14 Compare Freud's "Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben," Jahrbuch, Vol. I, ist half; also Jung: "Konflikte der kindlichen Seele," Jahrbuch, II, Vol. I.
15 Others do not make use of this step, but are directly carried away by Eros.
16 "La sagesse et la destinée."
17 This time I shall hardly be spared the reproach of mysticism. But perhaps the facts should be further considered; doubtless the unconscious contains material which does not rise to the threshold of consciousness. The analysis dissolves these combinations into their historical determinants, for it is one of the essential tasks of analysis to render impotent by dissolution the content of the complexes competing with the proper conduct of life. Psychoanalysis works backwards like the science of history. Just as the largest part of the past is so far removed that it is not reached by history, so too the greater part of the unconscious determinants is unreachable. History, however, knows nothing of two kinds of things, that which is hidden in the past and that which is hidden in the future. Both perhaps might be attained with a certain probability; the first as a postulate, the second as an historical prognosis. In so far as to-morrow is already contained in to-day, and all the threads of the future are in place, so a more profound knowledge of the past might render possible a more or less far-reaching and certain knowledge of the future. Let us transfer this reasoning, as Kant has already done, to psychology. Then necessarily we must come to the same result. Just as traces of memory long since fallen below the threshold of consciousness are accessible in the unconscious, so too there are certain very fine subliminal combinations of the future, which are of the greatest significance for future happenings in so far as the future is conditioned by our own psychology. But just so little as the science of history concerns itself with the combinations for the future, which is the function of politics, so little, also, are the psychological combinations for the future the object of analysis; they would be much more the object of an infinitely refined psychological synthesis, which attempts to follow the natural current of the libido. This we cannot do, but possibly this might happen in the unconscious, and it appears as if from time to time, in certain cases, significant fragments of this process come to light, at least in dreams. From this comes the prophetic significance of the dream long claimed by superstition.
The aversion of the scientific man of to-day to this type of thinking, hardly to be called phantastic, is merely an overcompensation to the very ancient and all too great inclination of mankind to believe in prophesies and superstitions.
18 Dreams seem to remain spontaneously in the memory just so long as they give a correct résumé of the psychologic situation of the individual.
19 How paltry are the intrinsic ensemble and the detail of the erotic experience, is shown by this frequently varied love song which I quote in its epirotic form:
Epirotic Love Song
(Zeitschrift des Vereines für Volkskunde, XII, p. 159.)
O Maiden, when we kissed, then it was night; who saw us?
A night Star saw us, and the moon,
And it leaned downward to the sea, and gave it the tidings,
