsted in his word battle with his wife. Andhe would be quite wrong. The truth would be that he was punishing the children because he was at war with himself. His early morning ugly mood betrayed a mental conflict. Hating himself, he hated his wife; his hate evoked her hate . . . and thus the circle was completed.
We might trace all the futilities, all the stupidities of mankind, all the wars and crimes and injustices to man's ignorance of self. To know all is to forgive all. Christ condemned no one because he was at peace with himself. Yet, I suddenly remember that He whipped the money-changers out of the Temple. This incident is comforting, for it shows that the most lovable man who ever lived betrayed one human frailty on one occasion at least. But now I am preaching again.
* * * * *
I went to see Charlie Chaplin in "Shoulder Arms" last night. Charlie is an artist of high quality; for once I think as the crowd thinks. But I leave the crowd when it comes to appreciating the "moving human dramas" in five parts.
The cinema must be reckoned with in any educational scheme. One may learn more about crowd psychology from attendance at cinemas than from reading books on crowd psychology. The cinema is popular because it encourages day-dreaming or phantasy. There are two kinds of thinking, reality thinking and phantasy or day-dreaming. Phantasying is the easier of the two; I can sit for hours building castles in Spain, and I never grow tired; but if I have to sit down and think out the Theory of Quadratics I soon become weary. In reality thinking the intellect is active, but in day-dreaming emotion is in control. Day-dreaming gets nowhere; the asylums are full of day-dreamers who spend their hours constructing beautiful phantasies. In childhood phantasy is supreme. Bobby turns the nursery into a jungle; the sofa is a tiger, the chairs are lions, the rocking-horse is an elephant. It is all real to him. And in later years Bobby often returns to his childish phantasying. We all do. What young lover has not phantasied a burning mansion where his lady love is imprisoned? Have we not all clambered up the water pipes and rescued her from the flames?
The world of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street. Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for most of us means trials and sorrows and conflicts, and we long to return to the nursery phase where life was what we wished it to be. The cinema and the public-house are the most convenient doors by which we can regress.
The "moving drama" is the other side of the industrial picture. Life for the masses means dirt and disease, ugly factories, sordid homes, mean streets. The moving drama takes the masses away from grim reality; they see beautifully gowned women in drawing-rooms; they see the King reviewing his regiments; they see wild and free cowboys chasing Red Indians. For two hours they live . . . and then they go out again into their world of mere existence. And it is all wrong, tragically wrong. The cinema craze means that life is too ugly to face; it means that the masses are fleeing from reality and to flee from reality is fatal. Day-dreams are laudable only when they come true. If the masses day-dreamed of an economic Utopia and forthwith set about building a New Jerusalem, their phantasies would become realities; but the moving human drama never leads to building; it is raw whisky swallowed to bring oblivion. The moving human drama will live and flourish so long as mankind tolerates the slavery of industrialism. It is a powerful weapon for capitalism; like the church and the public-house, it keeps the wage-slaves quiet.
* * * * *
To-night the conversation in Dauvit's shop turned to the subject of honours.
"They tell me," said Jake Tosh, "that you can buy a knighthood, or a peerage for that matter."
"Yea, man!" said Willie Simpson, the joiner and undertaker fromTillymains.
"So there's no muckle chance o' you getting ane, Willie," said Dauvit.
The joiner smoked thoughtfully for a while.
"Na, Dauvit," he said, "there's little chance o' an undertaker gettin' a title. You would think na that the man that coffined the likes o' Lloyd George wud get a knighthood."
Dauvit cackled.
"Honours are sold, as Jake says; they are never given for public services."
I am afraid the joke was lost on most of the assembly. Jake failed to see it. It is said that Jake has been known to laugh at a joke only once, and that was when the earth gave way beneath the minister's feet when he was conducting a service at a grave-side, and he fell into the open grave.
"Undertakin'," continued the joiner, "is a verra queer trade."
Jake shivered.
