INDIAN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY.

-:C-,- : , NAMES AND ADDRESSES-OF NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATE MEMBERS ELECTED DURING THE YEAR195.0

FOUR TYPES OF DREAMS INDICATING PROGRESS DURING PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT

BY
EDMUND BERGLER, M. D.

MEMBERS

Mrinal Kumar Barua R. T. Chinwalla . C. V. Ramana Rasiklal B. Shah

14 Ballygunge Circular Road, Calcutta 19Ismail House, Dongry, Bombay 9. 2701 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles 5, California. 13 Gunbow St., Bombay 1.

Starting with the "censor1' of Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS ( 1899 ), more and more emphasis has been placed on the ^" importance of the inner conscience in dreams- The clearest expression of this tendency is to be found in the suggestion made by Jekels and myself at the XIII International Psychoanalytical Convention in Lucerne (1934), in our joint paper "Instinct Dualism in Dreams". * We suggested that the original formulation "every dream expresses repressed infantile
wishes", be enlarged by adding : "and an attempt at refutation of reproa* ches stemming from the inner conscience (superego)", This enlargement

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS

{1) Samaresh Bhattacharjee (2) Jyotirmoy Chatterji (4) (5) (6) (7)

104 Upper Chitpore Road, Calcutta. 84 Russa Road South, Calcutta 33. 269 Vivekananda Road, Calcutta. Surama Das Gupta (Mrs) 89 Beltala Road, Calcutta 26. Hashi Gupta (Mrs) 9/6/1E Peary Mohan Sur Lane, Calcutta 6. Abraham Joseph 81-83 Rukkulbai Palace, Bombay 10. Krishna, Sen (Miss) 42/1 Ritchie Road, Calcutta 19.

SAMIKSA VOLUME 4, NUMBER 4, 1950, pp 190-242.

became necessary b y . Freud's investigations concerning the duality of instincts. We exemplified our contention on extensive clinical material, adducing also Freud's own famous dreamof "Irma's injection" ( 1895 ), which became the paradigm from which generation after generation of young analysts have been learning the technique of dream y interpretation. s > It would lead us far afield to repeat the theoretical and practical considerations prompting the suggestion of greater emphasis on the part played by the superego in the psychic economy, hence, also in dreams ; I am referring to my book, THE BATTLE OF THE CONSCIENCE.f In the present paper, I wish to concentrate on specific dreams, directly connected with the analytic procedure, giving both, theanalysand and the analyst, the possibility of a control experiment whether the _ , specific analysis is on the right track, and at the same time of checking the progress of the specific analysis. There are four types of dreams to be considered. One is encountered at the beginning of the analysis, one somewhere in the middle, two at the approaching end of analysis. All four types of dreams appear with the greatest of regularity.
* Imago 20 : 4, 1934, and The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 18 : 3, 1949. t Washington Institute of Medicine, 1948

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TYPE I : "REFUTATION DREAM", encountered at the beginning, provided interpretations given to the patient are dynamically correct.

The inner conscience "behaves" during analysis according to its antiltbidinous nature. It seizes every opportunity to extract more punishmerit from the victim. Such an opportunity is offeredparadoxically by correct analytic interpretations given by the analyst in the transference and resistance situation. These interpretations are given for curative purposes.; thesuperego misuses these interpretations. If the interpretation given to the patient is correctunfortunately this is the prerequisite ^ the inner conscience takes it up and makes the most of it. It is remarkable that only correct interpretations are singled out; this is explainable with the formalism of the superego, and constitutes one of the "rules of torture'*. The misuse of analytic interpretations by the superego constitutes a "predictable mechanism"! and can be utilized as such. I am using that mechanism in the first few introductory appointments in which I give the patient a general introduction what analysis means. I tell the patient: "You will be more than skeptical toward everything you will be told ; that's only natural, since you are not familiar with the world of the unconscious. Analysis is an affective, not intellectual experiencewait and see. But you will also be capable of checking up on me with analytic means. If the interpretations given to you will be correct, you will produce dreams proving to me and your inner conscience that I am wrong. If, however, the interpretations will be wrong, you will not have those dreams. Your "refutation dreams" will constitute your unconscious alibi. Since I don't know yet what your conflict is, nor the resultant interpretations, I'm giving you a powerful weaponto check up on me. You have to admit this is more than fair." Here is an example of a "refutation dream." A man in the early thirties entered analysis because of an irrational fear concentrated upon entering the business office. He was ' given the opportunity of finishing his academic studies by his wife who supported him for years. Finally, he achievedwith her supportthe higher
* See : THE BASIC NEUROSIS, Chapter IV "The Underestimated Superego." (Grune & Stratton, New York, 1949) t First described in "On a Predictable Mechanism-Enabling the Patient Even at the Beginning of Analysis to Check the Veracity of Interpretations", The Psychoanalytic Review 30 : I, 1943

social and financial position he and his wife aspired. Immediately afterwards, his fear set in, preventing him from getting the financial advantages expected by his wife. In analysis it became clear that his conflict with his wifehis refusal of "giving" her social and economic advantageswas but a pseudo-aggressive repetition of infantile grievances against his mother. Towards this mother he harbored consciously deep hatred, a covering cloak for deeper repressed masochistic attachment. In' the transference repetition, the patient repeated his constant feeling of "injustice collecting," Both, masochistic substructure, and pseudo-aggressive defence, were interpreted. During working out these interconnections, the patient had but one repetitive dream which he ironically called "the overcoat dream." The irony pertained to the inability to utilize analytically the dream, since he could not even formulate the contents of the dream, nor did he produce any associations. He could only state that the dream had "something to do with an overcoat." He could neither describe the coat, nor did he know to whom the coat belonged, nor specify details of any sort. He started to make fun of my insistence on remembering dreams, and my inability "to do something with the dream." The suggestion of- waiting for material which could clarify the allusion, seemed silly to him. One day the patient mentioned in other connection his disappointment with his wife's wealthy and stingy relatives. These English relatives, owners of a cloth manufacturing outfit, played on him, as he claimed, a "dirty trick." After the War, the patient visited these relatives, and ordered in their factory an expensive coat. The penurious relatives not only allowed him to- pay for the coat, but subsequently cheated him out of his money : the coat was not finished at the time he left England. To save the duty, it was arranged that the nephew who was to visit the U. S. shortly, should deliver the precious coat. The nephew arrived without the coat- He claimed that exactly that coat was stolen on the trip. Neither money was returned, nor a substitute provided.Thus the overcoat dream had not only obvious symbolic connotations. The overcoat-motif represented for the patient the strongest possible refutation of both reproaches mobilized through interpretations and taken up by his superego : "It is not true that I am masochistically attached to mother, and, in neurotic repetition, to my wife ; I am aggressive. Moreover, I have no reason to feel guilty because of my aggression either, because my wife helped me financially only to exploit

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me, as did her family, composed of cheating crooks-" In this way, the patient refuted the interpretation (and, later, accusation of his superego), to the effect that he is masochistic, and, as defense, pseudo-aggressive. Remarkable is also that the patient tried in the dream to fight his battle of masochism on the spurious front of pseudo aggressiona typical example of "taking the blame for the lesser crime."*
TYPE II: "ANT/-FALLACY DREAMS", encountered in the middle of analysis.

Every analysis fights the patient's "basic fallacy." The latter consists of an erroneous assumption about, or tendencious misuse of, the real situation in childhood. That fallacy assumes that neurosis is the direct, and photographic, result of the environment. In short, the patient denies his own unconscious elaboration of his real experiences. He believes that dragging out his family skeleton, such as : "Father was cruel ; mother did not love me ; she preferred my brother ; my sister hated me : the whole family was 'half-crazy' ; our neighbours' son seduced me", etc.is quite sufficient. The neurotic-masochistic unconscious elaboration, accomplished by the patient, is gratuitously omitted, the blame shifted, the "conditioned reflex" elevated to the role of producer of neurosis. If analysis tries to include the patient's part in this drama, the patient objects furiously. By constant exposing the "basic fallacy", guilt is mobilized, the crutch removed.! This conflict manifests itself in specific dreams, which I proposed to call "antifallacy doeams." ft Once more, the superego takes up the analytic clue, misuses it for its own antilibidinous purposes and ironically and maliciously points out how the victim fools himself about his real motives. A patient treated because of premature ejaculation, had, after longer exposing of his specific "basic fallacy*', consisting of the fantasy that not he was masochistically attached to mother, but was but an * innocent victim of mother's cruelty, this dream : My mother is in the hospital and wants to see my sister-in-law. The associations concerned two sets of facts: the actual sickness of his mother ; and the beginning of
*See : THE BASIC NEUROSIS, Chapter III ("The Nine Point Basis Of Every Neurosis") f "The Danger Neurotics Dread Most: Loss of the ''Basic Fallacy-" The Psycho-analytic Review, 32 : 2, 1946 ffFirst stated in "Three 'Battles' During Analytic Treatment." The Psychoanalytic'Review 35 : 3, 1948

the patient's marriage. Mother actually suffered from cancer and was living in last years on borrowed time. This did not prevent the continuation of family quarrels, especially the enmity between the patient's wife and the patient's mother. The patient married under peculiar circumstances. He did not inform his mother of his plans, he "just told her, the day before his wedding that he shall marrytomorrow." His mother was infuriated and did not attend the marriage ceremony. Later, there were constant fights between the two women ; the patient's wife being more provocative than the aggrieved mother. As usual, analysis could prove that his mother was in no -way directly"the cause of his neurosis. His own unconscious masochistic attachment was the real malefactor, an attachment which he perpetuated by constant provocations, as visible in excluding mother from his wedding plans, and being allegedly incapable of keeping peace between the ladies. His unsolved masochistic attachment explained also why he married a shrew : once more, he found himself confronted with a nagging, disagreeable woman. Officially, he wanted to escape mother's nagging and "malice"; unconsciously, he duplicated the identical experience with his nagging wife. Thus, his marriage was not, as he believed, an "escape marriage", but one of continuation of unresolved infantile trends.* His whole life was built upon that masochistic-provocative technique, warded off with pseudo-aggression, as visible in his oral-regressively conditioned refusal of sex : he "gave" mockingly, when the woman could not enjoy it because of the exceedingly short duration of the act (premature ejaculation).! In his dream, dreamt after a few months of working through the material in analysis, the superego shows to the victim that his nice "basic fallacy" is pure nonsense: "Mother isn't refusing; despite being provoked by you, she still wants to see your wife ( represented in the dream as her sister). Moreover, mother is dangerously ill with cancer, and still you maintain your faked grudges." The fact that the patient's wife is represented in the dream as his sister-in-law, denotes an especially malicious attack against the dreamer's "basic fallacy." The patient alwaysconsidered his mother "hilf-crazy ". His sister-in-law was a highly neurotic person who recently developed paranoiac ideas which worried the family. The inner conscience points out that the patient has no right to accuse
*See CONFLICT IN MARRIAGE (Harper & Bros. New York, 1949). fFor elaboration, see THE BASIC NEUROSIS, CH, VII, ("Twenty Seven Clinical Pictures of Oral Regression, 2) and NEUROTIC COUNTERFEIT-SEX (Grune &. Stratton, N. Y. 1951).

