there is maintained an active association of symbol and episode in the unconscious levels, which is excluded completely from conscious awareness. To illustrate the serious consequences which this situation may produce, the following instance is offered:

Thomas Hittit, the son of a famous baseball-player, came to the clinic one day to ask if anything could be done for his affliction of periodic drunkenness. He told of being a successful and highly trusted messenger in the employ of a large banking establishment. He was, indeed, so valuable a man that the president of his institution often sent him with confidential information to the executives of other trust companies in the town. To visit one of these he had found to be a particularly difficult task, because always, as he entered the door, he felt a sudden loss of confidence, a sense of anxiety bearing with it a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach and a weak sensation all over. It was a curious thing, he said, that usually following a visit to this bank an alcoholic bout began.

ball. "Diddy Hittit, Diddy Hittit—no, he Didn't Hittit." And so he hated and feared baseball, and each day, for all the years he had to play at school, he feared humiliation and went to the field with what has been called a heavy heart, but which is really a heavy pressure of fear on the solar plexus. Then, as years passed, all this schoolboy misery was forgotten and he became a successful and vigorous worker till the drink habit got its hold. As the details of his life history were unfolded it became quite clear that he had begun using alcohol as a method of escape from situations that produced feelings of anxiety and humiliation akin to those he had known at school. Whenever one of these occasions arose he had drowned his sorrows by the ancient custom of getting magnificently drunk. That the whole strange problem was in some way associated with baseball there could be no doubt. Thomas had not been to see a game in the thirty-five years since he left school and he always skipped over the baseball sheet in the newspapers. Finally, after much questioning about the hoodoo bank, the jinx was discovered. Next door to the main entrance was a sporting-goods shop whose windows held an alluring display of baseball bats and other paraphernalia of the game. These were the symbols, then, which, like the frown to Alice, implied the presence of humiliating criticism. On each occasion when Thomas had approached the trust-company entrance there had moved through his conscious mind thoughts of his immediate business mission. But subtly, like thieves in the night, the baseball symbols in the window crept unnoticed and unrecognized into the depths of his subconscious memory and resurrected again the ancient schoolboy terrors. This memory

Further questioning soon brought out a most surprising story. As a little boy Thomas basked in the glory of his father's prowess, which the grown son of to-day still proudly compared to that of the famous Babe Ruth. The name of Hittit was heard on the lips of all throughout the land. But as Thomas grew older and at the public school engaged in the great game, it was soon found that he wofully lacked his father's wallop. In fact, he was gauche at every point of the game, and quickly, on this account, became the butt of the school. His greatest humiliation was finally achieved in the nickname Diddy, which arose gleefully from his companions when he swung helplessly at the

fear acted, then, just as any proper fear would have acted if, for example, Tony the Blood had stepped out of the window armed with a Colt automatic. It deftly touched Thomas's solar plexus, as a light-fingered gentleman does a pocketbook, unbeknown to his conscious awareness, and released the dogs of war. Then followed all the unpleasant sensations which are popularly recognized as belonging to the state of fear. The responsibility for their production, however, was falsely placed upon the trust-company building.

Even though it is sometimes possible to do so, we seldom give a thought to the extent and vividness of those fantastic dramas which are constantly moving upon the hidden stage of our unconscious minds. Far too many active stimuli are engaging our immediate attention at every waking moment to permit such deflections of the stream of consciousness. Yet these dramatizations of the past form such powerful influences within our emotional lives that they frequently burst through to confuse us in our tussle with the palpable present. It is not difficult to understand why this should be so when one contemplates the fact that the "mindful tablets of the memory" are vast and exquisitely sensitive. Furthermore, no impression made in their plastic surfaces is ever lost. Upon them are graven not only those experiences which we can consciously call to mind—that is, remember-but also innumerable others so tiny and remote that they pass unheeded, like the swift shadow of a bird across a colorful, sunlit meadow. There is an immense storehouse for these mindful tablets wherein lie packed in orderly sequence all the sensations and experiences which have impinged upon our consciousness from the earliest moment

at which it was capable of receiving an impression. Side by side upon the tablets with each experience lies the attendant emotion which sprang to life at the time of its recording. Those impressions which have been most recently graven, and so lie nearest to the present moment, we can most easily call to mind or consciously remember. Others, pressed down securely at the lower levels where rest the records of our early days, rarely float into consciousness again save at the magic instance of some unexpected symbolic messenger.