"I dinna ken how ye can do it," he said; "man, it wud gie me the scunners."
"Man, ye soon get accustomed to it," said the joiner. "Of course, it has its limitations; ye canna verra weel advertise in the front page o'The Daily Mail, but, man, it's what ye micht call a safe trade."
"How safe?" I asked.
"Oh, ye never need to worry aboot yer custom; it's aye there. Noo in other lines the laws o' supply and demand are tricky. I mind a gey puckle years syne there was a craze for walkin'-sticks wi' ebony handles. Weel, I went doon to Dundee and bocht ten pund worth o' ebony, and afore the wood was delivered the fashion had changed, and the men were all buyin' cheese-cutter bonnets, so here was I left wi' ten pund worth o' ebony on my hands . . . and if I hadna sold it to Davie Lamb the cabinet-maker for thirteen pund I micht ha' lost the money. Noo, in my trade there's no sudden change o' fashion as ye micht say; the demand is what ye micht call constant, and that's what makes me say it is a safe trade."
Dauvit winked to me surreptitiously.
"Noo, joiner," he said, "will ye tell me wan thing? I want to ken the inner workin's o' an undertakker's mind. When somebody is verra ill, what's your attitude? I mean to say, do ye sort o' look on the illness wi' hope or what? When ye see a fine set-up man on the road, do ye look at him wi' a professional eye and say to yersell: 'Sax feet by twa; a bonny corp!'?"
"I'm no so bad as that, Dauvit," he laughed, "though I dinna mind sayin' that I've sometimes been a wee bit disappointed when somebody got better. On the other hand, when big Tamson was badly, I keepit prayin' that he wud get better."
"An unbusinesslike thing to do," I laughed.
"Aweel," said the joiner, "big Tamson weighed aboot saxteen stone, and at the time I hadna the wood."
"I dinna like to hear aboot things like that," said Jake Tosh nervously; "things like that give me the creeps, and besides it's no a proper way to speak."
Dauvit turned to me.
"Man, dominie, it's a queer thing, but the more religious a man is the less he likes to hear aboot death. Jake here is an elder o' the auld kirk; he's on the straight and narrow path; he's going straight to heaven when he dees . . . and I never saw onybody so feared o' death as Jake is. How wud ye explain that?"
"I think," I replied, "that it is due to the fact that Jake has been brought up in the fear of the Lord."
"Exactly," nodded Dauvit. "It's my belief that most religious fowk are religious not becos they want specially to play harps in the next world, but becos they dinna want to be roasted."
Dauvit's philosophy comes pretty near that of Edmond Holmes. InWhat Is and What Might BeHolmes argues that our education system is founded on the Old Testament. Man is a sinner, prone to evil; a stern angry God chastises him when he transgresses. Education treats children as sinners; it punishes the wrongdoer. I believe Holmes is right, only he does not trace back education far enough. The God of the Old Testament was a man-made God (Jung says that man makes his God in his own image; his God is his ego-ideal).
The genesis of education is not the God of the Old Testament; it is the unconscious wish of the primitive men who invented that God. The religion of the Old Testament is a father complex religion; God is the hated and feared father, the authority who punishes, the provider of food and clothing, the maker of laws. Authority always makes the governed inferior and dependent; the man with a father complex cannot stand alone; he must always flee to his father or father substitute when he meets a difficulty. Thus does the Christian act; he seeks the Father; he places his burden on the Lord; he avoids responsibility. The Hebraic religion and our modern education both demand that the individual shall avoid responsibility; the good Christian and the good schoolboy must obey the Law. I think that if the world is to be free the church and the school must aim at breaking the power of the Father.
* * * * *
"Look here, Mac," I said last night, "I am going to pay you for my board."
Mac protested vigorously.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
I went to the kitchen and made the offer to his wife, and she also protested.