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his mother of "crazyness," since his wife's family is on the same level; at the same time, the identification of his wife with her sister hints at the inner similarity of both sisters. The ironical motto of the dream seems to be : "Look, who's accusing." Only in one point does the weak ego attempt a counterattack, and even then only on the basis of "taking the b!ame for the lesser crime" : there are hints of the patient's identification with the sick sisters, hence double admissions of unconscious feminine identification, and admission of psychic illness. The latter repartee contains also a pseudo-aggressive note : "If I am sick, it's mother's fault; isn't she half-crazy 1" These "antifallacy dreams" seem to me of great clinical importance. To underscore the latter, I am adducing a second and third example. A patient, in' analysis because of masochistic personality conflicts, dreamt after a few months of analysis : "Escaping from pursuers in area mostly destroyed by bombing. Run to back of damaged house, hiding in back yard. Four children, including my little daughter, are there. An old lady (gray, ugly, toothless), the grandmother of children (or some of them ?) returned to room in the house. I am hiding from her. She left and returned. Finally, children run out of yard, past grandmother in kitchen. She apparently heard them. Then I ran and she comes after me, apparently in pursuit, repeating "I thought there were only two". I understand she meaning of her words as indication that she knew all along of my presence, but had no intention of exposing me." . The patient's masochistic regression brought him into severe conflicts : his first wife left him for a friend ; the second was no less aggressive and constantly quarreling. In his two marriages the patient unconsciously repeated the masochistic attachment to the image of the "bad" mother. The patient had two sisters ; in the four children of the dream, he includes his daughter of 1\ (an innuendo "You act like a child" ; also "admission of the lesser crime"feminine identification). The "old lady" described as "gray, ugly, toothless", represents the caricature of the patient's mother (details were provided by the dreamer's associations) ; the witch is allegedly the danger, not the "pursuers." The inner conscience demonstrates to the patient how fallacious his assumption has been of her alleged enmity : mother returned, obviously sacrificing herself for the children, and had no intention of exposing the

children, since she herself was persecuted in the European country of her origin. The only weak defense, the dreamer's ego is capable of, is selfdegradation as loved child : by putting the words in mother's mouth "I thought there were only two." The allusion being that mother never took cognisance of his very existence, being interested exclusively in her two daughters. The underlying defense is : "If mother wasn't my enemy, she did not love me either". The-prevailing mood of danger in the dream ( bombing, pursuit) is once more an ironic memento : "the danger is outside, not in the family, as you assume". Analysis seems to be subsumed under these "dangers," too. As third example of an "antifallacy dream", I am recording one from a woman in analysis because of severe depersonalization.* The dream reads : "I sink in peat moss." The patient's "basic fallacy" centered around the accusation that mother never loved her: in her sixth month of life she was left in the care of her grandmother, because her father fell sick on a trip to the West coast, became hospitalized, and could not be transported home. Mother left, and spent the next year with father, away from home. Peat moss is used by the patient for wintering flowers. She possessed a garden, and had prior to the dream the disagreeable experience that some of her flowers died out: - she covered those with too much moss. The inner conscience uses the incident, to point out ironically : "One can be damaged by too much love, too". The weak repartee is the symbolic* libidinous connotation of moss, thus admitting to sexual wishes aloneAnti-fallacy dreams in the course of analysis prove that the inner battle of debunking the patient's pet fallacy goes onin the right direction. Once more, the prerequisite is correct interpretation.
TYPES 111 AND IV, encountered at the approaching end of analysis :

"DREAMS EMBODYING QUILT FOR NOT BEING WELL YET", AND "DREAMS OF DEVALUATION OF SUCCESS ALREADY ACHIEVED." After long "working through" of resistance and transference, the superego turns the tables : being unable to maintain the old corruptibility, it becomes a champion of healthonly because this includes renunciation of old neurotic pleasures.f The result are reproaches fashi*The case is described at length in "Further Studies On Depersonalfzation", The Psychiatric Quarterly, 24 : 2, 1950. tFor elaboration, see "Working Through in Psychoanalysis", The Psychoanalytic Review 32 : 449-480, 19465. Reprinted in THE BASIC NEUROSIS (1. c)

' \

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oned after the formula "Why aren't you well yet ?" These reproaches enter dreams and are responsible for a type of dream which I suggested to call "dreams embodying guilt in connection with recovery". * An_ example follows : "I have to visit a new hospital. A great mass of people is gathered before the hospital. I pass a store handling china wares and pots. The crowd prevents me from entering a barber shop." The dreamer was a patient suffering from "psychogenic oral aspermia" f; the dream was produced at a time in which the man gave up his symptom, but was still holding on to his neurotic personality" traits. The situation preceding the dream : the patient's father-in-law died a few days ago, and the patient missed a few appointments. Consciously, the patient was not moved by the old man's death. The cue, "death", activated, however, guilt in connection with his mother's death, though her death occured a few years ago. This mother, rather the distorted image of her, was in the center of the man's analysis. Two incidents happened during the day preceding the dream : he nearly killed with his car an old woman, though he was an experienced driver, and had to admit that the woman in question was not more and not less careless, as is the typical pedestrian. The second incident was "strange", to quote the patient : he fell on the staircase of his motherin-law's house. The crowd in the dream was associated by the patient with the great mass of people who attended the funeral. The patient was rather surprised ; he was not aware of the old man's popularity. The china-store has connections with a commission given to the patient by his wife ; she was an artist and producer of fine pottery, and asked him to fetch a pot in the store ; of course, he forgot al! about it. To "barber", he associated : "I did not have time to visit the barber at that day, as I wanted to." The dream shows the patient's fight against the accusation of sizable remnants of his masochistic attachment to the enshrined mother image, and his guilt from holding on to these wishes. The masochistic attachment is denied and desperately warded off with pseudo-aggression : he nearly kills a harmless pedestrianan old woman, in
*First stated in my contribution to the symposium "Theory Of Therapeutic Results", held at the XIV International Psychoanalytic Convention, Marienbad, 1936, Published in Int. Journal of Psychoanalysis 13:2-3, 193" fSee : "Further Contributions to the Clinical Picture of 'Psycbogenic Oral Asperrnia' '\ Int. Journal of Psychoanalysis, 18:2-3, 1937.

:f

maternal substitution. He is callous towards the death of the father-inlaw, and accepts the guilt for the lesser crime (pseudo-aggression), to disguise his real crime (psychic masochism) ; thus his falling down the steps is-explainable. Thus, he makes desperate attempts to pronounce and underline his defensive aggression : he is in his dream the sadistic voyeur of sickness and death, is indifferent towards suffering of the whole family, thinks only about the petty disturbing details of the funeral. Moreover, he admits that he is not interested in his wife ("pot") ; in short, he acts the "bad" boy, only to disguise that he is the masochistic infant. The patient's feeling of guilt pertaining to the interruption of anilysis (meaning in unconscious reality : holding on to the remnants of his masochism), is handled with the excuse : "I wanted to keep the appointments ; how am I to blame that the death of my father-in-law "prevented me from coming ?" He describes the analytic appointment as something irrelevant, as a routine visit to the barber. The "cutting" allusion points not only to castration fantasies ; it is also made harmless by the comparison with a routine matter, not to forget the alibi detail of denying once more his dynamically decisive conflict, shifting it from mother to a man ( father ). The mere fact that the missing few appointments provoked such a barrage of aggression from the superego, proves that something more important was at stake : his inner reproach, accusing him of not wanting to get wellThe second type of terminal dreams is one which may well be cal?ed
^devaluation - dreams of success already achieved.1" In short, being unabjie

to prevent analytic success, the inner conscience demotes its value. A patient in the process of being cured of "writer's block", and having already resumed his creative productivity, dreamt this dream : I was at a party, quite the center, holding the floor. At once someone ( or was it I ?) said condescendingly: "Not bad for a journalist". The irony of the superego is directed against the patient's being a raconteurf, an ability not inhibited even at times of bis complete blockage. Ironically, the inner conscience objects : "You are at best a story-teller ; as story-writer your abilities are that of a journalist."
*See: THE WRITER AND PSYCHOANALYSIS ( Doubleday, N. Y. 1950) f"Story - tellers And Stoiy - writers." The American Imago, 6: 1, 1949

i ueueve tnat me tour types of dreams, described in this paper, indicating progress in analysis, are of practical value. These dr*eams do not contradict all other existing types*. They represent, however, guiding signposts enabling the analyst to answer the question how far the patient has progressed.

ATYPICAL AND DEVIANT MOHAVE MARRIAGES *

BY
GEORGE DEVEREUX, Ph. D.

Introduction

It is not always easy to differentiate sharply between merely atypical and outright deviant forms of marriage) especially in Mohave society, in which the institutionalization of marriage is a rather minimal one. It is nonetheless of some importance to formulate the difference between the two types rather clearly, if for no other reason, then in order to shed further light upon the fundamental characteristics of average Mohave marriages. I define as atypical a marriage which, even though it contains many secondary elaborations of a purely idiosyncratic character, nontheless conforms to Mohave standards, both as regards motivation and mate' choice in terms of a socially accepted system of values, and as regards the nature of the relationship between the spouses. Atypical marriages would, thus, include those of unusually long, or unusually short duration, unions in which one or both spouses are either completely faithful or else utterly promiscuous, etc., and polygynous marriages, which are merely a special variant of standard marriages. Since minor divergences from standard marriage patterns are best discussed in connection with marriage in general, the present discussion will be limited to an analysis of polygynous marriages. By contract, deviant marriages are characterized by a deviation from the tribal value-system in the motivation of the marriage and in the choice of the spouse, and by unusual forms of relationship between the spouses, primarily in the social and in the psychological, and, secondarily, also in the sexual sense. Deviant marriages include unions between the young and the old, in which economic factors play an appreciable role, and marriage with transvestites. Since homosexual marriages were already discussed elsewhere in full (1), they are merely mentioned in this study. * From the Musee de l'Homme, Paris

* Besides the obvious libidinous and aggressive repressed wishes,, reference is made, e. g,, to "neurotic vindication dreams." These dreams represent ego-defenses, but of a type intended to maintain the neurotic edifice. See : ''Three 'Battles' During Analytic Treatment" (1. c.)

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I. Atypical Marriages: Polygyny, an ancient, atypical and totally obsolete form of marriage is, nowadays, little more than a vague memory. The technique of courtship in polygynous marriages could no longer be ascertained. ' One must assume that the courtship of a subsidiary wife took- place with the assent, or, at least, with the knowledge of the first wife, since it would have been impossible for a married man to engage surreptitiously in a formal courtship. -He could, of course, have acquired a dissolute, divorced or widowed subsidiary wife in a rather casual manner, i. e., during a dance, without the previous knowledge of his principal wife. There . are, however, no indications that subsidiary wives were recruited primarily from the ranks of women who could no longer insist upon being courted in a formal manner. On the whole, the most plausible assumption is that the subsidiary wife was usually related to the principal wife, who may, conceivably, have taken a fairly active role in persuading one of her sisters or relatives to become her co-wife. This is suggested by the tendency of the Mohave to marry repeatedly into the same family. It must be stressed, however, that these are mere hypotheses, unsupported by factual evidence.. Informants were unable to recall a single actual polygynous marriage, and could, therefore, provide no information regarding the establishment and course of polygynous households. This ignorance of old polygynous practices cannot be wholly ascribed to .repression, since the idea of polygyny neither scandalizes nor fascinates the average Mohave. Thus, my interpreter, E. S., casually mentioned that Walapai men sometimes have three or four wives, and remarked that "in such families the children are either full, or else half'Siblings". Similarly, Tcatc mentioned in the most matter-of-fact manner that she knew a Walapai who had twelve children (i. e,, by several co-wives), adding that "the Mohave never had more than two wives. Two wives are all rightbut when a third wife is brought in, the first two get mad and fight". E. S. then remarked "I guess that when a wife does not know that the husband sleeps with the other wife, it is all right". When I told the Mohave that, among the Indo-chinese Ha (rhn) de : a (ng), the first wife pirformed the marriage ceremony between her husband and the subsidiary wife, and then described some other aspects of polygynous family life in that tribe, the Mohave "merely listened, but showed no appreciable interest in the matter.

