Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/122

 We would show but slight justice, however, to the intellectual originality of our author, if we were satisfied to trace back the commotion of that sleepless night absolutely and entirely to the sexual problem in a narrow sense. That would be but one-half, and truly, to make use of the mystic's expression, only the under half. The other half is the intellectual sublimation, which strives to make true in its own way the ambiguous expression of "the idea which produces its object spontaneously,"—ideal creation in place of the real.

In such an intellectual accomplishment of an evidently very capable personality, the prospect of a spiritual fruitfulness is something which is worthy of the highest aspiration, since for many it will become a necessity of life. Also this side of the phantasy explains, to a great extent, the excitement, for it is a thought with a presentiment of the future; one of those thoughts which arise, to use one of Maeterlinck's expressions,16 from the "inconscient superieur," that "prospective potency" of subliminal combinations.17

I have had the opportunity of observing certain cases of neuroses of years' duration, in which, at the time of the beginning of the illness or shortly before, a dream occurred, often of visionary clarity. This impressed itself inextinguishably upon the memory, and in analysis revealed a hidden meaning to the patient which anticipated the subsequent events of life; that is to say, their psychologic meaning.18 I am inclined to grant this meaning to the commotion of that restless night, because the resulting events of life, in so far as Miss Miller