A Dominie in Doubt Part 23
If I dream that my father is dead the Freudians declare that I either wish or, in the past, have wished unconsciously for my father's death.
But surely so alarming a wish would be changed into a harmless form if there were a censor. One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray, was dead. The first a.s.sociation to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of chap." I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely my own laziness symbolised. The dream was a hint to me to be up and doing, for I had been neglecting a task that I should have undertaken.
There is what might be called the cheese-and-tripe supper theory of the dream held by many people.
"There's nothing in dreams," they say, "nothing but the disorders following late supper."
A cheese-and-tripe supper will cause queer dreams, but the advocates of this theory cannot explain why a tripe supper should make me dream of--say--a tiger. Why not a lion or a mouse?
It is an accepted fact now in psychology that the dream is the working of the unconscious. Some theosophists claim that during sleep your spirit leaves your body and seeks the astral plane, but I have never seen anything resembling evidence of this. It may be a fact for all that.
Concerning the prophetic aspect of dreams I know nothing. I have heard that the night before the Tay Bridge disaster a woman dreamt that it was to take place, and she persuaded her husband not to travel by that ill-fated train, but I cannot vouch for the story. I believe, however, that the dream is prophetic in that the unconscious during the night is working out the problems of the next day. The popular saying about sleeping over a problem shows that there is a real belief in this aspect. I know a lady who was undergoing a.n.a.lysis. She was suffering from a father complex, that is, her infantile fixation on the father had remained with her, and unconsciously she was approving or disapproving of every man she met according as he did or did not in some way resemble her father.
For a few weeks after the a.n.a.lysis began she was always dreaming that she was back in her childhood home, and in her dreams she was always trying to get away from home and her father was always restraining her from going. Often the figure in the dream was not the father, but the a.s.sociations always showed that the figure was standing for the father.
One night the figure was the King, and her first a.s.sociation was: "The King's name is George. . . . That's father's name too."
This seems to be a case where the unconscious is striving to find a solution.
The way the unconscious does things is wonderful. I remember one night listening to a lecture by Homer Lane. He brought forward a new theory about education, and it was so deep that I did not quite grasp its meaning. At the time Alan, Homer Lane's youngest child, was one of the pupils in the school in which I taught. That night I dreamt that I was standing before a cla.s.s. Alan was sitting in the front seat, and behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest child." The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest. Here again I cannot see why any censor should change a theory into a child.
In my _Log_ I make a very, very poor statement about s.e.x instruction.
I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory of birth until the age of nine. That was a wrong belief, but then at that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll. I see now that the child should be told the truth about s.e.x whenever he asks for information. But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have s.e.xually educated their child when they tell him where babies come from. The physiological side of s.e.x is the less important; you can take a child through all the usual stages--pollination of plants, fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find no help in these informations when he faces his s.e.x instinct at adolescence. s.e.x instruction should be psychological; it should deal with the s.e.x instinct as one form of life force or libido. The child should be led to face it openly. It should be entirely dissociated from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.
Who is to give the instruction? That is the difficulty. Most parents and teachers cannot do it because their own s.e.x instinct is all wrong.
Make a remark about s.e.x in the company of adults, and it will be reacted to in two ways; some will grin and laugh; others will be shocked. I hasten to add that the shocked ones are worse than the laughers. The laugh is a release of s.e.x repressions; the shocked appearance is a compensation for an unconscious over-interest in s.e.x.
Anyway neither type is capable of talking about s.e.x to children, and since humanity is roughly divided into prudes and sinners (not saints and sinners), there is little hope of a frank s.e.x education for kiddies.
Many people say: "Oh, leave it to the doctors," but personally I haven't enough faith in doctors. Their att.i.tude to s.e.x is usually no better than the att.i.tude of the layman. I know doctors who could give excellent instruction to children on the physiology of s.e.x, but the only doctors of my acquaintance who could teach the psychological side are psycho-a.n.a.lysts or psycho-therapists of some sort.
Teachers can tackle the s.e.x problem negatively. s.e.x activity is a form of life force or interest, and if a child is not finding life interesting enough there is a danger that he will regress to what is called auto-eroticism. When we remember that the s.e.xual instinct is the creative instinct, and that creation in dancing or music or poetry or art of any kind is sublimated s.e.x, that is s.e.x raised to a higher power, we can readily see that one of the most important parts of a teacher's job is to provide ways and means for creation. I realise that this is not enough, but, as I say, I cannot see the way to a good s.e.x education, until every teacher and parent has discovered his or her own s.e.x complexes. Co-education helps, for then the commingling of the s.e.xes affords a harmless and unconscious outlet for s.e.x interest. But co-education is no panacea, for the s.e.x problems of the individual child in a co-educational school are almost as immediate as those of the child from the segregated school.
IX.