The following, fairly meager, data represent the sum total of my informants' knowledge of Mohave polygyny. Men possessing several wives were usually great warriors, rather than successful hunters or prosperous farmers. They usually married two sisters, or also "several" unrelated wives. This did not mean that the kwanami :yhe (great warriors) had a formal right to contract plural marriages, but merely indicated that they were more attractive to women than were other men.. This is rather striking, since, according to Stewart's data (18), great warriors were not particularly interested in women, sex or economic success, many of them marrying only when they became too old to fight. * Women, on contracting a marriage, could not stipulate that their husbands would not take subsidiary wives. Neither the first wife, nor any other wife was considered to be the head-wife, since Mohave family -structure was not suitable for the establishment of inequalities within the family. The favorite wife was simply the one whom, for the time being, her husband preferred to his other wives. She had no special privileges, however, was not designated by any special term of respect, and wore no distinctive badge. A man was free to acquire a second wife, even if his first wife objected to it. If the first wife did not wish to accept the second wife, she simply packed up her belongings and divorced her husband. The barrenness of the first wife did not make the acquisition of a second wife mandatory, just at it did not necessarily induce the husband to divorce her. It is not entirely clear precisely how the several wives of a polygynous man were lodged. Hivsu : Tupo :rna claimed that all the wives lived in one and the same house. Tcatc, however, described the matter in an entirely different way : "Polygyny still existed in my time (18501870 ?). If a man had several wives, each wife lived with her own family. The husband visited them in turn, and the wives never met each other". Tcatc's statement, when taken literally, suggests a rotating matrilocal residence, which does not tally with the prevailing, though not mandatory, tendency toward patrilocal residence. It is, nontheless,
* Great warriors were frequently also leading kiilers of witches, although they resembled their victims in two important respects-: Both warriors and witches delibeiately sought to die a violent death (14), and, like witches, great warriors were sometimes known to commit incest ( 3 ) . On the other hand, unlike great warriors, witches were very much interested in sex (2),

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entirely possible that Tcatc described rather accurately the quasi' matrimonial arrangements of great warriors. The kwanami :yhe were frequently poor men, partly because Mohave warfare was not primarily, nor even practically, an economically rewarding pursuit (18), partly because enthusiastic fans sometimes stripped the home of great warriors bare of all belongings (14)*, and partly because, as stated above, the great warriors -were not interested in economically productive activities, and were, therefore, probably not particularly eager to establish a home of their own, nor, perhaps, altogether able to do so. It is, thus, possible that Tcatc was simply trying to convey to me in a "modest" manner the information that successful warriors sometimes carried on a number of concurrent, and more or less sanctioned, semi-matrimonial affairs with girls living in "their own homes. These affairs came probably as close to being marriages as could be expected in the case of great warriors, who were not especially interested in women and in sex, and. seem to have had few or no strong Iibidinal attachments. This interpretation is strongly supported by the fact that Tcatc concluded her description of polygyny with the following remarks "Nowadays people have only one wife at a time,and that time is seldom a long one. Of course, men sometimes have both single and married mistresses, if they can get them". In brief, since the sharing of a residence is defined as "marriage" fti Mohave society, and since the kwanami :yhe had, properly speaking, no home of their own, and since, furthermore, men sometimes oscillate back and forth between two women, just as women sometimes vacillate between two men (9) the marriedor, if one prefers to use that term, the sexual,life of the great Mohave warrior did, in some respects, resemble polygyny with rotating matrimonial residence. Summing up, polygyny, which was always a more or less marginal or exceptional, though socially sanctioned phenomenon in Mohave society, is today entirely obsolete. This is apparently due neither to the decline of warfare, nor to a sudden puritanism, but to the contemporary exaggeration (6) of the aboriginal Mohave_pattern of successive monogamy, which is inextricably intermingled' with constant adultery.
*For a psychologically perhaps similar, though sociologically differently motivated, complimentary plundering of a social cynosure ( 15 ), compare Roheim's Duau data ' "* . ( 1 7 )" For a different, and spiteful, rensacking of a home, cf, the legend of Halyec Matcoo : t a ( 7 ) . 3 f

This state of .affairs made polygyny, as an institution, both unrewarding and unnecessary, and made it impossible to maintain indefinitely the fiction that concurrent affairs were actually rotating multiple marriages. II. Deviant Marriages were of two types t (1) Marriage between an old person and a young one. (2) Homosexual marriages (1).
(1) Marriage Between an Old and a Young Person involves either an

old woman and a young man, or else an old man and a child-bride. The former is, essentially, a relatively un-institutionalized, situationally motivated arrangement, which, except for the subtler aspects of the relationship between the spouses, approximates fairly closely the basic pattern of Mohave marriages. The latter may be viewed, however, almost as a specific sub-institution, characterized by an interaction between the spouses which is wholly sui generis, and which reflects both a total reversal of the traditional forms of division of labor and a radical' deviation from standardized interpersonal attitudes. The two types of marriages between the old and the young will be described under separate headings : (a) Marriages between old women and young men were almost unknown in aboriginal times. "Young fellows avoided old women, and, because of the age-difference, were sometimes reluctant to marry even a woman who already had two or three children. Young men were, in^ a way, almost afraid of old women (kwaku :y) and sometimes actually made a detour to avoid meeting them. Some older women tried to give presents to young boys, in order to lure them into marriage, but most boys continued to be afraid of them. Most young men sharply resented such jibes as: 'Would you like to cohabit with that old woman?', or 'Why don't you go (cohabit) with that old lady ?'." The fact that several personal names contain jesting references to sexual relations between old women and young men suggests, however, that this aversion was not an insuperable one, although the young husband of an old wife was teased mercilessly: "Don't you see that she is old ? If you stay with her, people will think that she is your aunt or your mother. You married her only because the young girls did not want you." No young woman or ''virgin" (?) was supposed to desire for a spouse a man who had previously contracted such a union.

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If such a man tried to court them, the girls replied, "You smell like an old woman !"* In brief, it was considered a kind of disgrace to marry an old woman, one reason being that such women are usually barrenf, a fact specifically alluded to in certain personal names. The old woman herself was also teased. "What was the idea of marrying him ? They will think that he is your son or nephew." Despite social disapproval, marriages between young men and older women were fairly frequent, and seem to have become more numerous in recent times. When confronted with this empirical fact, the Mohave simply retorted that such people are "goofy", aitogc. ther disregarding the fact that marriage between a young divorced or widowed man and his former mother-in-law, is a characteristic form of Mohave matrimony. Dr. Nettle plausibly suggested that such marriages were due to the fact that old women worked harder and were better housewives then the young ones. When I quoted- this opinion to the Mohave, they admitted that there was a great deal to it ff. They added, however, that "nowadays young men marry old women, and,, as a result, do not have children. They marry old women only because they cannot get young girls". The reasons why young men sometimes find it' "difficult" to get young wives are the obvious disinclination of the present-day Mohave to engage in lengthy courtships, and their tendency tQ treat marriage somewhat like a casual affair, which involves no real long-range commitments. Another definitely significant factor, is the boarding school system, which puts the sexually frustrated young man, just released from boarding school, in a difficult situation. He is compelled to choose beween girls his own age, who graduated at the same time he
*The Mohave dislike strong odors, and especially the smell of menstrual blood (10), It is interesting, therefore, that young girls, who are still menstruating, should object to the odor of women past the menopause. [Compare, however, the Mohave belief that, in aboriginal times, women rttained their fertility and sexuat capacities until old age (9). f fit is also useful to recall in this context that some men, tired of being neglected by flighty young wives, sometimes went so far as to marry male transvestites, who, in order to prove that they were, indeed, "women", and, perhaps, also in order to attract "husbands", worked very hard and tried to be exceptionally proficient housewives. Similarly, lesbian transvestites prided themselves en being good "husbands" and providers (1).

did, and marginal women, such as widows and divorcees, who are, generally speaking, much older than he is, because all other desirable younger women are either still in boarding school or else are already married. Since, after years of sexual deprivation, Mohave boys tend to rush into any kind of marriage, often means that they will marry an older woman. By contrast, a Mohave who has been out of boardingschool for a few.years and is no longer sexually starved, is usually willing to devote at least a few days to the task of courting a girl just out of boarding-school. This is so well known, that the Mohave frequently mention by name several adult and even middle-aged man, who habitually married girls just out of boarding-school. ( 9 ) It is therefore, not surprising that affairs and marriages between young girls just out of school and older, experienced and sometimes quite unattractive men should today be accepted as commonplace occurrences. Since such marriages are essentially hasty and unsatisfactory ones, they tend to be dissolved rather rapidly, thus increasing even further the already notorious instability of Mohave marriages. It is possible that the new day-school system will, in the long run, bring about a return to a more normal and more traditional state of affairs. Returning now to marriages between old women and young men, the fear of old women has so completely abated nowadays, that the one known case of robbery in Mohave society is said to have involved at the same time also rape and incest ( 3 ). The antecedents of mother-in-law, son-in-law marriages are, as a rule, rather simple : a widowed or divorced woman, residing in the home of one of her married daughters, often voluntarily assumed much of the burden of taking care of the home, not because she felt compelled to do so, but because she wished to behave like a true member of the family. This assistance sometimes had rather unexpected results. Since many young Mohave women are both flighty and fickle, the fact that their mother took care of the household work merely encouraged them "to neglect more and more their household duties. As a result, the contrast between the wife's irresponsibility and promiscuousness and the mother-in-law's competent domesticity sometimes became so painfully obvious that the discouraged son-in-law, simply divorced his wife and married his former mother-in-law, primarily in order to enjoy the advantages of a well-run home. Superficially, the sequence of events just described is the exact

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reverse of the process which, e.g., among Swedish farmers (16) culminates in father-daughter incest, when the wife's incapacitating' illness forces the adolescent daughter to perform most of the household work. Yet, fundamentally, the two processes are .identical in every respect, since in both cases, the establishment of economic complementarity and interdependence precedes, and possibly, determines, the establishment of a sexual relationship. This observation leads one to suppose that, in primitive and rural society at least, sexual relationship in marriage is often a consequence, rather than a cause of, the economic complementarity of the spouses. While marriages of this type were not common, and exposed the ill-matched couple to mild ridicule, neither were they very rare. It must be specified, however, that the mother-in-law's domesticity was not construed as an attempt to break . up her daughter's marriage, and I know of no instance in which a daughter was jealous of her own mother, or tried to prevent her from working around the house. The following is a sample instance of marriage between a man and his former mother-in-law. " Case. 1. "When a certain woman left her husband, the latter married his former mother-in-law. When the young woman's second husband died, she married a third man, who is quite jealous of her." The practice of marrying one's mother-in-law does not seem to be a recent innovation since, according to information received from trie late Professor Ruth Benedict, Mohave half-siblings sometimes referred to each other by kinship terms one generation apart. This is rather interesting, since they are one generation apart only in terms of matrilincal descent (their respective mothers being mother and daughter), which does not prevail among the patrilineal Mohave *.
* This startling invasion of the Mohave patrilineal kinship system by matrilineal elements, as a result of difficulties arising from multiple marriages, appears to support the theory that raatrilineal descent is made necessary by female promiscuousness, and by the chaos in filiation resulting therefrom. A patrilineally inspired attempt to cope with this difficulty is exemplified in the Mohave belief that a pregnant woman's subsequent husband or lover can change the identity of her unborn child, and transform it into his own child {8). The fact that the Mohave transmit gentile affiliation in the male line, although the gentile name is worn exclusively by the women who do not transmit it to their children (14)) is also well worth pondering in this Context. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible, however, to decide whether the Mohave were "originally" matrilineal, or whether matrilineal elements began to intrude into their social structure as a result of their promiscuousness, or for some other reason, e, g., through borrowing from neighbouring matrilineal tribes.

(si

Psychologically speaking, the relationship between the old wife and her young husband seems to be a somewhat superficial one. This can be demonstrated by means of two well established facts. In the first place, there are ample indications that the libidinal cathexes of the younger Mohave, who' live under notoriously unsettled conditions, tend to be somewhat labile. It is, therefore, quite possible that the opportunity to establish a fairly settled relationship, with a domestically inclined older woman, may sometimes outweigh the attractiveness of younger,women, especially since older women, despite occasional scenes of jealousy, will, as a rule, stand a great deal more philandering on the part of their young husbands than will young women. Even more revealing is the fact that, as a rule, one does not see the female equivalent of the male hiva itck neurosis (5), which afflicts only, or at least primarily, older men deserted by their young wives. Historically, socially and subjectively the relationship is characterised by a certain degree of casualness and even of opportunism, which does not involve any really fundamental commitment, either in terms of afFectivity, or in terms of duration. Three factors are responsible for this state of affairs (a) The instability of Mohave homes . does not provide the child with a continuous and restricted human environment, and thus prevents it from developing intense and concentrated oedipal attachments, (11). This means that the Mohave child is not conditioned to make genuine monogamous attachments in later life, because his libido continues to be invested in a diffuse, though not precisely fragmentary manner. (b) The resulting breadth af the Mohave child's social experience (11) and the variety of his earliest human environment, together with the Mohave Indian's positive attitude toward his own culture and society (4), tend to bring about a broad and complete social integration, accompanied by a wide diffusion of the libido over society as a whole. This, naturally, precludes the possibility of withdrawing sufficiently large amounts of libido to enable normal and well adjusted individuals to develop obsessive and intense, love-involvements. (c) The third factor specifically accounts for the failure of older Mohave women to duplicate the psychological crisis-behavior exhibited by older Mohave men deserted by a young wife. To begin with, the Mohave women is admittedly less involved affectively in her marital