It is not easy for most of us to describe our earliest memory. Some people declare that they remember experiences which occurred when they were five, or four, or even three years of age. At times the vividness of these remote events is startling, and we sense again the emotional thrill which accompanied them. Often people will say that a whistled melody, or an odorous whiff on the summer breeze, will recall some forgotten experience so intensely that the original feeling of fear or anger or love which was associated with it surges through them again. But if the purpose of emotion be to enable the organism, through a process of rapid energizing, to meet an immediate situation which confronts it, clearly emotions which are aroused by the symbolic and not actual content of reality lead to futile expenditure of protective energy. Yet, because of his subservience to the effect of symbols, man is continually setting in motion his life and soul saving machinery. Thus unwittingly he squanders to-day's supply of precious defensive energy upon the no-longer-existent menaces of yesterday.

There are, however, two very special fear-laden human experiences which are common to all men. One of these is

the fear of physical death, and the other is the much-talked-of inferiority sense. The latter actually is the expression of fear for the life of the idealistic ego, or personality. While it is doubtless true that most people will tell you serenely and in all sincerity that they are not afraid to die, yet there is nevertheless deep-rooted in the hearts of men the fear of death. To say that one is not afraid to die is merely the expression of a determination, backed by logic or sentiment, to behave well at the approach of the unavoidable circumstance of death; it is the behavior of a courageous soldier going over the top. Not long ago, for example, a man came to the clinic to get relief from severe attacks of indigestion and nausea. These were violent, occurred at irregular intervals, and had obstinately resisted all sorts of medicines and dietary regulations. When he was asked if he could remember the first attack he laughed somewhat apologetically and said:

"Why, yes, I remember very well, but of course it has no possible connection with the real cause. It occurred twenty-five years ago, when I was sixteen years old, at the funeral of my brother, who had been killed in a railway accident. The day was hot and sultry, and as the hearse moved away I felt dizzy and nauseated and had a sense of oppression in the pit of my stomach." Further discussion at length brought out the interesting fact, which he had previously not recognized, that his present attacks only came on after he had attended a funeral. Lately, however, they had become more frequent. Finally it developed that the last attack had arisen rather suddenly after rounding a corner and seeing what he had at first taken to be an undertakers' wagon drawn up in front of the house of an old

and dear friend. "My God," his first impulse had been, “Jim must be dead!" A second glance showed that it was an ambulance which he had mistaken for the more grim conveyance. Within a few hours he began to be dizzy and nauseated and felt the old sense of oppression in the pit of his stomach. These digestive disorders were classical fear symptoms, yet the patient would surely have faced the event of his own death with courage.

The actual presence, however, of so obvious a symbol of death as the hearse is often not necessary to provoke sensations of apprehension. For example, one occasionally meets people who indulge, under the subtle dictate of fear, in the curious habit of reading daily the death notices in the morning paper. If you question one who practises this diversion, you will inevitably find that unknown names of the dead provoke no emotional stir. Should a friend's name appear in the morning list a slightly startled interest leads the inquirer to reread the notice. But if the name be that of a relative-and the closer the relative the more intense the reaction-a feeling of disquietude akin to physical sensation creeps over the body. Actually, of course, the approach of the hand of death is no nearer to the reader in the event that a relative had died than it would be at the announcement of the departure of an unknown person. Yet inevitably the dread presence seems

closer.

