Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/491

 PSYCHOLOQY OF WISH FULFILMENT 485

What James is particularly emphasizing here is that the human or- ganism is instinctively capable of developing along many different lines^ but that due to the stress of civilization some of these instinctive capacities must be thwarted. In addition to these impulses which are instinctive^ and therefore hereditary, there are many habit impulses which are equally strong and which for similar reasons must be given up. The systems of habits we form (t. e., the acts we learn to perform) at four years of age will not serve us when we are twelve, and those formed at the age of twelve will not serve us when we become adults. As we pass from childhood to man^s estate, we are constantly having to give up thousands of activities which our nervous and muscular sys- tems have a tendency to perform. Some of these instinctive tendencies bom with use are poor heritages; some of the habits we early develop are equally poor possessions. But, whether they are " good '^ or " bad,*' they must give way as we put on the habits required of adults. Some of them yield with diflBculty and we often get badly twisted in attempt- ing to put them away, as every psychiatric clinic can testify. It is among these frustrated impulses that I would find the biological basis of the unfulfilled wish. Such "wishes'* need never have been "con- scious " and need never have been suppressed into Freud's realm of the unconscious. It may be inferred from this that there is no particular reason for applying the term "wish" to such tendencies. What we discover then in dreams and in conversational slips and other lapses are really at heart " reaction tendencies " — ^tendencies which we need never have faced nor put into words at any time. On Freud's theory these " wishes " have at one time been faced and put into words by the indi- vidual, and when faced they were recognized as not squaring with his ethical code. They were then immediately "repressed into the uncon- scious."

A few illustrations may help in understanding how thwarted tenden- cies may lay the basis for the so-called unfulfilled wish which later appears in the dream. One individual becomes a psychologist in spite of his strong interest in becoming a medical man, because at the time it was easier for him to get the training along psychological lines. Another pursues a business career — ^when, if he had had his choice, he would have become a writer of plays. Sometimes on account of the care of a mother or of younger brothers and sisters, a young man can not marry, even though the mating instinct is normal; such a course of action necessarily leaves any unfulfilled wishes and frustrated im- pulses in its train. Again a young man will marry and settle down when mature consideration would show that his career would advance much more rapidly if he were not burdened with a family. Again, an individual marries, and without even admitting to himself that his marriage is a failure, he gradually shuts himself ofiE from any emo-

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