Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/407

 idea of the intimate comprehension of a human soul, which is in reality something very beautiful and pure, is soiled and disagreeably distorted through the entrance of the indirect sexual meaning.[1] The secondary meaning or, better expressed, the misuse, which repressed and denied sexuality forces upon the highest soul functions, makes it possible, for example, for certain of our opponents to scent in psychoanalysis prurient erotic confessionals. These are subjective wish-fulfilment deliria which need no contra arguments. This misuse makes the wish to be "understood" highly suspicious, if the natural demands of life have not been fulfilled. Nature has ''first claim'' on man; only long afterwards does the luxury of intellect come. The mediæval ideal of life for the sake of death needs gradually to be replaced by a natural conception of life, in which the normal demands of men are thoroughly kept in mind, so that the desires of the animal sphere may no longer be compelled to drag down into their service the high gifts of the intellectual sphere in order to find an outlet. We are inclined, therefore, to consider the dreamer's wish for understanding, first of all, as a repressed striving towards the natural destiny. This meaning coincides absolutely with psychoanalytic experience, that there are countless neurotic people who apparently are prevented from experiencing life because they have an unconscious and often also a conscious repugnance to the sexual fate, under which they imagine all kinds of ugly things. There is only too great an inclination to yield to this pressure of the unconscious sexuality and to experience the dreaded (unconsciously hoped