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relationship than is the Mohave man. Furthermore, the flightiness of younger women generally enables an older woman to secure an adequate substitute for the young husband just lost. This is not the case, how ever, for an older man deserted by a young wife. What an old husband has to offer, the child-bride can probably obtain also from her relatives, or from hospitable friends. By contract, the old woman is able to offer her spouse a well-run household, which is a rare and desirable thing in Mohave society. Thus, the Mohave Indian's craving for stability, which, to a certain extent, has been frustrated in childhood, can be gratified in adult life only by a good housewife. Consequently, the old Mohave woman is in a better position than is an older man to find an equivalent substitute for a fickle young spouse. Last of all, in many cases the marriage of a young Mohave to an older woman is a casual matter of short duration, whereas marriages between old man and very young girls tend to last at least until the girl grows up, primarily because such marriages are more or less culturally standardized ones.
(d) Marriage between prosperous old men and poverty*stricken girl-

involved orphan gkls brought up by a grand-father, or by some other aged male relative, generally with the help of an older kinswoman. These elderly persons, who worried a great deal over their own future, as well as over the future of the girl, sometimes decided that the best thing would be to marry her to an industrious elderly man, who was willing to assume responsibility for the support of the entire family. Economically insecure parents or kinsman, who felt that such a step would be advantageous to them, therefore deliberately indoctrinated the young girl with the idea of putting an end to the misery of her family by marrying a prosperous old man. Even though they did not bully the child, but merely 'talked into her', the pressure usually sufficed to make her marry either the old man chosen by her family, or else some other eligible old man. Although such a young girl did not really feel attracted to an elderly suitor, her decision to marry him was sometimes influenced by the fact that the old man often began to court her before her mind was entirely made up". * "Suppose the man was forty years old, and the girl only ten. One night, with the consent of her parents, the man came to their camp, and slept near the girl, at some distance from the rest of the family, without, however, cohabiting with her, eitherthen,or in the course of the next three nights of the courtship. The next morning he would leave the camp, but would come back for three more nights. By then the child, (presumably both flattered and intimidated by the attentions of a fathersfigure), generally decided to accept him, and let him share her pallet, again without cohabiting with him. The man merely lay beside her, on his back, his hands folded under his head. Then, the next morning, the family made it public that he had taken the girl for his wife. Henceforth the two lived together as man and wife. Sexual relations between them began as soon as practicable, and, thus, such girls were bound to have children at a comparatively early age". Various informants were unable to agree on whether or not the husband of a prepubescent girl had to submit to all the taboos imposed upon his wife when she reached the menarche. Two shamans affirmed that the man had to share the puberty observances of his immature wife,
* This is quite compatible with the general tendency of the Mohave to take the line of least resistance, and to marry those who are attracted to them, rather than those to whom they, themselves, are attracted.

children was a socially sanctioned and fairly completely institutionalized, though not a fully approved, relationship in Mohave society. The existence of such marriages in ancient times is suggested by the tale of Halyec Matco:ta (7), which reveals with great clarity the socio-economic background of such unions, as well as the various facets of the psychological and interpersonal crises which characterized them. At present child-marriages are obsolete, which, oddly enough, is not an unmitigated blessing, since nowadays some poor and neglected girls, instead of being married to an old man, are merely promiscuous. Hivsu : Tupo:ma described the pattern as follows : "In ancient times marriages of this type were much sought after, and arranged for by families whose crops had failed, and who, after moving from one relative to another, began, rightly or wrongly, to feel, that they had outstayed their welcome everywhere. Hence, if they happened to live for a while in the house of an elderly and well to do man, they sometimes gave him their young daughter in marriage, in order to have a permanent roof over their heads. In this manner hardworking old men, who raised large crops, often managed to marry pre-pubescent child-brides. In other instances a family, which had had a run of bad luck, saw a successful hunter, thirty years old or even older, and wished him to be their son-in-law. Still other instances

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while Mrs. Tcatc,always the rational scoffer,denied^ it. * Yuma and Cocopa data also suggest that the husband had to observe at least the alimentary taboos imposed upon his wife (12, 13). It is also probable, though by no means certain, that he had to submit also to the bathing and de-lousing observances. Intercourse during the first menstrual period was prohibited. "If the girl was very young,...too young to perform the duties of a housewife...the old husband generally took over all domestic tasks, and more or less treated her as though she were his daughter. He even brought water and cooked the meals". This last remark is surprising in many respects, since the average Mohave girl-child participated rather actively in all types of housework. One is therefore compelled to conclude either that old husbands deliberately infantilized their child-brides, or else that such girls came from shiftless families, which failed to train them early for active domesticity. The following case-history suggests that, in contradistinction to most Mohave marriages, in unions of this type the girl's parents tried to retain some sort of control over their daughter, perhaps because she was the .pivotal point of their economic security system. This, apparently, induced them to meddle with their daughter's life and conduct, which, in normal marriages, is practically never the case, and is strongly frowned upon. Case 2 was obtained from two informants. o Hivsu : Tupo ima's Account : "This marriage between a girl-child and an old man happened a long time ago. I knew the woman quite well. She is now (1932) quite old, and lives in the house of P. N. They say that she was the most beautiful Mohave woman in human memory, and has retained her good looks even in her old age. She was the last girl-child betrothed to an old man. Her husband treated her as though she were his daughter or granddaughter. In the summer he would carry her to the river on his back, because the ground was so hot that the child cried whenever she stepped on it. They lived in the now ruined and abandoned settlement of La Paz, which is located between what is now the town of Blythe, and Moon Mountains, where you find all these pictographs I told you about, and also lots of rattlesnakes. When
* The shamans also declared that the "husband" of male transvestite was expected to submit to all puberty taboos when his ''wife" pretended to menstruate for the first time. (1).

the girl reached the age of fifteen, the couple decided to move to Needles. They left La Paz without first obtaining the consent of her parents,, and travelled at night, until they reached Parker. After they made camp, the husband ground some corn for her, because she was still too young to do the work of a housewife. She was no longer, a virgin, however, although she had not borne her husband any children as yet. The girl's mother, who did not approve of this sudden departure, immediately started out in pursuit, and after a while overtook them, reaching their camp at night. Since the moon was high up in the sky, the bright moonlight enabled the mother to make a raft, on which she and her daughter travelled downstream until they reached La Paz where they disembarked. The old husband went on to Needles by himself, and remained there for a year. During his absence the girl married a man about thirty-five years of age. I still remember the way she looked at fifteen, she looked niceshe did." At this point the interpreter interrupted Hivsu: Tupo:ma, and said to me: She is still good looking although she is an old woman now. Do you remember the description of the ideal type of Mohave beauty which we gave you the other day ? That was really the portrait of this woman." After agreeing with the interpreter, Hivsu: Tupo:ma added:''Eventually the girls' old husband turned up at her new home and tried to drag her away. He was pulling hard at her arm, but when, she would not go with him, the old man went away again. Later on she had some children. All this I either saw myself, or else heard directly from the people wlio had been involved in this incident." Tcatc's account was obtained in reply to a direct inquisy. It is, however, quite evident that she did not know the story very well, and therefore confused the first husband with the second one, who was also quite a bit older than the girl i. e., if Hivsu: Tupo:ma's account is accepted as accurate, Tcact's statements that the couple quarrelled, that the girl bore her husband several children, and that she did not marry J again after deserting him, can apply only to this woman's second marriage. Tcatc's story ran as follows: "Now that you mention it, I do remember the case Hivsu: Tupo: ma told you about. The.{ second ? ) husband's name was Isam munyu: ( What they see they grab or- take away; i. e. they grab everything in sight). * Unfortunately, I failed to ascertain whether Isam munyu : was the name of the first, or of the second husband. -

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The girl married this old man and was willing to live with him and to do her duty, but he was very hard to get along with. He'd fight nearly all the time. She had two or three children but, somehow none of them ever lived very long, and so she left him. She then went 'down below' ( ? ) - and started to run around with a man ... a White man. She did not marry again." ( Was she the one whom her White lover compelled to cohabit with him in public, by the camp fire ?) ( 9 ). "She might have been the one." ( Was Hivsu: Tupo:ma mixed up with her in any way?) (*).- She was a very close relative of his, but he was quite young when all this took place." Although such unions were more or less standardized, they nonetheless elicited a certain amount of unfavorable comment. "Why did you give your daughter away, and consent to this marriage ?'' the parents would be asked. Somewhat unfairly, the young girl was also subjected to a certain amount of ridicule: "Why did you consent? Later on when you might wish to divorce this man, young men will not want you. They will say to you: "Why didn't you marry me when you were young ? Now your breasts are too long." The old husband was also teased: "Whom do you carry around on your back ? Is it your daughter perhaps ? I did not know you had a daughter ! Where did you get her from ?" The satirical comments just quoted, which are replete with more or less overt references to incest, indicate that the interpersonal relations obtaining in such unions differed rather sharply from the general pattern of relationships obtaining in ordinary Mohave marriages. It is quite evident that the old man was viewed more or less as a father figure, especially since he actually nurtured his childbride, the way a widowed father would, and took over most of the household tasks. This must have elicited a great many guilt-feelings and anxieties in the girl, and may explain, in patt at least, why such marriages were usually very unstable. The old husband's affective investment in the union also seems have been both intense and tinged with anxiety, witness the fact that older men deserted by young wives frequently suffered an attack of transitory confusion, which the Mohave designate by the term hiva itck (5), The intensity of the husband's libidinal investments in the relationship with his wife, is, likewise, not all typical of Mohave
* This question was asked because, when narrating this story, Hivsu; Tupo:ma seemed rather melancholy, and did not laugh and joke as was his wont.

marriages, in which the wife's domestic services are, in many ways, valued more highly than her amorous and sexual potentialities. In fact, as has been shown elsewhere, Mohave men sometimes deserted pretty but flighty young wives, and married older womenor even male transvestites (1)who were willing to be good housewives. Equally unusual is, in many ways, the role of the economic factor in the motivation of such marriages. Not only is this parasitical economic interestedness incompatible with the general value-system of Mohave culture (4), but, as a rule, it is not the woman, but the man, in whose choice of a mate economic considerations play a definite role. In other-words, whereas the average adult Mohave woman makes no special effort to marry a good provider, the Mohave man often chooses a wife primarily on the basis of her proven competence. Last, but not least, the extreme poverty of the girl's family is also most atypical, as is their feeling that they have outstayed their welcome in the homes of their hosts. This state of affairs strongly suggests that such families had no close relatives, and were thus, socially marginal. This impression is confirmed by the fact that in the legend of Halyec Matcoo:ta the old husband and the girl-child are the sole survivors of a massacred village (7), so that the old man had to raise the infant girl whom he had removed from the breast of. her dead mother. (Maternal father fantasy.) In brief, the great intensity and complexity of feelings and attitudes characteristic of such couples strongly suggest that such marriages we|e highly atypical in many respects, the most striking deviations being the "maternalization" of the domestically inclined old husband, and the "infantilization" of the childbride. In conclusion, it may also be worthwhile to point out that men never married their former daughters-in-law- As Mrs. Tcatc expressed i t : "Men aren't chat crazy !" SUMMARY Polygynous marriages, which are today obsolete, and have been replaced by rotating monogamous marriages tempered with adultery, must be considered as atypical marriages, rather than as deviant ones, since they were motivated by the same considerations which lead to routine marriages, and were characterised by interpersonal relationships which were identical with those obtaining in the more common

monogamous unions. By contrast, marriages between the old and the young are deviant marriages, since they are primarily motivated by economic considerations, and are characterized by distinctly unique forms of interaction between the spouses. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Devereux, George : Institutionalized Homosexuality of the Mohave Indians, Human Biology 9:498-527, 1937 2. Devereux, George ; L'Envoutemcnt chez Jes Indiens Mohave. Journal de la Sod/it' des Ame'rieanistes de Paris N. S. 29:405-412, 1937 3. Devereux, George : The Social and Cultural Implications of Incest Among tbe Mohave Indians- Psychoanalytic Quarterly 8:510-533, 1939 4. Devereux, George : Mohave Culture and Personality. Character and Personality . 8:91-100, 1939' 5- Devereux, George : Primitive Psychiatry !. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8:1194-1213, 1940 6. Devereux, George - The Function of Alcohol in Mohave Society, Quarterly 7. 8. 5. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. 9:207-251, 1948 Devereux, George : Mohave Coyote Tales. Journal of American Folklore 61:233-255, 1948 Devereux, George : Mohave Paternity, Samiksa, Journal of ike Indian Psychoanalytical Society 3:162-194, 194 Devereux, George : Heterosexual Behavior of the Mohave Indians, {In) Roiieirn, Ge'za (ed). Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences II. New York, 1950 Devereux, George : The Psychology of Feminine Genital Bleeding. International Journal of Psycho-analysis (In Press) Devereux, George: Status, Socialization and Interpersonal Relations of Mohave Children. Psychiatry (In Press) Forde, C. D. : Ethnography of the Yutria~-fridians. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 28:83-278, 1931 Gifford, E. N. : The Cocopa. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 31:257-334, 1933 Krbeber, A. L. : Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 78, 1925 LaBarre, Weston : Soica! Cynosure and Social Structure. Journal of Personality. 14-169-183, 1946 Riemefj Svend : A Research Note on Incest. American Journal of Sociology 45:566-575, 1940 Roiieim, Ge'za : Psycho-Analysis of Primitive Cultural Types. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 13:1-244, 1932 Stewart, K. M. : Mohave Warfare. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE*