Biologically, from the standpoint of the species, death is essential to life, but the individual vital organism concerned with self-preservation cannot readily accept the truth. The urge of living things is toward life, and death, therefore, is an untenable concept for those that live. Consequently, the insignia of

death act as a warning to the living to take what steps they may to preserve themselves. The fear of death makes you put your rubbers on when it rains and obey the traffic policeman at Broadway and 42d Street. Yet such protections of the physical being are instantly disregarded by men and women if they retard an effort to rescue the life or limb of another. We readily sacrifice these physical members to save our souls.

Now, this business of saving our souls is, so far as we know, an interest which William and Ethel do not, at least consciously, share with us. The human being, however, is acutely, almost physically, aware of his psychic individuality. Indeed, as has already been pointed out, the maintenance of this sense of wholeness of self is his most vital need, for which he is ready at any time to sacrifice a limb or even life itself. But if this demand for ego adequacy and stability is so essential, whence does the universally recognized and much-talked-of inferiority sense arise, and what may be its significance?

In connection with the first of these queries it may not be amiss to recall the radically opposite states of mind which Gulliver experienced during his sojourn, first at Lilliput and later at Brobdingnag. His feelings of ego adequacy among the tiny folk of the former land were commensurate with his relatively immense physical bulk. But beside the gigantic Brobdingnagians Gulliver's inconsiderable form implied to him, whether justifiably or not, the suggestion of his general inadequacy and consequent probable destruction. Great physical size in a man is no doubt an immense asset, so far as its impressive effect upon others is concerned, and

may in a large measure offset marked limitations of character and intellect. But we are actually all born upon the shores of Brobdingnag. For against the background of our first awareness of an earthly environment move the colossal forms of parents and nurses towering above our bassinets. Then for many years, ten or fifteen at least, our awakening and growing consciousness still thrusts itself out among companions who are always twice as big and more powerful than we are ourselves. And so we are thrown back upon the support of our fantasy. We don armor and slay dragons, we become Indians on the war-path, and finally with our wonderful friend Jack we climb the bean-stalk and kill the giants who thus hold us in thrall. It may be that the struggle to overcome giants is nature's plan to develop in man qualities of enterprise, fortitude, and vigorous action. The overproduction of this compensatory effort, indeed, may be one reason at least for the astonishing achievements for those very great little men of history -Cæsar, Napoleon, John Hunter, and Lord Nelson.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that many a child is permanently crippled in spirit by his inevitable passage through Brobdingnag. Nor do parents always help as much to encourage their Lilliputian offspring as they might. "No, darling, better not try to climb that tree. You're not big enough yet; mother's afraid you may hurt yourself." The inferiority sense is fear-fear that, owing to a sense of personal inadequacy, life cannot go on. This sense of ineffectiveness may be generally applied to all points of contact with life. Or it may gradually contract and focus on one or two special relationships. One man once told me that, because of a persis

tent shyness in the face of lordly head waiters in fashionable restaurants, he could never secure the table his wife wanted him to get for her. With a sense of failure in his heart this man regularly encouraged himself by telling her that he didn't think it good form to engage in noisy and public demonstration for the favor of a servant. Then there was a

little boy of five who looked up at his unusually large father one day and said, by way of self-support: "It must be uncomfortable to be so big." That was the only possible method to pick a flaw in the complete advantage of bigness-by which unconsciously the child could save himself and maintain his sense of wholeness and stability.

Pain, disease, death, and humiliation -these are the dragons which, either in actuality or implied through symbol,

surround us. The few perilous actualities of life are dragons indeed and must be met with the heart of Saint George. But all the vast horde of symbolic representations are but chimeras and Medusa's heads which must be looked at, as they were by Perseus, in a mirror. Man can often be released from the spell of a symbol through the apparently simple process of retrieving the ancient episode with its attendant fear emotion, for this process draws it into direct contact and comparison with the content of his conscious consciousness. In the companionship of these robust and obvious children of the immediate and palpable environment the ancient and terrifying image rapidly fades and we step forth from the valley of the shadow into the comfortable warmth of sunlit reality.