PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. That there was some inkling of the Freudian psycho-analytic method of treating nervous disorders many centuries ago is shown by a narrative in Lucian's tract The Syrian Goddess. According to this story (§ § 17 and 18), the stepson of Stratonice, wife of the king of the Assyrians (i.e., Syrians, the king thought of being probably Seleucus Nicator of Antioch), was enamoured of his stepmother. He lost his colour, and became daily more frail. Seen by a doctor, the doctor could find no definite disease, and perceived that the malady was erotic. He noted that when the stepmother was near, the patient became worse : he paled, sweated, trembled, and suffered from violent beating of the heart. The doctor summoned the patient's father, and explained to him that the malady was due to a wrongful action. Slightly dissembling the truth. he said: " he has no painful symptoms; he is possessed by love and madness. He longs to possess what he will never obtain; he loves my wife, whom I will never give up " (transl. by H. A. Strong). The father pleaded for his son, explaining his guilt as involuntary. Thereupon the doctor professed to be scandalized, and asked : " What would you do, if it were your wife? " The father replied that even if his son were enamoured of his own stepmother, he would not begrudge him his life. The doctor then announced that the object of the young man's love was actually his father's wife. On hearing this the father decided to give up his wife and kingdom; and the young man was cured. In the words of Pro
fessor R. C. Cabot (What Men Live By, 1915), the essence of .the Freudian doctrine is this: " People suppress and try to bury a disappointed hope or an evil desire; but accidentally they bury it alive, so that it struggles and shrieks beneath the weight of daily life piled on top of it." Jane E. Harrison (Rationalism and ReligiouS Reaction, 1919) observes with truth that, if Dr. Freud's books are in some ways unpleasant reading, no one now doubts the substantial soundness of his conclusion's or the reality of his cures. " He can Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written tablets of the brain.
He does Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart.
A host of obscure diseases—on the borderland of insanity —diseases gnawing at and corrupting the very sources of life, are caused, he finds, by repressed emotions, and most of all by repressed desires. Such diseases are hysterias, claustro- and other phobias, multiple personali ties, and the like." To find a remedy, " the suppressed desire is to be fished up, brought into relation with the conscious, harnessed to reality, sublimated." For a popular exposition of Freudian and other Psycho-analytic Methods, see Wilfrid Lay, Man's Unconscious Conflict, 1918.