This morning I cycled to Dundee and bought a knife-cleaner and a vacuum cleaner. They arrived to-night, and Mrs. Mac gave a gasp of delight. Mac tried to frown, but he could not manage it. Both protested against what they called my idiotic kindness, but their protests were half-hearted.
It is a strange thing that money itself is considered a sordid thing. Why should Mac refuse five pounds with anger, and accept a ten pound gift with pleasure? If anyone wants to study the psychological meaning of money I recommend Chapter XL. in Dr. Ernest Jones'Psycho-analysis. In the unconscious, at any rate, money is assuredly "filthy lucre."
* * * * *
A teacher should know very little about the subject he professes to teach. In my London school I succeeded a line of excellent teachers of drawing. I had not been long in the school when Di, aged 15, looked over my shoulder one day and said: "Rotten! You can't draw for nuts!"
A week later Malcolm looked at a water colour of mine.
"You've got a horrible sense of colour," he said brightly.
Then I began to wonder why everyone in school was much more keen on drawing and painting than they had ever been in the days of the skilled teachers. The conclusion I came to was that my bad drawing encouraged the children. I remembered the beautiful copy-book headlines of my boyhood, and I recalled the hopelessness of ever reaching the standard set by the lithographers. No child should have perfection put before him. The teacher should never try to teach; he should work alongside the children; he should be a co-worker, not a model.
Most teachers set themselves on a pedestal. They think that they lose dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard balls. The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked problems he worked solely to escape punishment.
The difficulty is that if a teacher works at a subject year after year he is bound to become an expert. The only remedy I can think of is to make each teacher take up a new subject at the beginning of every school year. By the time that he had been master of Mathematics, History, Drawing, English, French, German, Latin, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, Physiology, Eurhythmics, Music, Woodwork, it would be time to retire . . . with a pension or a psychosis. The late Sir William Osier said that a man was too old at forty; my experience leads me to conclude that many a teacher is too old at twenty.
I sometimes think that every man has a certain definite psychic age fixed for him by the Almighty before he is born. I know a man of seventy who is psychically five years old, and he will never grow older. I know a boy of ten who is psychically sixty years old, and he will never grow younger.
Psycho-analysis is doing a lot of good, but I fear that it may do a lot of harm, for, one fine day Professor Freud or Dr. Jung will get hold of Peter Pan, take him by the back of the neck, and say: "My lad, you've got a fixation somewhere; you are the super-regression-to-the-infantile specimen; you've got to be analysed." And then Peter will grow up and readThe Daily Newsand own an allotment and a season ticket.
When we know all about psychology, the world will be rather dull. The Freudians have said that the play ofHamletis the result of Shakespeare's Oedipus Complex. If Shakespeare had not had an unconscious hatred of his father,Hamletwould never have been written. In other words, if Bacon had discovered the psychology of the unconscious, Shakespeare might have been analysed and forthwith might have gone in for keeping bees instead of writing plays.
It is the neurotic who leads the world; he is a rebel and he is an idealist. Yet when you analyse him you find what a poor devil he is. His noble crusade against vivisection is due to the abnormal strain of cruelty he is repressing in himself; his passion for Socialism comes from his infant fear of and rebellion against his father. The ardent suffragette who smashes windows in a just cause is merely doing so because the vote is a symbol of freedom from an arrogant husband.
What I want to know is this: In the year 5000, when everyone is free from repressions and suppressions, will there be any rebels to spur humanity on? But then if humanity is free from unconscious urges there will be no need for rebels, for there will be no crime or prison or wars or politicians. Every man will be a superman.
I firmly believe that Freud's discovery will have a greater influence on the evolution of humanity than any discovery of the last ten centuries. Freud has begun the road that leads to superman, and, although Jung and Adler and others have begun to lead sideroads off the main track, the sideroads are all leading forward. Theirs is a great message of hope.
And yet, nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ gave the world a NewPsychology . . . and none of us have tried to apply it to our souls.
Mac came across a vulgar word in a composition he was correcting to-night, and it seemed to alarm him. He could not understand why I laughed, and I explained to him that I liked vulgarity.
