“The story of Œdipus is the reaction of the imagination to these two typical dreams [of murdering one’s father and marrying one’s mother]. And just as the dream when occurring to an adult is experienced with feelings of resistance, so the legend must contain terror and self-chastisement. The appearance which it further assumes is the result of an uncomprehending secondary elaboration which tries to make it serve a theological purpose. The attempt to reconcile divine omnipotence with human responsibility must, of course, fail with this material as with every other.”[90] So it is an “uncomprehending” elaboration which busies itself with trying to reconcile divine omnipotence with human responsibility. One would hardly expect an uncomprehending elaboration to succeed in such a task. As to actual incompatibility of the two ideas, it is such a large question that I prefer to consider it later under another head. Freud goes on:[91] “The unconscious idea, as such, is altogether incapable of entering into the foreconscious, and ... it can exert an influence there only by uniting with a harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to which it transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be concealed.” “Allows itself to be concealed!” It has intelligence and purpose, this unconscious thought. A cunning fellow for a mere reflex in a process antedating memory and reason. But the theatre has suddenly become dark with purple shadows through which absurdity stalks, obscure but naked and unashamed. The unconscious wish is incapable of entering into the foreconscious, but, without entering it, nevertheless manages to exert an influence there, by means of what go-between Freud only knows; for the “harmless idea” with which union is to be made is already beyond reach in the foreconscious. Nor is this all. “The relations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the situation existing in Austria for the American dentist, who is forbidden to practice unless he gets permission from a regular physician to use his name on the public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements. Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest physicians who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only such foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed idea as have not themselves attracted much ... attention.”[92] The _entrepreneur_ (French for “undertaker”) has now become a dentist, and the entire Austrian code of civil procedure has been introduced into the psychic apparatus. Yet, such is the lure of figurative speech, so easy is it to fancy that whatever can be true of the figure is necessarily true of the abstraction for which it “doubles,” that even Freud obviously thinks he is saying something.