PRELIMINARY .COMMUNICATION G. BOSE, S LAW and D. GANGULY. That language can be studied from the psychological standpoint has struck many observers, but unfortunately not much serious and systematic work has' been done as yet in this direction. Philologists have been able to throw considerable light on the early history and progress of a race by studying its language. It has been very aptly said that where historical records and inscriptions fail to give any information language speaks. The early word forms, the predominance o,f certain types of expressions, the peculiar change in the meaning of a word in course of time and many other details enable the philologist to unravel the early activities of a race. It is to be expected that a psychological study of language is likely to give us valuable indications of the evolution of the mind and the nature of the mental processes in general Isolated attempts have been made in this line by different people, notably the psychoanalysts who have often produced linguistic evidence in support of their findings. The study of symbolism and the determination of the unconscious meanings attached to symbols have been mainly possible through the help of language. Indian philosophers have often had recourse to linguistic evidence in support of their contentions regarding the nature of the ego. The knowledge of the external world comes to us through the five modalities of sense-perception. When we say that only five such modalities exist it means that the kinaesthestic group of sensations has been included in touch. The stimuli from the external world come to us through these five sense doors, to use an apt expression of the ancient Hindu psychologist, and in reacting to these stimuli we bring about changes in the external world the perception of which in its turn effects entrance into the psyche through the same five doors. AH the five different sense modalities are not of equal utility to the human organism. When man assumed an erect posture his sense of smell lost its original importance. Psychologists have taken pains to prove that
*Read at the Indian Science Congress, Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting, Calcutta, January, 1938.

3:257-278,1947

visual impressions are of greater significance than olfactory ones in human affairs. The study of image types as usually undertaken in psychological laboratories is an effort to find out the relative importance of the different forms of perception in man. Since the human species has evolved a language it is to be expected that a study of language will at once enable us to determine the relative importance of the different sense modalities much better than any other form of analysis. All we need do is to have a statistical record of the words related to the different sense modalities and to find out the preponderance of any particular type of perception. We are not in a position here to give an exact record of the relative values of the different types of perceptions. Even when such a record becomes available, it will not enable us to appreciate the mechanism of the mind in the proper perspective. The types of perception do not give any information at all regarding the motive forces that control human behaviour. Psychoanalysis enables us to appreciate the nature of the forces that unconsciously guide our attitude towards the external world. In any attempt to analyse the workings of the human mind the unconscious factors will have to be taken into account as much as the conscious ones. Freud's conception of the libido has given us an idea of the nature of these unconscious forces and the way they are mobilised- Freud has pointed out that sex plays a dominant part in our life reactions. "Working in an unconscious manner sex has made the grammarians classify objects according to their gender. Objects could have been classified according as they are chewable, suckable, lickable, drinkable or smokeable ;. but this sort of attempt has never been made in any language. Classification accord' ing to gender is a strong evidence of the importance of the genital libido. In some languages e. g., Urdu, even verbs have inflections for gender showing that the female type of action is considered something different from the male one. Psychoanalysts have proved the existence of other types of libido besides the genital one. In its early stage of development the constitution of the child is dominated by the oral libido. The next phase is the appearance of anal libido. The genital organization of the libido is the last to be evolved. In the normal adult the infantile oral and anal libidos remain in the unconscious mind in a more or less repressed condition. Both the anal and the oral libidos have been responsible

for the modification of the language. In such expressions as 'his financial adventure ate up all his capital' the importance of the oral act is evident. The German expression 'ich habe es satt'' meaning 'I have it full' and the English expression 'I am fed up with it' are identical in meaning and show the influence of oral interest. The Bengali language shows certain very curious manifestations of this libido. These indicate a greater degree of repression than the examples just cited. When anybody gets afraid, we say in Bengali 'he has eaten fear' (bhoy khe'ychhe'). A host of such expressions may be cited :'eaten a beating' (mar khe'ychhe') in the sense 'he has been beaten', 'eaten a stumbling' in the sense 'he has stumbled', 'he is eating gasping' in the sense 'he is gasping' etc. A curious point to notice about these expre' ssions is that they all refer to unpleasant situations ; the only exception is 'eating air' in the sense of 'enjoying fresh air-' Air, is drawn into the lungs during inspiration but the unconscious oral libido makes' us express the process by saying that 'we have eaten the air.' Both in eating and in inspiration there is an actual ingestion of air, so the expression 'eating air'is not far removed from the truth. The repression creating the indirect expression in this case is thus not deep. It is only in cases where the represented act is one of actual ingestion that the symbolic 'eating' may be connected with an expression representing a pleasant function e.g, 'eating one's terms or dinners-' In the German expre' ssion 'ich have dich 2um Fressen.Lieb' meaning 'I love you so much that I can eat you up,' in the English expression 'devouring love' and also in the Bengali expression 'eating a kiss' the oral libido finds vent without any resistance, hence these also refer to a, pleasant situation. In all other cases the symbolic 'eating' represents an unpleasant act. In English also we have such expressions as 'eat humble pie', 'eat one's word', ceat one's heart out,''eaten up with pride' etc. Compare also the German expressions 'hast du es gefressen' meaning 'have you eaten it' in the sense of 'have you understood it'; 'er hat the Weisheit mit Loffeln gefressen' meaning 'he has eaten wisdom with spoons' in the sense of 'he is too clever'; 'friss mich nicht' meaning 'don't eat me' in the sense of 'don't try to bully me'; in English 'well, don't eat me' is a jocular reply to vehement protest; 'seinen Aerger in sich fressen' meaning 'eat one's anger' in the sense of 'swallow one's vexation'; *sie hat einen Narren daran gefressen' meaning 'she has eaten a fool over it' in the the sense of 'she is infatuated with it' etc.

The anal sadistic libido is evident in such expressions as 'to beat a person hollow', 'to beat retreat', and in the Bengali language in expressions like 'unki mara' meaning 'to strike a peep' in the sense of 'peeping'; 'genda mara' meaning 'to strike the genda' (which is a modified form of the word 'gand' meaning buttocks) in the sense 'to cheat' ; 'adda mara' meaning 'to strike a company' in the sense 'to while away the time in gossip' ; riarki mara? meaning 'to strike a joke' in the sense to 'cut a joke'; 'ponde' ponde'* jaoa' meaning 'to go at buttocks' in the sense to follow a person etc. Compare also the German expressions, 'er kriecht ihm in den Arsch' meaning 'he crawls to him in the arse' in the sense 'he fawns on him', 'sein Vermogen ist im Arse h' meaning 'his property is in the arse' ki the sense of 'his property is gone' and the Bengali expression 'barir ponde* taka dhala' meaning 'pouring money into the anus of a house' in the sense of 'spending too much money over building a house' etc. Here also most of such expressions refer to unpleasant situations. The Bengali word 'jaghanya' derived from 'jaghana' meaning 'buttocks' is an adjective equivalent to 'bad* but .'the word 'dhan' which means both 'wealth' and 'penis' has no such bad connotation, The reason of this difference lies in the fact that the anal libido suffers a greater repression than the genital one. The acts of touching and catching are important manifestations of all the different types of libido and as such they have received great weight in linguistic expressions. If we consider a subject-object libido relationship from the standpoint of the subject and the object respectively we find that the active manifestations of the libido are represented by such expressions as 'I touch', 'I catch' etc, whereas the passive ones are represented by 'I am touched' or 'there is something on me', 'I get' etc. Instances of the operations of the active libido are to be found in such symbolic expressions as 'catching cold,"catcha Tartar', 'catch one's eyes', 'catch it,' 'catch me,' etc. In its passive form the same symbolism is observed in the Bengali expression 'm^tha dhorechhe' meaning'head is caught' in the sense 'to get a headache' and in English expressions 'to get pneumonia', 'get angry', 'get tired' etc and again in those Bengali expressions which could be literally translated as 'to get fear, laughter, pleasure, knowledge' etc. The expressions in Bengali like 'o amar upar rag kore'ehhe" meaning 'he has made anger upon me' in the sense 'he is angry with me' ; 'amar upar khusi hoye'ehhe''' meaning 'is pleased upon

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me' in the sense 'is pleased with me' etc., are indicative of passive libido. Most of the above cases are of the unpleasant order. Compare also the German expressions 'ich habe seinen Blick aufgefangen' meaning 'I have caught his eyes' ; 'ichliabe Fieber bekommen' meaning'I have got fever'; c er ist argerlich uber mich' meaning 'he is angry above me' in the sense 'he is angry with me' ; 'ich freue mich uber es' meaning 'I am pleased above it' in the sense 'I am pleased with it'; 'ist mir uber' meaning 'he is above to me' in the sense 'he is superior to me' etc. There is another class of symbolic expressions connected with the verbs 'do' and 'make*. The motive force behind such expressions is not clear. On ultimate analysis it is just possible that the verb 'do' will be found to be associated with self-assertion and the verb 'make' with procreation. The auxiliary verb do in a sentence often emphasizes the statement e.g., 'I do say this'. Curiously enough the two verbs are expressed in Bengali and in French by the one word 'kara' and 'faire1 respectively meaning literally 'to do'. The following English and Bengali expressions are to be noted in this conection:'make water', 'dourine'; 'make a row,' 'do a row' ; 'make effort', 'do effort' ; 'make friendship', 'do friendship'; 'do good' 'do goodness'. In the German language the verb 'machento make* is used much more extensively than in English. 'Was machen sie da' meaning 'whatdo you make there' corresponds to the English 'what do you do there'. Compare alsp expressions like 'es macht nichts' and 'it does not matter1. The ideas corresponding to 'do' and 'make' thus seem to be interchangeable. Can it be said psychologically that self-assertion and procreation are identical processes in the unconscious ? The different forms of sex perversions, the rudiments of which are to be found in the normal child, often influence linguistic expressions in a peculiar manner; for instance, in the Bengali expression 'kapad chhada' meaning 'put off clothing' in the sense 'to change dress' one can see unconscious exhibitionism at work. In slang and vulgar language and abusive expressions the influence of the different types of sex perversion are quite apparent. We do not intend to discuss this problem in detail here. The study of the syntax of a particular language gives us a good deal of information of a psychological nature about the mental peculiarities of a race. For the purpose of our illustration we give here a simple sentence in different languages r English ... Ferdinand loved Miranda

221

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE

[SAMIKSA

VOl.