I remember when a high-minded mother came into my class-room in Hampstead. The highest class was writing essays. On her asking what the subject was, I replied that each pupil had a different subject. She walked round and looked over their shoulders. I saw the lady's eyebrows go up as she read titles such as these:—"I Grow Forty Feet high in One Night"; "I Edit the GreenlandMorning Frost" (the news this boy gave was delightful); "I Interview Noah for theDaily Mail" (photos on back page). She nodded approvingly when she read the titles of the more serious essays. Then I saw her adjust her spectacles in great haste; she was looking over Muriel's shoulder.
"Mr. Neill," she gasped, "do you think this a suitable subject for a girl?"
I glanced at the title; it was; "Autobiography of My Nose."
"Er—what's wrong with it?" I said falteringly.
"It lends itself too readily to vulgarity," she said.
I picked up the book, and together we read the opening words.
"When first I began to run . . . ."
The high-minded lady left the room hurriedly.
I loved that class. Often I wish that I had kept their essays. One day we had a five minute essay on the subject: Waiting for My Cue. Lawrence wrote of standing on the steps in a cold sweat of fear. He had only five words to say—"The carriage waits, my lord," but he had never acted before. His cue was: "Ho! Who comes here?"
"At last," he wrote, "I heard the fateful words: 'Ho! Who comes here?' I could not move; I stood trembling on the stairs.
"'Get on, you idiot!' whispered the stage manager savagely, but still I could not move.
"'Ho! Who comes here?' repeated the fool on the stage. Still I could not move a step.
"'Ho! Who comes here?'
"Suddenly I became aware of a disturbance in the auditorium. The noise increased, and then I heard the agonising words: 'Fire! Fire!' Panic followed, and cries of terror rang out.
"But I . . . I jumped on the stage and cried: 'Hurrah!Hoo-blinking-rah!' It was the happiest moment of my life."
Sydney took a different line. Her cue was the sound of a stage kiss. Boldly she walked on, and the stage lovers glared at her, for she arrived before the kiss was finished or rather properly begun. The audience chuckled. At the next performance she determined to be less punctual. She heard the smack of the kiss, but she did not move. As she waited she heard the audience roaring with laughter, and then she realised that the poor lovers had been standing kissing each other for a full five minutes.
I must write to these dear old children to ask if they kept their essays.
* * * * *
Duncan was in to-night, and he told a school story that was new to me.
In a certain council school it was the custom for teachers to write down on the blackboard any instructions they might have for the janitor before they left at night. One night he came in and read the words: Find the L.C.M.
"Good gracious!" he growled, "has that dam thing gone and got lost again?"
That version was new to me. My own version ran thus:—
Little Willie is doing his home lessons, and he asks his father to help him with a sum. The father takes the slate in his hand and reads the words: Find the G.C.M.
"Good heavens!" he cries, "haven't they found that blamed thing yet?They were hunting for it when I was at school."
I think both versions are very good.
* * * * *
I have a strong Montessori complex. I find myself being critical of her system, and I have often wondered why. I used to think that my dislike of Montessori was a projection: I disliked a lady who raved about Montessori, and I fancied that I had transferred my dislike of the lady to poor Montessori. But now I refuse to accept that explanation; it is not good enough for me; there must be something deeper. I shall try to discover that something deeper.
When I first read Montessori's books I said to myself: "She is devoid of humour." This to me suggests a limitation in art, and I feel that Montessori is always a scientist but never an artist. Her system is highly intellectual, but sadly lacking in emotionalism. This is seen in her attitude to phantasy. She would probably argue that phantasy is bad for a child, but it is a fact that much of a child's life is lived in phantasy. Phantasy is a means of gratifying an unfulfilled wish. The kitchen-maid in her day-dream marries a prince, and, as Maurice Nicoll says in hisDream Psychology, to destroy her phantasy without putting something in its place is dangerous.
