ABSTRACT
One of the most important sources of the primitive belief in spirits is dreams. A dream is a psychic product originating in the sleeping state without conscious motivation. In a dream, consciousness is not completely extinguished; there is always a small remnant left. Another source of the belief in spirits is psychogenic diseases, nervous disorders, especially those of a hysterical character, which are not rare among primitives. Accordingly, primitive pathology recognizes two causes of illness: loss of soul, and possession by a spirit. Since, according to primitive belief, a spirit is usually the ghost of one dead, it must once have been the soul of a living person. A well-known example of transformation of a content of the collective unconscious into communicable language is the miracle of Pentecost. Spiritualism as a collective phenomenon thus pursues as the same goals as medical psychology and styling themselves the teachings of the spirits, which are characteristic of the nature of the collective unconscious.
