and to imagine that she loved him. Of course this queer play did not escape the sharp eye of feminine jealousy. Mrs. A., her friend, felt the secret, was worried by it, and her nervousness grew proportionately. It became more and more necessary for her to go to a foreign health-resort. The farewell-party was a dangerous opportunity. The patient knew that her friend and rival was going off the same evening, so Mr. A. would be alone. Certainly she did not see this opportunity clearly, as women have the notable capacity "to think" purely emotionally, and not intellectually. For this reason, it seems to them as if they never thought about certain matters at all, but as a matter of fact she had a queer feeling all the evening. She felt extremely nervous, and when Mrs. A. had been accompanied to the station and had gone, the hysterical attack occurred on her way back. I asked her of what she had been thinking, or what she felt at the actual moment when the trotting horses came along. Her answer was, she had only a frightful feeling, the feeling that something dreadful was very near to her, which she could not escape. As you know, the consequence was that the exhausted patient was brought back into the house of the host, Mr. A. A simple human mind would understand the situation without difficulty. An uninitiated person would say: "Well, that is clear enough, she only intended to return by one way or another to Mr. A.'s house," but the psychologist would reproach this layman for his incorrect way of expressing himself, and would tell him that the patient was not conscious of the motives of her behavior, and that it was, therefore, not permissible to speak of the patient's intention to return to Mr. A.'s house.
There are, of course, learned psychologists who are capable of furnishing many theoretical reasons for disputing the meaning of this behavior. They base their reasons on the dogma of the identity of consciousness and psyche. The psychology inaugurated by Freud recognized long ago that it is impossible to estimate psychological actions as to their final meaning by conscious motives, but that the objective standard of their psychological results has to be applied for their right evaluation. Now-a-days it cannot be contested any longer that there are unconscious tendencies too, which have a great influence on our modes of reaction, and on the effects to which these in turn give rise.