t,

11Oi

tj

French Ferdinand aimait Miranda German Ferdinand Iiebte Miranda Sanskrit Ferdinan Mirandayam aprinot Hindi Ferdinand Miranda, ko mahabbat karte'the"' Bengali Ferdinand Mirandake^bhalobasita From a consideration of the above renderings it will be seen that in European languages the order is nominative, verb and object, whereas in the Indian group of languages the order is nominative, object and verb. We might consider the precedence as the order of psychological preference. The European nations seem to attach the greatestimportance to the subject and the least to the object, whereas in India the object . receives the next preference to the subject. We shall now consider a few examples with dative case : English ... He gave Ram a pice. French ... II donna une pice a Rama German ... Er gab Rama einen Pice Sanskrit ... Sa Ramaya paysamekam adadat Hindi ... Unhone'Ramko ek pyasa dia. Bengali ... Se Ramke ekti paysa diachhila In the Indian languages the dative usually precedes the accusative and it always refers to a person or a personified inanimate object. In fact the Sanskrit name for dative is 'sampradan' which denotes a gift to a person. In the European languages sometimes the dative precedes the accusative and sometimes this order is reversed. In French expressions like 'il donna Rama une pice' are quite common. In English the expression 'he gave a pice to Rama' is more often used than the expression 'he gave Rama a pice', but where it is a pronoun instead of a proper noun the dative receives the preference and 'he gave him a pice' is more idiomatic than'he gave a pice to him'. Compare the French expression lil me donna une pice' in which the dative immediately follows the nominative as in Bengali. We thus find that wherever the dative situation is represented by the preposition 'to' in English or 'a' in French it always follows the accusative. The euphonic expression 'give it me' has yet its rival in the Scotticism 'give me it' which has a psychological right to exist. The German grammatical rule is: of two nouns the dative usually precedes the accusative, but an accusative object denoting a person generally precedes a dative object 'not denoting a person'. {Otto: Qerman Conversation Qrammar, 33rd edition, pp. 329). This rule

clearly shows that it is human interest that determines the order of words in a sentence ; we are usually more interested in a person than in a thing. In Grammar we have the 'dative of interest'. We might say that in the Indian mind the order of interest is as follows :self, another person, inanimate object and lastly the act. The Englishman's mind is most interested in self, then comes the act, then another person and then the inanimate object; in many cases the other person comes last. The German and the French minds stand midway between the Indian and the English mind, the 'other person' receiving greater interest than the object in most of the situations. In this connection we might note that the European races are generally more active and aggressive than the Indian races and their language shows a preference for the act over objects. In the Bengali language complete sentences without any verb are quite common e.g., 'tar bara duhka' in the sense of 'he is in great trouble' etc. The importance of this grammatical peculiarity will be more apparent when we shall be discussing reflexive verbs.

yi

We have been hitherto considering the order of words in an ordinary sentence. "Whenever we want to emphasise any particular component of the sentence we always give it a precedence in the sequence. This again is a proof that the sequence of words is determined by the distribution of interest. When an object in an act is the centre of interest, it not only comes first in the sentence but often, in looking at the situation from the standpoint of the object, the voic'e itself undergoes a change from the active to the passive one e.g., 'he gave Rama a pice' is changed into 'a pice was given to Ram by him'. Sometimes the verb suffers a polar reversion. Let us consider the expressions 'the allies defeated the Germans' and 'the allies were victorious over the Germans'. In the two cases the actual situations remain unaltered. The .second form, in the absence of a special need to emphasize victory is only possible in the case of a person who is in sympathy with the allies. The idea of inflicting a defeat is changed into one of winning a victory. A person whose sympathy lies with the Germans will say 'the Germans could not win a victory over the allies'; if pushed to the extreme he will only admit that 'the Germans lost the war'. A careful study of the mode of expression will often reveal the working of the unconscious mind. One of us (Bose) has already discussed this problem in another paper 'Pleasure in Wish';

The words expressing abstract ideas in any language offer a fruitful field for psychological investigation. It is usually assumed that the abstract idea develops in the child from many concrete experiences. The child, only after experiencing many acts of kindness, knows what kindness means ; so also with common nouns. After having seen many dogs the child forms an idea of what a dog is. In the cases of abstract, common and material nouns, a sort of unconscious generalization takes place in the mind of the child enabling him to use such words as 'kindness', 'dog' and 'gold' as symbols for ideas which have strictly no external existence. The idea of a dog, for instance, is an imaginary concept and an abstraction derived from a consideration of many individual dogs. Similarly the feelings and emotions that accompany an act of kindness, when generalized from the experiential basis of kindness. It therefore seems at first sight that abstract ideas are quite different from concrete ones. The study of language however shows that the abstraction gained at so much cost relapses into the concrete form in the human mind. Although it may seem strange, still it is a fact that we always invest abstract ideas with concrete shapes in dealing with them. The abstract ideas which are really the product of the mind are projected outside as it were and take vague shapes and forms. When we say 'his kindness is great' we have already invested kindness with physical dimensions ; similarly with all other abstract concepts such as love, courage etc In the Bengali expression 'ubhaye'r madhye'.pragarha pre'm janmila', which has its counterpart in the English expression 'a deep love grew up between them', love is treated not only as a concrete object but it is invested with certain special physical attributes. It is further to be noted that the mind in projecting the love into the outer world treats it as an object independent of persons and having a special existence of its own. In reality every mind has its own love experience but language treats love as if it were a definite object that can come as a separate entity between two persons. To say "that 'love grew up between them' is exactly like saying 'a tree grew up between them': cf. the German expression 'Feindschaft besteht zwischen ihnen' meaning 'hostility stands between them'. When we say 'we fall into sleep' sleep is treated as a cavity. All the human emotions and feelings are capable of being treated in language in a similar manner. Bengali idiom speaks of 'contact with pleasantness' in the sense of experiencing-pleasantness (bhalo lage'); 'smelling pleasantness'

in the sense of 'loving'; 'paying attention' (mon de"oa) ; 'coming of sleep' ; 'getting sleep' ; 'love on a person' ; 'love towards a person', 'anger on a person' etc. Prepositions play . an important role in idiomatic English expressions. Since prepositions denote relation between objects, they give us important clues to the attitude of the mind towards objects. Some of the prepositions have a special psychological significance e.g., on, upon, over, under, above, below, beneath etc Their use in language is often determined by unconscious psycho-sexual attitudes. In English we say 'he is angry with me' whereas in German and in Bengali the corresponding prepositions are 'above' and 'upon'. The two latter prepositions indicate that the angry person does something upon another whose mental condition is left undescribed. The preposition 'with' in English suggests that the anger is shared by both the subject and the object. This indicates an unconscious tendency of the ego to minimize the importance of the other person. In expressions like'he sat with his face towards the fire,' it will be seen that the ego considers the 'face' as an entity distinct from itself and the relationship that exists between the two is denoted by the preposition 'with' ; compare 'he sat with his friend'. Whenever the ego wants to pay special attention to any part of the body a sort of dissociation takes place and the part is considered as something detached from the whole. The tendency of the ego to disown parts is also apparent in menltd experience. Adjectives are a.clear evidence of the ego's effort at projection of its own perceptions. When we call sugar 'sweet' we forget that the sweetness does not He in sugar but is a special gustatory perception produced by sugar. Instead of saying sugar produces the perception of sweetness, we call sugar sweet. The ego's perception of sweetness is thus projected into an external object. Similarly in adverbs the ego's expert ences are foisted into the act. It is on this account that adjectives and adverbs are inter-changeable. Sometimes the ego considers the action and the object to which the act is directed as a unitary whole ; the object then stands for an adverb e.g., English 'went home,' German 'daheim.' It will be seen that the vigour of expression in such cases goes more towards the act than towards the object and thus the adverbial objects are to be found mainly in the European languages in which the verb receives preference over the object. The

iil

reverse is the case in Indian languages in which the object precedes the verb. Indian languages have no adverbial nouns ; on the other hand they have compound adjectives e.g., 'grihagata', meaning 'one who has come home'. Such compounds may be used either as substantives or adjectives qualifying nouns. The forms of sentence also give us an insight into the working of the mind. Let us take for our illustration a simple, a complex and a compound sentence e. g., (a) the fowler having fixed his net, withdrew (b) the fowler, who had fixed his net, withdrew (c) the fowler fixed his net and withdrew The same idea has been expressed in three different ways but the grammatical variations indicate subtle psychological differences in thought. In the simple sentence (a) the emphasis is on the act and the two different acts namely that of 'fixing the net' and that of 'withdrawing' have been sought to be fused into one. In the compound sentence (c) the acts have been kept distinct. In the complex sentence (b) the emphasis is on the subject; the fowler is the centre of interest and he is considered from two different standpoints, namely the fowler who fixed the net and the fowler who withdrew. Apparently the fowler's personality has been split into two. The splitting up of a personality is a phenomenon to which language bears strong evidence. We shall revert to this problem again. c "A pronoun is a word used in the place of a noun to indicate or enumerate persons or things, without naming them." The personal pronouns T, 'you' and 'he' in various inflections stand on a somewhat different footing from other types of pronouns. Personal pronouns are generally classified according as they are first, second or third person. This numerical statement clearly indicates their relative importance to the ego.* To the ego, the first person 'I' or the self is the most important entity. In Sanskrit, the first person is called 'uttama purusha' meaning 'the best- person'. The third person, which always refers to a distant individual is less important than the second person who is directly addressed. Curiously enough in Sanskrit the third person is called 'the first person'; this again is an evidence of the importance that the Indian mind attaches to objects remote from the self. None
* It is interesting to note that in English the personal pronoun '1' is always written in Qapital letter.

of the personal pronouns take any adjective. We have already pointed out that the ego projects its own sense-perceptions as adjectives to external objects and itself remains immaculate- This fact gives us a hint at the attitude taken up by the ego towards other persons. The ego looks upon them as modified self i.e. as a secondary ego. This is why the secondary ego also does not take an adjective. In expressions like 'poor me' what really happens, is that the ego gets out of its body-mind envelopment and considers the latter as an external object. 'Poor me' is a variant of the expression 'my poor soul'. The formation of the secondary ego is an important and an interesting process. In all situations the ego, consciously or unconsciously, identifies itself with the nominative, When we say 'you did this' or 'he killed a cat' or 'Rama loved Sita' or 'a chair has four legs', the ego's main centre of interest lies in the nominative, i.e., the ego has identified itself with the subject. The identification is progressively more and mort complete according as the subject is an external inanimate object, a second person and finally the self. An inanimate object and an animate object may take adjectives so long as they are not replaced by demonstrative or personal pronouns. In a narration all nouns receive specific mention in the first instance and as the narration proceeds they are substituted by pronouns. This fact shows the growing interest of the ego in external objects when they come into relationship with it. With the increase in interest identification becomes more and more complete and adjectives are discarded and pronouns take the place %f > nouns. Adjectives qualify ing,the subject as in the example 'a good man gives alms' signify that the subject has been first treated as an object * , a man must be in the position of an object before he is considered as good'. We have pointed out that the Indian mind gives the object a greater importance than the European mind. The capacity for identification of the ego with the object is more marked with Indians than with Europeans. > The Bengali language says 'sardi dhore"chhe' or 'the cold has caught me' whereas the Englishman says 'I have caught cold'. This latter expression is a clear evidence of the effort at minimizing the importance of the object. The corresponding German expressions stand midway between the Indian and English expressions. The German says 'ich habe mich erkaltet' meaning 'I have got myself caught by cold' or 'ich bin erkaltet' meaning 'I am attacked by cold'. The French expression'jesui enrhume'

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corresponds to the German 'ich bin erkaltet' while the expression 'je me suis enrhume' meaning T am myself caught by cold' stands midway between the passive and the reflexive forms. Reflexive verbs are very common in German. The reflexive verbs are also very interesting examples of the tendency of the ego to depreciate the importance of the object. Where reflexive verbs are used it is to be noted that the ego has failed to identify itself completely with the object, with the result that the secondary ego remains imperfect. In expressions like 'I punish myself or 'I hate myself, it is to be understood that some moral, social or religious ideal has been transgressed necessitating punishment or self-depreciation. At first sight it seems that the same ego played the role of both the subject and the object ; the punishing self appears to be identical with ..the punished self. In reality however in taking up the attitude of punishing or hating, the punishing self identifies itself with the social or the moral ideal. The punishing self is therefore a secondary ego and the punished self^the primary ego with its bodymind envelopment. Punishment or hatred is always directed towards a transgressor and it is only the primary self with the body-mind attachment that could act as an offender. Since in such cases the primary ego and the secondary ego are but different forms of the same entity no punishment can be inflicted on the self without its willing participation in the act. We thus have to assume the presence of the desire to be punished in the psyche. That desires of this type exist in the unconscious has been repeatedly proved by psychoanalysts. Such passive desires generally remain repressed. From the standpoint of the primary ego the situation 'I punish myself is more correctly expressed by 'I am punished by myself. But owing to the repression the primary form is disallowed in consciousness and can only be recognized in the modified active form suitable to the secondary ego. This is the reason why idiom does not allow the passive form in reflexive verbs. In French the expression 'je me fait punk' meaning 'I-make myself punished' is a half-hearted admission' of the original passive reflexive form. Reflexive verbs are invariably repression productsWhen the mobility of the primary ego to go over to the position of the object is marked even inanimate objects are invested .with sentient attributes and the changes that such objects undergo are sought to be expressed as due to the voluntary effort of the object.

