I formerly was inclined to interpret such paradoxical emotions on the principle of the simple linking of an affect to a perception. But when we consider that, on the reversion of the personality to BI the perception, meaning, and affect still remained organized as a conscious psychic whole, it is much more probable that the meaning took part as a subconscious process in the mechanism of BIV’s emotional psychosis and was responsible for the paradox. In the case of recurrent fears the antecedent experiences which contain their meaning are conserved as unconscious complexes. The psychosis differs clinically from types A and B only in that another conscious element has been added,—viz.: the idea of an object of the fear. It is consistent therefore to infer that the unconscious complexes are a submerged part of the mechanism by which the affect is maintained in association with the object. The conscious and the subconscious form a psychic whole. As an instance let us take the following case of phobia. It was ostensibly one of church-steeples and towers of any kind. The patient, a woman about forty years of age, dreaded and tried in consequence to avoid the sight of one. When she passed by such a tower she was very strongly affected emotionally, experiencing always a feeling of terror or anguish accompanied by the usual marked physical symptoms. Sometimes even speaking of a tower would at once awaken this emotional complex which expressed itself outwardly in her face, as I myself observed on several occasions. Considering the frequency with which church and schoolhouse towers are met with in everyday life, one can easily imagine the discomfort arising from such a phobia. Before the mystery was unraveled she was unable to give any explanation of the origin or meaning of this phobia, and could not connect it with any episode in her life, or even state how far back in her life it had existed. Vaguely she thought it existed when she was about fifteen years of age and that it might have existed before that. Now it should be noted that an idea of a tower with bells had in her mind no meaning whatsoever that explained the fear. It had no more meaning than it would have in anybody’s mind. In the content of consciousness there was only the perception plus emotion and no corresponding meaning. Accordingly I sought to discover the origin and meaning of the phobia by the so-called psycho-analytic method. When I attempted to recover the associated memories by this method, the mere mention of bells in a tower threw her into a panic in which anxiety, “thrills,” and perspiration were prominent. Before making the analysis I had constructed a theory in my mind to the effect that a phobia for bells in a tower was a sexual symbolism, being led to this partly by the suggestiveness of the object and partly by the fact that I had found symbolisms of a sexual kind in her dreams.[183]