Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/113

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THE HYMN OF CREATION
55

had to contain a powerful repetition. From analytic experience, one knows that the early dreams which patients bring for analysis are none the less of especial interest, because of the fact that they bring out criticisms and valuations of the physician's personality, which previously, would have been asked for directly in vain. They enrich the conscious impression which the patient had of his physician, and often concerning very important points. They are naturally erotic observations which the unconscious was forced to make, just because of the quite universal undervaluation and uncertain judgment of the relatively weak erotic impression. In the drastic and hyperbolic manner of expression of the dream, the impression often appears in almost unintelligible form on account of the immeasurable dimension of the symbol. A further peculiarity which seems to rest upon the historic strata of the unconscious, is this—that an erotic impression, to which conscious acknowledgment is denied, usurps an earlier and discarded transference and expresses itself in that. Therefore, it frequently happens, for example, that among young girls at the time of their first love, remarkable difficulties develop in the capacity for erotic expression, which may be reduced analytically to disturbances through a regressive attempt at resuscitation of the father image, or the "Father-Imago."6

Indeed, one might presume something similar in Miss Miller's case, for the idea of the masculine creative deity is a derivation, analytically and historically psychologic, of the "Father-Imago,"7 and aims, above all, to replace the discarded infantile father transference in such a way