To a child, as to Cinderella, phantasy is a means of overcoming reality. Father bullies Willie and the boy retires into a day-dream world where he becomes an all-powerful person . . . hence the fairy tales of giants (fathers) killed by little Jacks. In later life Willie takes to drink or identifies himself with the hero of a cinema drama.
The extreme form of phantasy is insanity, where the patient completely goes over to the unreal world and becomes the Queen of the World. And it might be objected that phantasying is the first stage of insanity. Yes, but it is the last stage of poetry. Coleridge'sKubla Khan, one of the most glorious poems in the language, is pure phantasy. I rather fear that one day a grown-up Montessori child will prove conclusively that the feet of Maud did not, when they touched the meadows, leave the daisies rosy.
No, the Montessori world is too scientific for me; it is too orderly, too didactic. The name "didactic apparatus" frightens me.
I quote a sentence fromThe New Children, by Mrs. Radice.
"'Per carita! Get up at once!' she (Montessori) has exclaimed before now to a conscientious teacher found dishevelled on the ground with a class of little Bolshevists sitting on top of her."
In heaven's name, I ask, why get up? Life is more than meat, and education is more than matching colours and fitting cylinders into holes.
Montessori was thinking of the conscious mind of the child when she evolved her system, and the apparatus does not satisfy the whole of the child's unconscious mind. Noise is suppressed in a Montessori school, but every child should be allowed to make a noise, for noise means power to him, and he will use it only as long as it means power to him. I have watched Norman MacMunn's war orphans at Tiptree Hall at work. MacMunn, the author ofA Path to Freedom in the School, did not say "Hush!"; his boys filled the room with noisy talk as they worked, and never have I seen children do more work with so much joy.
The Montessori teacher, when she finds that Jimmy is interfering with the work of Alice, segregates the bad Jimmy, and treats him as a sick person. But the right thing to do is to solve Jimmy's problem as well as Alice's. What is behind Jimmy's aggressiveness? Jimmy does not know, nor does the Montessori teacher, because she has been trained in the psychology of the conscious only.
Another reason why I am not wholly on the side of Montessori is, I fancy, that her religious attitude repels me. She is a church woman; she has a definite idea of right and wrong. Thus, although she allows children freedom to choose their own occupations, she allows them no freedom to challenge adult morality. But for a child to accept a ready-made code of morals is dangerous; education in morality is a thousand times more important than intellectual education with a didactic apparatus.
* * * * *
To-night Duncan came in, and as usual we talked education. I took up the subject of punishment, and condemned it on the ground that it treats effect instead of cause. After a little persuasion Duncan seemed inclined to agree with me.
"I see what you mean," he said, "but what I say is that if you abolish punishment you must also abolish reward."
"Why not?" I said. "The case against rewards is just as simple. A child should do a lesson for the joy of doing it. Milton certainly did not writeParadise Lostfor the five pounds he got for it."
"Yes, I see that," said Duncan thoughtfully, "but what about competition? The prize at the end introduces a breezy struggle for place."
I shook my head.
"No competition! I won't have it. It makes the chap at the top of the class a prig, and gives the poor chap at the bottom an inferiority complex. No, we want to encourage not competition but co-operation. Competition leads naturally to another world war, as competition between British and American capital is doing now."
Then Duncan floored me.
"And would you discourage football because it introduces the idea of competition?" he asked.
"Of course not," I replied
"Then why discourage it in arithmetic?" he asked.
It was an arresting question, and I had to grope for an answer that would convince not only Duncan but myself. That every healthy boy likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot ignore. Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake Tosh are fundamentally the same desire, the desire for self-assertion. And I see that the man who comes in last in the quarter-mile race is in the same position of inferiority as the boy who is always at the bottom of the class. Yet I condemn competition in school-work while I appreciate competition in games. Why?
