ABSTRACT
Freud’s connection of thumb-sucking, and other early pleasure-bringing activities, with the sexual impulse could only be justified, in his view, if the ‘obviously false’ premiss were accepted, that all pleasure is sexually toned. Differences of this kind are reflected in their attitude to dreams. Several dreams are reported by McDougall which seem to him to have been motivated by repressed fear rather than repressed sexuality, among them a dream which occurred during his own analysis with Jung, i.e. that he was swimming on a lake with two other men behind him in a small boat. The prospective orientation to mental life is another feature. Parallels for unconscious processes are to be sought in the physiological sphere rather than the social, they consider, and the analogy which they suggest is that of levels of functioning. The same writers are far readier than the orthodox Freudians to admit questions of value and life philosophy into psychotherapy.
