I want you to talk to yourself. Go somewhere where you can be alone, and where you can talk to yourself without being over­heard. Then think of all the weaknesses and undesir­able characteristics that: have troubled you so greatly in your life, and utter them aloud.

Bring out every shortcoming and furtive tendency and permit your own ears to hear your own voice giving expression to those repressed thoughts.

Many thousands of times in your life you have caught fleeting glimpses of slinking thoughts in your mind, of which you have tried to deny the existence— run away from, in fact. It is best that these running-away efforts should end, and that a totally different attitude be adopted; for a little reflection is all that is necessary to show that running away from something which is unpleasant does not dispose of the disagree­able agents. Instead of running away from such things as these, therefore, go to meet them, and have it out once for all.

Have you ever heard your own voice uttering aloud your innermost fears, weaknesses, and undesirable tendencies? Well, you are going to be a trifle startled at first. You will understand, however, that you are not creating anything that has not hitherto existed. You are simply facing, for the first time, something the existence of which you have always tried your hardest to deny.

You have probably not understood the fact that inner weaknesses are like shadows; the faster that one runs the faster the shadow also travels. There is no change in the relative positions. When we travel fast, the shadows of our weaknesses travel fast; when we stop, they stop. When we move on again, our phantom attendants move on with us. Where we are, they are.

Running away from one's mental shadows is a losing race from the beginning; the runner has no chance whatever. And the faster the misguided in­dividual runs the sooner he lands in the psychopathic ditch.

Instead of running away, therefore, we are now going to do the opposite. We are going to turn round and have it out.

Say the Words

In the first place, however, don't infer that the mental attitude that is aimed at is a sort of glorified moaning and groaning indulgence, for it is not to be anything of the sort. This is not to be any lamentation séance. Simply transform vague, repressed, slinking, and furtive thoughts into words.

Act as if you were taking a cold-blooded inventory of the weaknesses, fears, and unenviable tendencies of some entity or other which is something apart from yourself. Don't look upon the thoughts that you thus drag forth as being anything to be ashamed of, or as having any other form of personal identification. Look upon them as bunches of barnacles that you are scraping off your submerged mental foundations.

Go right down the line, speaking out aloud those thoughts of which you have caught fleeting glimpses from time to time; don't shirk anything. The more disagreeable or distressing a thought seems to be the greater the necessity for oral expression.

No matter whether a thought pertains to religion, sex, inferiority, temperament, grief, disappointment, or injuries, real or imaginary—turn them into words. Hear yourself speak them.

We are going to do something with this mental inventory presently, but before doing so I will say that the very act of making it will have a most bene­ficial effect. The mere act of transforming the vague and repressed thoughts into words, and letting those thoughts be represented by actual acoustic vibrations, produces a pronounced emotional release; an easing of psychical tension.

Of course, there must not be any confusion as to the nature of the mental attitude that will govern this exercise. There must not be the slightest tendency towards moody introspection. Don't make the mistake of considering this action as being a post-mortem ex­amination.

Simply recite the bald facts in as cold-blooded a manner as you would call out the articles on a shelf to an attendant clerk if you were taking an inventory of a grocery business. Keep on talking as long as ideas come up to be expressed, and when you have "run dry," start to write, and write fast.

Write the Words

We now want to have another "original" story; and we want that story to be written down so that it will be strongly influenced (unconsciously) by the mental catharsis that has just been undergone. We want this story to be a word-dream; a "story" in which the gov­erning ideas will have some special unconscious sig­nificance. I will try to illustrate what is required in this respect by a personal effort of my own.

After an intensive period of analysis of the type we have been discussing, I sat down at the typewriter and tapped off the following little storiette; the time consumed being sixty-two seconds:

"The cat jumped at the dog and the cabbage laughed; there was no moon and the grass was tall; the people were laughing at the pool where the man came out before he jumped into the sea; but the pier was there, and the lighthouse kept on blinking."

That little story is virtually a dream: a word-dream. There is not in that "story" a single idea that I pur­posely designed; yet an analysis of the ideas contained in it relates to memories of significant interest to my personality. The same principles will apply in an analysis of your own word-dream also.

Do not aim at intellectual sequence; for that matter, don't think at all. Just write down the first ideas that come into your head, and write as if the point of in­terest consists in expressing as many different ideas as possible in the shortest period of time—irrespective of logical order. As previously stated, the very act of undergoing this mental catharsis is going to have an extremely beneficial effect, as it will serve to release a certain amount of suppressed emotional tension.

If you are in such a fit mood that your ideas virtu­ally "jump out" of you, and seemingly without any rhyme or reason, so much the better; for there will be that much more mental material to utilize subsequently. On the other hand, if you find that fifty or a hun­dred words are all that you can manage readily, that will do for the present experiment.

There will be a tendency for you to oppose your intellectual guidance to the ideas that are required to "jump out" of your mind, but this must be avoided. The more seemingly erratic and bizarre the features of this story appear to be, the better they will be for our purpose.

Every conscious idea is motivated by definite un­conscious influences, no matter whether it relates to religion, humor, a mathematical problem, or an in­sane raving. And as this "original" story will have been written down at a time immediately succeeding the generation within yourself of a very deeply-seated emotional disturbance resulting from the making of the mental inventory, the ideas that are expressed in that story will have very significant associations with some of the factors that are involved in that emotional disturbance.

In writing this word-dream, therefore, try to write as spontaneously as possible. At the slightest tendency of the mind seemingly to jump from one idea to something else, let it go; don't guide it.

You will note how my ideas jumped about in that word-dream of mine. Intellectually, the sequence is absurd; but in connection with the unconscious moti­vating influences that I subsequently uncovered in relation to them by analysis, they were extremely sig­nificant to my psychical poise.

Pressures Are Released

If you have caught the spirit of the requirements in this purging effort, and have apprehended the principles that are involved in the subsequent word-dream construction, a very pronounced object will have been attained.

The giving of oral expression to the repressed thoughts, fears, weaknesses, and tendencies, will have an extremely beneficial influence upon the uncon­scious conflicts, as it will serve to release a very con­siderable part of the hitherto pent-up emotional pres­sure. The benefit in this connection can be so great, in fact, that it has to be experienced in order to be fully realized. The reaction is in many cases simply extraordinary.

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