I think I should leave it to the children. Obviously they like to compete in games and races, but they have no natural desire to compete in lessons. It appears that some things naturally lend themselves to competition—racing, boxing, billiards, jumping, football and so on. Other things do not encourage competition. Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton do not compete in the output of books; Freud and Jung do not struggle to publish the record number of analysis cases; George Robey and Little Tich do not appear together on the stage of the Palladium and try to prove which is the funnier. Rivalry there always is, but it remains only rivalry untilThe Daily Mailoffers a prize for the biggest cabbage or sweet-pea, and then competition seizes suburbia.
I should therefore leave the children to discover for themselves what interests lend themselves to competition, and what interests do not. I know beforehand that of their own accord they will not introduce it into school subjects. This is in accord with my views on the authority question. I insist that the teacher will impose nothing; that his task is to watch the children find their own solution.
* * * * *
I must write down a wise saying that came from Dauvit. A rambling and ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night. Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my word for it, Bolshevism is wrong."
"How do you make that out, Dauvit?" I asked.
"Because it's a success," he said shortly.
* * * * *
To-night the Rev. Mr. Smith, the U.F. minister, came in. He is one of the unco' guid, and to him all pleasures are sinful. It happened that I was telling Macdonald the Freudian theory of dreams when he entered, and when Mac told him what the conversation had been about, he begged me to continue. It was evident that he had never heard of dream interpretation, and he was surprised.
"And every dream has a meaning?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I had a dream last night," he began, but I held up a warning hand.
"You shouldn't tell your dreams in public," I said hastily; "they may give things away that you don't want others to know."
He laughed.
"I don't mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk. Last night I dreamt that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most obscene stories. According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a wish. Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such a company?"
I explained that the dream as told is not the dream in reality, the meaning lies behind the symbolism, and it can be got at by the method of free association. I also explained that I did not believe the Freud theory, that the dream is always a wish, and suggested that Jung was a surer guide.
"According to Jung," I said, "the dream is often compensatory. In your own case you are consciously living the higher life, but there is another side of life that you are ignoring, and that is the vulgar pub side. Your dream is a hint that the vulgar side of life cannot be ignored. You may ignore it consciously, but your unconscious will seek the other side in your dreams."
This seemed to make him think.
"But the saints and martyrs!" he cried. "Think of the thousands who crucified the flesh so that they might win the everlasting crown! Do you tell me that they were all wrong?"
I lit my pipe.
"I think they were," I said, "for they merely repressed their animal life. They thought that they had conquered it, but they only buried it. The real saint is the man who faces his flesh boldly and loves it too, just as much as he loves his God."
Then the minister fled.
The interpretation of dreams is one of the most fascinating studies in the world. The method as evolved by Freud is simple, although the interpretation is anything but simple. Obviously the average dream has no meaning. You dream that a horse speaks to you, and then it turns into your brother. It is all nonsense, yet behind the nonsense is a serious meaning. Not long ago I was analysing a girl of sixteen. About a week after the analysis began she brought a dream which began thus: "I am invisible, and I have a tail that I can take off or put on."
Following the method of free association I said to her: "What comes into your mind about being invisible?"
"Oh, I've often wanted to be invisible, for then I could do what I liked; then I would be free."
Being invisible therefore meant being free.
Then I asked her associations to the tail part.
"Tail . . . monkeys at the Zoo; they are poor things always kept behind bars. Just like me. I forgot to say that my tail wasn't on in the dream."
Tail therefore meant something associated with confinement and restriction. It is significant that her tail was unattached. I took it to mean a wish-fulfilment dream; in it she got free from her neurosis.
The following night she dreamt that she was being driven in a motor car by a swanky chauffeur. They came to the bottom of a hill, and the car stopped, and she got out and walked. Her first association was: "The chauffeur had a big green coat on, one just like the coat you wear."
"So I was the chauffeur?" I asked.
She brightened at once.
"I see it!" she cried. "The car is the analysis; you are driving me away from my old life!"
"Excellent!" I said, "but don't forget that the car stopped at the bottom of the hill. What does the word hill give you?"