This morning I was setting off for Dundee when Willie Marshall entered the compartment. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and I wondered why he was going to Dundee on a Wednesday.
"Hullo, Willie!" I cried, "what's on to-day?"
He looked troubled and angry.
"I've been summoned to serve on the jury that's tryin' that dawmed rat that stailt ten pund frae the minister," he said viciously, "and I had little need to lose a day, for I hae far mair work than I can dae.
Mossbank's twa cairts cam in yestreen, and he's swearin' like onything that he maun hae them by the nicht." Willie is a joiner, and most of his work is building and repairing carts.
"So you think that Nosie Broon is guilty?" I said with a smile.
"Of coorse he is," he cried with emphasis.
"But," I said seriously, "you'll maybe alter your mind when you hear the evidence."
He grunted.
"Dawn nae fear! I'll show him that he's no to drag me awa frae ma work for nothing!"
He opened his _Dundee Courier_, and I sat and thought of the trial by jury method. I would not condemn it on the strength of Willie's dangerous misunderstanding of what it means, but I do condemn it on other grounds. Weighing evidence is a difficult enough business even for the specialist, for it is almost impossible to eliminate emotion in forming a judgment. With a jury of citizens, some of them possibly illiterate, too much depends on the advocates, or on outside causes.
During the war there was a glaring instance of this. A soldier shot the man who had been trying to steal his wife's love . . . and the verdict of the jury was Not Guilty. The emotional factor in this case was that the dead man was a German. I am not arguing that the prisoner should have been hanged or imprisoned, for I think both procedures are bad; I merely point out that in the eyes of legalism the soldier was guilty, yet the jury threw legalism overboard.
Another instance of the emotional factor over-ruling legalism is seen in the trial of the man who shot Jaures. He was acquitted. . . . Not Guilty . . . the man who slew one of the best men in Europe. On the other hand the youth who attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate Clemenceau was sentenced to death, pardoned, and sent to penal servitude. In France therefore it is a crime to kill a politician of the right, but a virtue to kill one of the Socialist left.
Abstract justice is a figment. No jury and no judge can be impartial.
The other day a man was charged with striking a Socialist orator with an ice-pick. The judge lectured the orator on his Bolshevism, and then gave the accused imprisonment for a short term in the second division.
Suppose that the Bolshevist had used an ice-pick on a Cabinet Minister!
I do not think that our judges and magistrates ever consciously show partiality. They are an upright cla.s.s of men, men above suspicion. It is their unconscious that shows partiality just as mine does. The army colonels who tried Conscientious Objectors were upright men, but it was wrong to imagine that they could possibly see the C.O.'s point of view.
So it was with the regular R.A.M.C. doctors. To some of them the neurotic patient was a swinger of the lead, a malingerer. They had never heard of the new psychiatry, and the neurotic was a strange creature to them. Their ignorance supplemented their prejudice, and they could not possibly have treated these men with justice.
The truth is that we all make up our minds according as our buried complexes impel us. If I saw a Frenchman fighting a Scot I should take the Scot's side, because I have a Scot complex. Occasionally our complexes work in the opposite way. I fancy that the few people who sided with the Germans in the war were suffering from an "agin the government" complex, which, if you trace it deep enough is usually found to be an infantile rebellion against the father. In this case the State represented the father, and Germany was the outside helper who should conquer the father (or mother) country. Had Germany won, the unpatriotic man would immediately have turned his hate against Prussia, for then Prussia would have been the father subst.i.tute.
Our loves and hates and fears are within ourselves. I know a man who has a nagging wife; she has a constant wish for new things. He bought her a hat, and for two days she was happy; then she nagged, and he bought her a dress. Three days later she demanded a necklace, and he gave her a necklace. He may continue giving her everything she asks for, but if he buys her a Rolls Royce and a house in Park Lane she will be a dissatisfied woman, for "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves." I advised him to spend his money on having her psycho-a.n.a.lysed.
To-night Tammas Lownie the joiner came into Dauvit's shop. He is an infrequent attender at Dauvit's parliament, and Dauvit seemed slightly surprised at his entry.
"Weel, Tammas," he said, "it's no often that we see you here. What's brocht ye here the nicht?"
Tammas spat in the grate.
"Oh, it was a fine nicht, and I thought I'd just tak a daunder yont,"
he said easily.
Dauvit looked at him searchingly.
"Na, na, Tammas, it winna dae! It wasna the fine nicht that brocht ye yont. Ye've got some news I'm thinkin'."
Tammas laughed loudly.
"Dauvit, ye're oncanny!" he cried. "Ye seem to read what's at the back o' a man's held. But I have nae news to gie ye."
Dauvit chuckled.
"I wudna wonder if ye didna come yont to tell me aboot the eldership,"
he said slowly.
The expression on Tammas's face showed that he _had_ come to tell us that the minister had asked him to become an elder.