CHAPTER V
The Unconscious
The sphere of the unconscious infantile phantasies has become
the real object of psychoanalytic investigation. As we have
previously pointed out, this domain seems to retain the key to the
etiology of neurosis. In contradistinction with the trauma
theory, we are forced by the reasons already adduced to seek in
the family history for the basis of our present psychoanalytic
attitude. Those phantasy-systems which patients exhibit on mere
questioning are for the most part composed and elaborated like
a novel or a drama. Although they are greatly elaborated, they
are relatively of little value for the investigation of the unconscious.
Just because they are conscious, they have already deferred
over-much to the claims of etiquette and social morality.
Hence they have been purged of all personally painful and ugly
details, and are presentable to society, revealing very little. The
valuable, and much more important phantasies are not conscious
in the sense already defined, but are to be discovered through the
technique of psychoanalysis.
Without wishing to enter fully into the question of technique, I must here meet an objection that is constantly heard. It is that the so-called unconscious phantasies are only suggested to the patient and only exist in the minds of psychoanalysts. This objection belongs to that common class which ascribes to them the crude mistakes of beginners. I think only those without psychological experience and without historical psychological knowledge are capable of making such criticisms. With a mere glimmering of mythological knowledge, one cannot fail to notice the striking parallels between the unconscious phantasies discovered by the psychoanalytic school and mythological images. The objection that our knowledge of mythology has been suggested to the patient is groundless, for the psychoanalytic school first discovered the unconscious phantasies, and only then became acquainted with mythology. Mythology itself is obviously something outside the path of the medical man. In so far as these phantasies are un-
