PROFESSOR FREUD
SIR,—It seems a pity that so devoted a Freudian as Doctor Ernest Jones should have pronounced the funeral oration in The Spectator over the late Professor Freud. No one would cavil at the tribute he pays Freud for the latter's pioneer work in describing the unconscious. But it is not a fair statement of the case to say that the peculiar nature of the unconscious was responsible for the subsequent violent oppo- sition to Freud's teachings. The trouble is that a knowledge of the secret forces within us does not help us with regard to action, which must take place on a plane where we can more or less see what we are doing. Such knowledge might even prove a hindrance. Imagine, for instance, a man wondering whether to take part in a war or not, and instead of trying to reason the thing out attempting to contemplate the " con- cealed sado-masochism " in the depths of his nature!
This kind of consideration accounts for the fact that in Central Europe, the home of psycho-analysis, there are still more neurotics than elsewhere, and that even in our own England those who go to the psycho-analyst for treatment usually come out after some weeks worse men than they went in. From Dr. Jones' article one would gather that Freud had discovered something as beneficently certain as the cure for diphtheria. And he just didn't—Yours faithfully, TERENCE GREENIDGE. 55 Netheravon Road, Chiswick, W. 4.
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