DELUSION AND DREAM. By Dr. Sigmund Freud. London: George Allen and Unwin. Pp 213. 12s 6d. net.
In this remarkable book there lies at least a double interest. There is, in the first place, a longish short story of unusual merit and charm, retained in spite of translation, and, in the second, Professor Freud╒s commentary on it from the psycho-analytic standpoint, a brilliant and ingenious treatment of the story as a narrative of real happenings. It is only to be regretted that the author did not go one step farther, by extending his consideration to the mental processes of imaginative writing as exemplified in this case. Such treatment of the material would have offered a field for analysis almost unique in speculative merit.
The story is of a young archaeologist who experiences a conflict between his natural affections and his devotion to his study and career, and whose mental poise suffers as a consequence. Thinking to benefit his health, he goes to Italy to continue his study, and arrives in Pompeii. It is here that the chief action of the story is worked out, with a remarkable ingenuity and insight into the action of a mind partially deranged, by an author, Wilhelm Jensen, who had no knowledge technically either of mental disease or of psychology, and who wrote the tale in 1903. How the woman with whom the ╥hero╙ ought to have been in love was able to recognise his state and to steer him back to complete sanity and the release of his suppressed affection would need the latter half of the story to tell properly.
Having been inveigled into an interest by the charm of the narrative, the reader is next gently introduced to the subjects of dream interpretation and psycho-therapeusis in the second part of the book. We confess to having found it quite as interesting as the former part, and it is hard to imagine a better way of popularising the more serious study of modern psychology than this method. We almost defy anyone who has read the story at all attentively to fail to be interested in the commentary.
The mind of the sufferer is tracked through its wanderings with a vivid sense of actuality which led the author to expostulate with himself for treating the inventions of genius as matter for serious consideration from the aspect of evidence.
More than a word of praise is due to the translation, which is singularly good, free from those awkwardnesses which are so general in translations from the German, and preserving the delicate atmosphere which the original story must have with great fidelity.