This mechanism is responsible for the genesis of animistic ideas. When we sjy 'a ripe apple falls from the tree' we invest the apple with the capacity of voluntary action. Such expressions are very common in the Indian languages. In Bengali we say 'bristi porchhe'' meaning 'rain falls' in the sense 'it is raining'; similarly 'smell comes out', 'time passes' etc. Although in the European languages there is no dearth of such expressions e.g., sun rises, time passes, tree grows etc., curious forms like 'it rains,' 'it smells' etc., are often met with. The 'it' here, as has been explained by psycho-analysts, refers to the unknown forces that bring about the particular phenomenon. Such expressions are the index to the ego's lack of complete identity with the object. When the ego considers an external object from the standpoint of the subject the different types of sensory changes produced by the object are, as has already been pointed out before, projected into the object, thus while the ego remains immaculate the external object is invested with diverse qualities. From the standpoint of the subject, therefore, the perception of the object is analysable and resolvable into several component elements. This is why we say that the perception of an orange is resolvable into the perception of its colour, that of its smell, that of its taste, that of its touch etc. If, however, the ego transfers itself completely to the position of the orange and considers the perception from that situation the perception becomes invested with the secondary ego which promptly casts away, all the individual attributes that went to form the orange as a composite whole. From this standpoint we say that an orange possesses the quality of redness, it has a special smell, a special taste and a peculiar feel. These qualities are supposed to be possessed by the orange which is considered as an entity distinct from its qualities. The perception of orange, therefore, becomes an immaculate something like the ego and is not resolvable into constituent elements. These elements belong to the orange just as a man's head, neck, extremities and trunk belong to him as his possessions. The possessor is always supposed to be different from his possessions. The concept of unresolvable wholeness in a perception as emphasized by the gestalt school is traceable to the influence of the secondary ego. While the structuralists consider a perception from the point of view < of the subject the gestaltists describe it ^from the standpoint of the perception itself. We have given here some of our more important findings. The

subject is a vast one and can only be adequately tackled by team work extending over years. Isolated facts have been unearthed and have been put together as they appeared. No attempt has 'been made to enunciate any comprehensive theory. The time is'not yet ripe for it as the materials are too meagre for this purpose. Our presentation is thus of a scrapy nature.

FEAR OF LOSS *
N. N. CHATTERJI.

: No body wants to incur any loss, be it in the'financial or any other sphere but that does not mean that one should always be preoccupied with this idea-. But we know all the same, that some neuroticpeople will develop this fear to an extraordinary degree and suffer unecessarily. It has been my experience that othis fear of loss usually appears in connection with certain excretory organs of the body. The fear of seminal loss is so widespread even among normal persons that it might not appear to many people as abnormal but fears connected with other excretory acts can not be held in the same light. The neurotic fear of defaeeation or the fear of loss of phlegm while coughing so often noticed in certain dementia praecox cases are so absurd that they could be at once labelled as abnormal. Why should such an absurd fear be associated with the loss of excreta which are usually considered as dirty and object to be discarded -at once is a problem that requires careful study. The first case tha$ introduced me into the intricacies of this problem was an agoraphobic patient. Simultaneously with the appearances of the fear of going out of the house alone, he manifested the fear of defaeeation also. In the beginning he did not know what he was afraid of at the rime of defaeeation but in course of time he started associating the fear of death with the act of defaeeation though he did not know what kind of relation could possibly exist between them. Later on however he started saying that it was not really the fear of defaeeation which kept him worried but the fear of emptiness of the abdomen created as a result of it. This realization came to him as he found out that if he ate anything while defalcating his feat would disappear at once. He could not say why this feeling of emptiness inside the abdomen should be so fearful and why should it create in the mind the idea of impending physical death though he found in the act of eating a remedy of getting rid of it. In
*Read before thfe General Ivfeeting of Society on 9th Pecember 1951.

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the beginning he got anxiety attacks only during defaecation but later on even the very idea of relieving his bowels would bring about an attack. , These frequent anxiety attacks made him eat too much and he became very fat due to overeating. Later on a change was noticed in his anxiety relieving mechanism. Now he need not eat always to get rid of his anxiety. If he knew that food would be available " in the crucial moment his mounting anxiety would at once subside, and for that reason all he needed now was simply to put some food materials on a table in front of him but he seldom required to eat them. Later on .even some substitutes of food would relieve his anxiety. He would keep his pocket filled with some match sticks and at the time of anxiety insert one or two of them into his nose and that would be enough to relieve him of his'difEcuties. The history of the above case shows that the patient feels that one's abdomen must be filled with some thing either in the form of food or faeces otherwise one would be in a dangerous situation. A schizophrenic boy who ate his own faeces immediately after defaecation said that he had to eat it as he could not stand the emptiness of his abdomen. I know a hysteric person who would feel like dying whenever he would be very hungry or thirsty and could not get any relief immediately but this feeling would disappear directly he ate or drank something. Another schizophrenic boy of 12 just at the onset tof his illness refused to defaecate as he feared that God who resided inside his body would leave it in the form of faeces and he would die consequently. According to him God was faeces or he was inside the faeces and He must remain inside the abdomen to keep him alive as the patient thought that God was his life force. Another schizophrenic equated the loss of money to the loss of his bodily parts. Whenever he had to travel in a bus and he "had to pay some money to the conductor for buying the ticket, he became overwhelmed with fear. According to him the fear was not due to the expenditure of money just made but due to some unknown loss which he would be obliged to undergo. Once it so happened that after reaching the destination when he had got down from the bus he suddenly thought that he had left something in it and ran after the running bus without -realising what he was doing. On being asked why he ran after the bus he replied that when he

saw that the bus was receding from him a sudden sense of deprivation seized him and he felt the impulse of getting into the bus again and this impulse he said might have originated from the idea that he actually had left some of his bodily parts inside the bus or the coming out from the bus itself might have been a loss. The fear of loss in the above case arising at the time of making payment to the conductor has got an anal erotic element no doubt so far as its origin is concerned but another element which is added to it, is castration complex. Freud has shown that in the Unconscious, faeces, child, money and penis are equated to each other, I got corroboration of this view from another patient who was being analysed under me for obsessional neurosis. He narrated that once when his wife took some money from his box without informing him, he became very angry ,and then an overwhelming fear of loss seized him and it was not relieved until he actually sustained some further loss of money due to his own negligence. Since then it has been his uniform experience that he would have to incur some financial loss every time when he had developed this kind of fear of losing money and strove for doing away with it. In this particular case there was ample proof in the associations, I obtained from him, that this fear of monetary loss and the compulsion to undergo some loss actually arose out of the castration fear and castration desire which are so often noticed to be present simultaneously. Now one might ask why this separation from the bus itse'f should appear to the patient as loss and we must admit that there are some difficulties in explaining this kind of fear of loss with the help of castration complex. A new comprehensive theory should be evolved which will be able to explain all the facts mentioned above in a better manner. It might be suggested that this fear of loss might have some link with the autoerotic phase of the sexual development. In the agoraphobic patient mentioned above it has been noticed that his daily loss of faeces appeared to him as a physical loss and he was obliged to compensate it by eating. This fact at once takes us to another problem. Why this fear of death should appear at the time of defaecation and what a person is really afraid of at the time of excretory loss. The schizophrenic boy's assertion that God was his life force and if he left his body with the faeces he would die gives a clue to the answer to this question. A middle aged

schizophrenic patient also expressed the similar idea. He said thathis mother left his body through his forehead after his father shot" him and since then he has. been a dead person. He: considered that he might come to life again if he could go back to his mother's womb or take her inside his body again. One day it was noticed that he was eating his own faeces and shouting that he got her mother back and ate her up immediately. Another obsessional patient also said that his mother was his life force and if he lost her he would be dead. For that reason he had decided to eat her up and keep her inside him as he thought otherwise his father would take her away from him. Even then hewas under the constant dread that his mother would leave his. body through his anal opening as faeces or through other excretory channels. I shall narrate portions from several days' free association of this patient to make the nature of his fear of excretory loss more clear. "Ihave lost my mother. I sought her here, there, everywhere, but she was nowhere to be seen. late her up and she is no more late her up so that I can have an absolute control over her but she has disappeared. I thought she must be in my faeces, or she was faeces itself but I could not detect her in it though, I smelt her milky body odour emanating from it so long I- have, eaten enough of my faeces fearing she should go away from me along with it. Unfortunately I do not feei my mother's presence inside me, perhaps she has become my breasts * I have got breast like a woman and milk; giving capacity, like my mother perhaps mother is my faeces but how. could it happen ? I took her as a milk and how could she become faeces then ? I tore my anus into pieces but I could not recover my mother from there, then I vomitted repeatedly but she was not in the vomit too; Ithen mtcturated and examined my urine but she was not to be seen in it also. At last 1 came to the conclusion that she must be in my. breasts creating milk from my inside." "If I lose mother I will lose my everything. I must eat my own faeces, mother must come out of my body as faeces so. that I might be convinced' that she still exists but I must eat her again otherwise my father will take her away," "Although due to repeated eating of my mother my mouth. has; become blunt yet I could not keep her under my subjugation, I am under the constant fear that-should leave- me.she is inside me; as

faeces and doctor would perform an operation on me- and take her. away.......toother and mother land is superior to heaven but mother will not remain with me. I am afraid to defaecateI would not be* a.ble to keep her under my control, she will escape through my analopening. 1 could not capture that person for whom I have become mad.....she is so elusive, she has become merged with me now or I have become merged with her. I want to get her separated from, rne so that I can feel that she exists She is lost and I do not getany trace of her but she can not disappear in the thin air. Lost ? Impossible. I feel her existence in the heart that is pulsating inside me. I must take her out from my inside as I do not feel her existence otherwise." Fi;o.m the studies of the above associations we can understand why faeces should become the symbol of money. In trie oral stage it is the mother who appears to be valuable to the child for her pleasure giving capacity and in the anal stage that mother would appear to the child as, fa;eces. Hence in the consciousness of adult persons any thing appearing to.be valuabl.e and requiring to be spent periodically would be symbol of faeces and money's worth being so high in the present society w,ould: certainly take up this kind of symbolisation. It might be aked why mother should appear as faeces to the child in the anal phase, arid in order to answer this question we have to take notice of the.- experiences-of a child during his autoerotic phase of development.. During this phase a child's interest centres round the alimentary canal. The primacy of the oral and anal phases being successive and mouth being an incorporating organ and anus an expulsive one the two. pleasure giving objects associated with these two phases. w,oukl be identified as one as it is a fact that things eaten up by the mopth wpuld be expelled by the anus though in a changed form. But a-child, takes, notice of other excretory organs also. In this way mother. w.ould, appear as faeces in the anal phase and urine and semen inr the ' phallic- phase, For that; reason the passing of 'urine;, might also appear aS'loss.. A.patient was under the delusion that he had been suffering;. from diabetes;, would be compelled to pass urine frequently but everytjbtne: after micturation he would be overwhelmed with the fear of loss,,. He said; that all the vital properties of his body were lost with the; urine he- wajs obliged, to pass and he adopted certain protective measures to save himself from, this danger. After micturation he would: sit down>

on the floor of the lavatory as he thought due to loss of strength he would not be able to walk any longer. Sitting there he would shout 'push me, push me' and he would start walking when he would be pushed by some body as this push according to him would generate new strength in him. But still then his danger would not be over. He wouli ask them 36 all right ? and some body had to answer, 'yes' and then only his mental equillibrium would come back. The number 36 showed that he was once more saved from a danger just like another occasion when he appeared in an examination in Bengali and narrowly escaped from failure by securing 36 marks only. Now he would be bold enough and say 85, all right ? and if he got an affirmative answer, his all sense of weakness would disappear. As we notice in most of the psychotic cases fixation in the anal phase of the sexual development the faeces take so important part in the symptom formation. Many paranoid patients complain that they are being given faeces to eat instead of rice whereas there are patients who think that along with rice they are given cow's head or their dear or .near one as a meal. If we critically observe the above delusions it will be evident that in the first one the emphasis is on the anal phase one whereas in the second one the emphasis is on the oral phase. But in both cases the patients were expressing their unwillingness to eat up their mother. That faeces could be symbol of mother would be evident from the associations of the obsessional patient given above. I have already shown in a previous paper on 'Delusion of persecution' that at the background of the refusal to eat lies the desire to eat one's own mother with whom he wants to get merged and this desire to eat one's own mother is only the reversal of the original wish of going into the mother's womb which become imperative in certain psychotic states due to regression. A child experi' ences a terrible shock at the time of birth due to his being separated from the mother and he feels a longing immediately for going back to the mother's womb again. In the oral phase to which he arrives now he gets a clue to the satisfaction of this desire, While he sucks the mother's breast he wouid imagine that he had eaten up his mother and thus he is able to satisfy his longing to go back to the mother's womb though in a reverse way. But at the time of defaecation he would think that the incorporated mother would be ejected out and therefore he would 'feelas much disturbance of mind as he had at the time of birth.

