ABSTRACT
The new teaching in ethnology, which is explained in the article by the late Dr Rivers in the number, destroys the foundation of the belief in the reality of “typical symbols,” and brings to the ground the fantastic speculations built upon it by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The history of Freud’s teaching is rich in contradictions and illogical claims. But the most remarkable feature of this great reform in psychological method is the fact that most of the opposition aroused against it has been the result of Freud’s departure from his own principles. The essence of his innovation was the fact that he took quite seriously the patient’s symptoms, his phantasies and his dreams, and made a real attempt to discover how they originated and to explain their significance. The common features of myths and folk-tales are not expressions of instinct or “the collective unconscious,” nor are they “typical symbols.”
