“The Unconscious,” or desire before psychoanalysis has enabled it to understand itself, may be either a literal description of mental dynamics, or a symbol that psychiatrists find useful in their practice, a symbol that abstracts from the psychical actuality much as atoms and ethers do from physical actuality. That psychoanalytic treatments have some success does not prove the truth of the practitioner’s mental pictures. The Ptolemaic astronomy correctly predicted eclipses; the Mesmeric fluid, animal magnetism, the king’s touch, spirits of deceased Indian chiefs--all have been effective for purposes of mental healing. Recently a psychoanalyst, MacCurdy, has pointed out that the patient’s emotional reorganization and recovery may take place around a secondary or minor complex instead of the one that is the primary cause of the disturbance; the essential thing is to secure the proper attitude and procedure for reconstruction. The cure, then, does not prove that any theory of the contents or the processes of “the Unconscious” is correct. There remains as evidence of the wild-animal-den view the fact that the patient himself accepts it as true in his own case. “Yes,” he says, “I see that I have desired to commit incest with my mother, or to murder my father. I didn’t realize it until now.” In other words, a psychoanalytic theory has been transferred to him in the course of the analysis. There is no evidence that he has become a psychologist, or that his ability at introspection has achieved a trustworthy stage. When witchcraft was believed, confessions were made, apparently sincere confessions, that one had “signed the Devil’s book,” or that one had done other monstrous deeds. Under questioning in court witnesses have recalled things that they never witnessed. A still closer parallel with psychoanalysis is the success of many a revivalist in convincing people of their utter moral worthlessness and helplessness, that they are creatures of the devil, moved solely by evil desires. In both cases the person who brings the relief is the one through whom the certainty of one’s inner baseness first arises.