So this fear of loss is analogous to the fear of separation from the mother at the time of birth. In the delusion of the schizophrenic patient and in the association of the obsessional patient mentioned above this idea has been clearly expressed. The obsessional patient once said in his association that he felt a magnetic pull of his mother constantly pulling him towards her and in order to get rid of it he was obliged to eat her up and thus become a woman as in the act he got himself lost altogether. Though this kind of union could satisfy his longing for the mother but his ego would sense a danger in it due to the possibility of self destruction and would get himself separated from the mother by the act of defaecation symbolically. But unfortunately the magnetic pull of the mother would assert itself immediately and this kind of separation from the mother by the acfcof defaecation would appear as a loss to him- It appears that two experiences of union with the mother during the intrauterine existence and the separation from her at the time of birth make such an impression on the child's mind that he will have to repeat it psychologically throughout life. It becomes a repetition compulsion with him. In a previous paper I narrated a phantasy of a patient described by Bose in which the patient saw a row of women standing before him and he would enter into their bodies successively through their mouths and come out through their genitals. In this phantasy the above mentioned mechanism could be very easily detected. In normal people also this mechanism could be noticed. In one's plunging in ceaseless activity during the day and surrendering oneself again in the embrace of sleep in the night and in the compulsion of the sexual activities we find the working of the same mechanism. But in the manifestation of the mental symptoms we find the effect of this repetition compulsion more clearly. In agoraphobia and claustrophobia which are so often noticed to be associated together in the same person the presence of this mechanism could be easily discerned. The agoraphobic patient mentioned above showed* claustrophobia also. During analysis of this case I have noticed that small room like water closet which he feared to enter and the house from which he was afraid to go out were symbols of mother to him and' through the agoraphobia he was expressing his fear of separation from the .mother and by showing claustrophobia he was expressing his fear .of self destruction due to his being merged with his mother. In

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jSaranoia also where the delusion of grandeur and the delusion of persecution are found to be associated together so often this mechanism of alternate union and separation with the mother is noticed. I have already described in another article (Ingestive arid excretory megalomania) that the delusion of grandeur is developed in a person when he imagines that he becomes transformed into his mother by eating her up and the delusion of poisoning is developed when he refuses to eat her up due to his fear of self destruction. So we 'find that there is a close connection between the delusion of poisoning and claustrophobia and the delusion of grandeur and agoraphobia so far as their origin is concerned. In the first two conditions the patient does not like to get united with the mother and in tke second two conditions he wants to remain united with her. In the sV&igtdnVs 6f mania and depression also we find the impression of the woffc'trig of the same repetition compulsion. In the manic phase the patient's excessive hunger and aggressiveness are required for the fulfilment of the incorpbrative desire and in the depressive phase his suicidal tendency and his refusal to eat etc. are necessary for expulsion of incorporated mother. Many depressive patients say that they can not eat as they find living human beings in their food whom they do not like to incorporate. If we look at the fear of loss in the above light then its meaning becomes comprehensible to us. Both the psychotic and neurotic patients through their fear of loss express their sense of loss that they had to sustain at the time of birth due to their separation from the mother. As I have already said that the effect of the birth trauma could be noticed in both normal and abnormal persons but in the normal persons it could not be detected so easily due to the ego's defensive measures. In abnormal persons the same defensive measures to be noticed and it Js due to them only that the fear takes up different shapes in the different developmental levels such as fear of faecal loss in the anal phase and castration fear in the genital phase but a proper analysis would always reveal that these fears have their origin in the fear of loss sustained by the child at the time of birth due to his being separated from the mother. Now the schizophrenic patient's manifestation of feat of loss at the time of his getting down from the bus becomes quite clear to us. The bus due to symbolisation becomes mother to him-'arid getting down from it would mean automatically his birth.

Many schizophrenic patients who manifested the delusion of being dead said that they died as a result of their being separated from their mother and some, of them openly expressed their desie of going into the mother's womb again. One such patient was under the impression that he had lost five lacs of rupees and searched them in the every room of the ward in which he was staying. But fear of loss would ajso appear from the other aspect of the repetition compulsion mentioned above that is from the fear of getting merged with the mother. The obsessional patient whose associations have been described above suffered from sexual inhibition; from this fear alone. Hefeared that if he indulged in sexual activities his penis would get stuck in the woman's body or his, whole body would go inside her and he would be. inside her and he would be lost for ever being merged with her. From.the analogy of this case it .appears that the schizophrenic patient's fear to the effect that he had .hisbodily parts inside the bus might have originated from this fear of getting merged with the mother.

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ABSTRACTS
The Etiology of SchizophreniaA. J. Shulman. (Psychiatric terly, Vol. 24, No. 3, 1950). The author discusses the different conceptions on the etiology of Schizophrenia. He criticizes the organic conception of" it as a disease entity rooted in the constitutional predisposition, on the basis of its lack of discrimination between biological and social inheritance. He says that the psychosocial conception of suchauthors as Sullivan, Cameron, is best suited to explain the phenomena of schizophrenia. He presents anthropological, social and clinical evidences in support of this conception. He points out that the biological factors are the universal property of the human organism. They may participate, but are not accountable for the schizophrenic process. They are operative only when there is an inadequate parent-child relationship in the early childhood years followed by stress in later life. He supports the view of those who hold that schizophrenia is not a disease entity, but a convenient way of describing certain phenomena which are continuous with and merge into the phenomena, of other so-called disease entities. He says that theactipn of somatic treatment is either to modify the concomitant interpersonal processes or to produce such change on the biological function as to give the patient an opportunity to work out a solution of his troubles. A. DATTA

of awareness meaning in turn responses -to sensory stimuli, is present in infants even during the first 24 hours. This. indicates the possibility of the feeling of hostility being laid as an engram in consciousness before birth. The authors argue if any thing happens to this rudimentary consciousness during the process of birth, it may be a selective or partial loss of memory of the previous awareness, but certainly not a total loss. After birth there is a period of relaxation. During this period, there is'an opportunity for the formation of an empathy between the mother and child which may compensate in part for the previous hostility the child has experienced. But the store of hostility which has been engendered in the child is so great that it cannot be entirely compensated and this uncompensated hostility continues to be a life-long problem to the individual which forces him to seek affection constantly' in an attempt to counterbalance this latent hostility ever afteiSSvards.
, ' A. D A T T A

A Concept of o the Genesis of HostilityJ N. G- Cushing and M. M. Cushing. (Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1949) The authors have examined motion pictures of human foetal behaviour and sections of central nervous system of the same foetuses. The movements of foetus after birth are expression of hostility. The possibility of the postnatal reactions of the foetus being a continuance of the prenatal life, the authors contend that the genesis of hostility is in the uterine life. Consciousness in the sense

Notes on AggressionAnna Freud. {Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Vol. 13, No. 5, 1949). This article forms a part of the symposium on "Aggression ir; relation to Emotional Development: Normal and . Pathological". In the course of his analytical work, . Ereud abandoned his earlier conception of aggression as an ego-instinct and 'frustration-theory' and developed the "Theory of the Life and Death Instincts", classifying the whole range of the instinctive urges under these two main headsthe life, force and the death force. Sex is the representative of the life force and aggression of the destructive force. The admixtures of the two fundamental instincts go to form the phenomena of life. Analysts differ among themselves on their views on aggression according as they have adopted Freud's earlier frustration theory or his later life and death theory. They, however, agree that at some moment or. other in the development of the young child the aggressive urges become incompatible with other strivings or with the higher agencies in the individual's mind. Aggression is then felt to be intolerable and the ideas, phantasies and. wishes representing it are rejected by the mind by various methods

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e. g. repression, projection, sublimation, etc. The answers to questions of effect of the internal and external factors on aggression, are not given but opinion is expressed to have them based on certain available clinical facts
A. DATTA

Bipolarity in Diagnosis Through ArtErnest Zierer, Ph. D.

(American Journal of Psychotherapy. Vol.,IV, No. 3, July 1950).

Bipolarity means "function of opposite forces." In,painting it m^y manifest itself simultaneously,; i, e. side by side or superimposed one on the other. These might be respectively described as contiguous or superimposed bipolarity. When opposite forces, operate alternately we call that alternate bipolarity. In evolutionary bipolarity there is a bipolarity of progressive and regressive forces as opposites. Finally we have an interpretative bipolarity evidenced only by the patient's symbolic usage of the represented subject matter. The intensity of opposition in bipolarity. may vary and may result in compatibility, in compromise or in incompatibility of the contradictory forces. Bipolarities are incompatible in schizophrenic art but allow a compromise in neurotic t.rt. They-are compatible, however, when they are the expression of reaiity problems and not of inner conflicts. Innumerable variations of the-theme "Battle between two worlds, Righteousness and Evil" are-found in Schizophrenic art. All of them, however, have two facts in common, (a) contiguous representation of opposite' forces and (b) a hopelessness. The theme is found in neurotic art too. But the neurotic type differs from the Schizophrenic in two aspects : (a) Many neurotics are particular about painting "the happy world" on the 'right' and the "evil" on the 'left' (b) The ambivalence between good and evil is sufmountable in terms of a compromise, usually expressed as hopefulness contrary to Schizophrenic's uncompromising hopelessness. An experiment demonstrated evolutionary bipolarity. All patients had to paint a portrait in oil from a piaster model. They were told to express as close a resemblance to the model as possible, otherwise they were free as to colour, composition and technique- The remarkable resuit was that all portraits

were self portraits although of course they were not intended to be that. There was an emphasis on motor expression in Schizophrenic drawings as we find in the drawings of the primitives and the children. These motor factors express the Schizophrenic's regression to infantile narcissism. His protest against progression amounts to incompatible opposition. The neurotic brought out less self resemblance. Form and composition were predominantly utilised by them for this purpose while Schizophrenic predominantly used movement and rhythm. Schizophrenic alternate bipolarity is a total bipolarity and cannot be expressed in terms of maturity and immaturity. It is an "all-ornothing" polarity. The either' or is either integration or non-integration. There is no gradual differentiation. The neurotic prefers a compromise, i e "integration on a lower level" to nop-integration. From the comments of the Schizophrenic painters it can be gathered that to them reality is no more than a symbol. The Schizophrenic's entire symbolic vocabulary derives from such a devaluation of reality ; to him reality and symbolism are incompatible opposites. Neurotic symbols are selected by associative thinking. The association symbolism is the neurotic's compromise with reality. A general survey of bipolarity has been given above. Completeness in the representation of creative bipolarity as a diagnostic system is not claimed, S. C. MITRA

NEWS AND NOTES

Bodhayana, a school for normal young children under the management of Indian Psycho-analytical Society has now completed one and a half year of its existence. It is hoped that this institution would not only attempt to impart education according to methods based on psycho-analytical principles but also collect data regarding the developmental processes working in such children. For this reason the school is started with only a small group of children so that each may receive individual attention from the psycho-analytical social worker. Arrangements for the opening of a special section of Bodhayana for mentally abnormal children are now proceeding. The extension work of the male ward of the Lumbini Mental Hospital managed by the Indian Psycho-analytical Society was completed in December 1950. It is hoped that further extension work would be taken up at the end of 1951. We welcome the news of the formation of the Association For Psychiatric Treatment of Offenders under the chairmanship of Dr. Meliita Schmideberg. The Society was organized in the Spring of 1950 only and claims today to have a clinical service functioning which has attracted considerable attention. Offender patients known to have committed such crimes as rape, armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, forgery, etc. are, being dealt with along with other patients in the private offices of the doctors without discrimination from his regular practice. In addition to the clinical service the Association holds monthly forum meeting free to the public, clinical discussion for rherapy and; case work discussions meetings for social workers. The , Association is a non-profit and non-sectarian organization; membership is $5 a year open to all professional people. The Association is also affiliated to the International Society of Criminoiogy,

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