Here the psychiatrist distinctly gives to the childish wish that very importance which would naturally lead to excessive repressive measures and to abnormal interior reproach. Moreover, it follows that all of us who are not “sharply distinguished from ordinary human beings” would do well to lock ourselves up. For we are not only capable of entertaining such a wish, we have--so Freud has been telling us through fifty or sixty pages--already entertained it, time and time again. Which brings us to our-- _Sixth and Last Assumption_: That the cure for hysterical symptoms (and these include most of the ills to which flesh is heir) is the recapture by consciousness of the lost knowledge of that circumstance which drove the original wish-thought into the limbo of the lower psychic locality. The procedure is for the patient to dream a dream, or if he cannot do this to make up a dream, which the psychiatrist “analyzes.” Then the patient lies down on a couch, “relaxes,” and repeats whatever random thoughts come into his head as the various parts of the dream are brought to his attention. These “associated” thoughts are analyzed in their turn. If there is reluctance, the operator knows he has encountered modesty (“resistance,” he calls it) and has got the range. He can now tell where to train his guns. For all these neuroses, psychoses and psycho-neuroses (mental troubles in general and their physical results) are, according to the hypothesis, the children of shame. Kill shame, and the brats perish. That is what it amounts to. It may have seemed unaccountable that it should have been thought necessary to invent an elaborate system of dream interpretation when the psychiatrist is convinced from the moment his office door-bell rings that he is about to be confronted with a case of suppressed incest. But the hocus-pocus serves its turn. Never has the ingenuity of man devised a more effective excuse for the discussion of the abominations of the human heart. “But,” cries Freud, “my analyses bring about cures!” Granted. But that only proves that Freud the man is better than Freud the scientist and philosopher. The world is full of miserable wretches whose early education was of the most atrocious kind; who were first permitted improper contacts, and then taught that their infantile imaginings were unpardonable sins. The doctor poo-poos the whole matter, and they are relieved. In other words, if he is a wise doctor, he tries to remedy the defects of education by re-education. So long as he has to deal with those suffering from abuse, or from starvation of natural desires--desires which have failed of their ordinary satisfaction without having been sublimated by devotion to higher aims--so long as he deals with these unwilling anchorites and pitiable social victims, he does well.