A Dominie in Doubt Part 22
"Yes, I see that," said Duncan thoughtfully, "but what about compet.i.tion? The prize at the end introduces a breezy struggle for place."
I shook my head.
"No compet.i.tion! I won't have it. It makes the chap at the top of the cla.s.s a prig, and gives the poor chap at the bottom an inferiority complex. No, we want to encourage not compet.i.tion but co-operation.
Compet.i.tion leads naturally to another world war, as compet.i.tion between British and American capital is doing now."
Then Duncan floored me.
"And would you discourage football because it introduces the idea of compet.i.tion?" he asked.
"Of course not," I replied
"Then why discourage it in arithmetic?" he asked.
It was an arresting question, and I had to grope for an answer that would convince not only Duncan but myself. That every healthy boy likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot ignore. Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake Tosh are fundamentally the same desire, the desire for self-a.s.sertion. And I see that the man who comes in last in the quarter-mile race is in the same position of inferiority as the boy who is always at the bottom of the cla.s.s. Yet I condemn compet.i.tion in school-work while I appreciate compet.i.tion in games. Why?
I think I should leave it to the children. Obviously they like to compete in games and races, but they have no natural desire to compete in lessons. It appears that some things naturally lend themselves to compet.i.tion--racing, boxing, billiards, jumping, football and so on.
Other things do not encourage compet.i.tion. Bernard Shaw and G. K.
Chesterton do not compete in the output of books; Freud and Jung do not struggle to publish the record number of a.n.a.lysis cases; George Robey and Little Tich do not appear together on the stage of the Palladium and try to prove which is the funnier. Rivalry there always is, but it remains only rivalry until _The Daily Mail_ offers a prize for the biggest cabbage or sweet-pea, and then compet.i.tion seizes suburbia.
I should therefore leave the children to discover for themselves what interests lend themselves to compet.i.tion, and what interests do not. I know beforehand that of their own accord they will not introduce it into school subjects. This is in accord with my views on the authority question. I insist that the teacher will impose nothing; that his task is to watch the children find their own solution.
I must write down a wise saying that came from Dauvit. A rambling and ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night.
Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my word for it, Bolshevism is wrong."
"How do you make that out, Dauvit?" I asked.
"Because it's a success," he said shortly.
To-night the Rev. Mr. Smith, the U.F. minister, came in. He is one of the unco' guid, and to him all pleasures are sinful. It happened that I was telling Macdonald the Freudian theory of dreams when he entered, and when Mac told him what the conversation had been about, he begged me to continue. It was evident that he had never heard of dream interpretation, and he was surprised.
"And every dream has a meaning?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I had a dream last night," he began, but I held up a warning hand.
"You shouldn't tell your dreams in public," I said hastily; "they may give things away that you don't want others to know."
He laughed.
"I don't mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk. Last night I dreamt that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most obscene stories. According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a wish. Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such a company?"
I explained that the dream as told is not the dream in reality, the meaning lies behind the symbolism, and it can be got at by the method of free a.s.sociation. I also explained that I did not believe the Freud theory, that the dream is always a wish, and suggested that Jung was a surer guide.
"According to Jung," I said, "the dream is often compensatory. In your own case you are consciously living the higher life, but there is another side of life that you are ignoring, and that is the vulgar pub side. Your dream is a hint that the vulgar side of life cannot be ignored. You may ignore it consciously, but your unconscious will seek the other side in your dreams."
This seemed to make him think.
"But the saints and martyrs!" he cried. "Think of the thousands who crucified the flesh so that they might win the everlasting crown! Do you tell me that they were all wrong?"
I lit my pipe.
"I think they were," I said, "for they merely repressed their animal life. They thought that they had conquered it, but they only buried it. The real saint is the man who faces his flesh boldly and loves it too, just as much as he loves his G.o.d."
Then the minister fled.
The interpretation of dreams is one of the most fascinating studies in the world. The method as evolved by Freud is simple, although the interpretation is anything but simple. Obviously the average dream has no meaning. You dream that a horse speaks to you, and then it turns into your brother. It is all nonsense, yet behind the nonsense is a serious meaning. Not long ago I was a.n.a.lysing a girl of sixteen.
About a week after the a.n.a.lysis began she brought a dream which began thus: "I am invisible, and I have a tail that I can take off or put on."
Following the method of free a.s.sociation I said to her: "What comes into your mind about being invisible?"
"Oh, I've often wanted to be invisible, for then I could do what I liked; then I would be free."
Being invisible therefore meant being free.
Then I asked her a.s.sociations to the tail part.
"Tail . . . monkeys at the Zoo; they are poor things always kept behind bars. Just like me. I forgot to say that my tail wasn't on in the dream."
Tail therefore meant something a.s.sociated with confinement and restriction. It is significant that her tail was unattached. I took it to mean a wish-fulfilment dream; in it she got free from her neurosis.
The following night she dreamt that she was being driven in a motor car by a sw.a.n.ky chauffeur. They came to the bottom of a hill, and the car stopped, and she got out and walked. Her first a.s.sociation was: "The chauffeur had a big green coat on, one just like the coat you wear."
"So I was the chauffeur?" I asked.
She brightened at once.
"I see it!" she cried. "The car is the a.n.a.lysis; you are driving me away from my old life!"
"Excellent!" I said, "but don't forget that the car stopped at the bottom of the hill. What does the word hill give you?"
"Something difficult to climb. I hated climbing it and thought it a shame that the motor didn't take me up."
"Well?"
"I've got to climb to get better, haven't I?"
"That's right," I said. "I told you the other night that no a.n.a.lyst should give advice, and I refused when you asked me for it. In your unconscious you realise that the chauffeur is not going to take you up the hill; in other words you've got to do most of the work."
Freud holds that there is a censor standing between the conscious and the unconscious. Primitive wishes seek to come from the unconscious, but the censor holds up his hand. "No," he says, "that's too disgusting; the conscious mind couldn't stand that; it would be shocked. You must disguise yourself in harmless form!" And so the infantile s.e.x wish is changed into a harmless dog or cycle. But if this is the case why should my little girl dream of me as a chauffeur?
There was nothing disgusting about me, nothing that her conscious mind could not face.
I prefer Jung's theory. He says that we dream in symbols because symbolism is the oldest language in the world, and, as the unconscious is primitive it uses this language. We all dream of shocking things, and if the endopsychic censor were really on duty he would never allow these disgusting dreams to get through.