Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/88

 342 JAMES S. VAN TESLAAR

The prospect is not over-drawn. Psychoanalysis clearly holds out no less a promise than this.

, Not the least merit of Freud is that he has at last linked in a practical, rigorously scientific manner our so-called 'normal' mental activities with those considered 'abnormal*, and has proven the essential unity of mental functions.

That mental disorders are the result of the psychic forces governing the normal reactions of mind has long been accepted as a truism — in the abstract. Bat in the practical working out of the subject, in our text-books on psychiatry, for example, this essential truth played no part. It was practically disregarded — abstract theory and practice did not conform to each other in this instance, for the simple reason that there had been found no way of utilising the truth; no method of interpreting the disordered mind through a knowledge of what is going on in the healthy mind and vice versa.

To assert the essential unity of mental functions as a truth flowing out of theoretic considerations is one thing; to prove, as well as make fruitful use of, this important fact, is quite an other.

This bridging over of normal and abnormal, the rediscovery of the essential unity or oneness of mind, has been accomplished by Freud.

The links that connect normal and abnormal mind are furnished by the functions of the unconscious. The notion of the unconscious, of course, is not in itself a novel contribution of psychoanalysis. Indeed, as a mere hypotliesis the unconscious is as old as, and perhaps antedates, the formulation even of our earliest scientific conceptions in psychology. But Freud gave the principle its present scientific and precise formulation. Above all he has evolved the tech- nique for the empiric investigation of the unconscious — a technique that enables us to deal with the facts and forces of mind as ob- jectively as with any other facts and forces in nature.

The concept of the unconscious had been rejected from modern scientific psychology because of its metaphysical and highly specula- tive character. But with the adoption of Freud's rigorous, practical method of inquiry the principle of the unconscious has become the core of psychology.

It is in this connection that Freud has evolved the study and analysis of dreams. The results are overwhelming; they yield a new sense of order and permit our understanding to reach down to the nethermost depths of human nature. i