"Something difficult to climb. I hated climbing it and thought it a shame that the motor didn't take me up."
"Well?"
"I've got to climb to get better, haven't I?"
"That's right," I said. "I told you the other night that no analyst should give advice, and I refused when you asked me for it. In your unconscious you realise that the chauffeur is not going to take you up the hill; in other words you've got to do most of the work."
Freud holds that there is a censor standing between the conscious and the unconscious. Primitive wishes seek to come from the unconscious, but the censor holds up his hand. "No," he says, "that's too disgusting; the conscious mind couldn't stand that; it would be shocked. You must disguise yourself in harmless form!" And so the infantile sex wish is changed into a harmless dog or cycle. But if this is the case why should my little girl dream of me as a chauffeur? There was nothing disgusting about me, nothing that her conscious mind could not face.
I prefer Jung's theory. He says that we dream in symbols because symbolism is the oldest language in the world, and, as the unconscious is primitive it uses this language. We all dream of shocking things, and if the endopsychic censor were really on duty he would never allow these disgusting dreams to get through.
If I dream that my father is dead the Freudians declare that I either wish or, in the past, have wished unconsciously for my father's death. But surely so alarming a wish would be changed into a harmless form if there were a censor. One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray, was dead. The first association to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of chap." I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely my own laziness symbolised. The dream was a hint to me to be up and doing, for I had been neglecting a task that I should have undertaken.
There is what might be called the cheese-and-tripe supper theory of the dream held by many people.
"There's nothing in dreams," they say, "nothing but the disorders following late supper."
A cheese-and-tripe supper will cause queer dreams, but the advocates of this theory cannot explain why a tripe supper should make me dream of—say—a tiger. Why not a lion or a mouse?
It is an accepted fact now in psychology that the dream is the working of the unconscious. Some theosophists claim that during sleep your spirit leaves your body and seeks the astral plane, but I have never seen anything resembling evidence of this. It may be a fact for all that.
Concerning the prophetic aspect of dreams I know nothing. I have heard that the night before the Tay Bridge disaster a woman dreamt that it was to take place, and she persuaded her husband not to travel by that ill-fated train, but I cannot vouch for the story. I believe, however, that the dream is prophetic in that the unconscious during the night is working out the problems of the next day. The popular saying about sleeping over a problem shows that there is a real belief in this aspect. I know a lady who was undergoing analysis. She was suffering from a father complex, that is, her infantile fixation on the father had remained with her, and unconsciously she was approving or disapproving of every man she met according as he did or did not in some way resemble her father.
For a few weeks after the analysis began she was always dreaming that she was back in her childhood home, and in her dreams she was always trying to get away from home and her father was always restraining her from going. Often the figure in the dream was not the father, but the associations always showed that the figure was standing for the father. One night the figure was the King, and her first association was: "The King's name is George. . . . That's father's name too."
This seems to be a case where the unconscious is striving to find a solution.
The way the unconscious does things is wonderful. I remember one night listening to a lecture by Homer Lane. He brought forward a new theory about education, and it was so deep that I did not quite grasp its meaning. At the time Alan, Homer Lane's youngest child, was one of the pupils in the school in which I taught. That night I dreamt that I was standing before a class. Alan was sitting in the front seat, and behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest child." The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest. Here again I cannot see why any censor should change a theory into a child.
* * * * * In myLogI make a very, very poor statement about sex instruction. I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory of birth until the age of nine. That was a wrong belief, but then at that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll. I see now that the child should be told the truth about sex whenever he asks for information. But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have sexually educated their child when they tell him where babies come from. The physiological side of sex is the less important; you can take a child through all the usual stages—pollination of plants, fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find no help in these informations when he faces his sex instinct at adolescence. Sex instruction should be psychological; it should deal with the sex instinct as one form of life force or libido. The child should be led to face it openly. It should be entirely dissociated from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.