(© RKP, 1960)Travail
Anthropologists, and even the general public, know that in many parts of the world, among some so-called primitive peoples, the husband goes to bed and experiences the birth-pains of his wife who is in travail.
It would be of no avail were you to tell him that his pains are imaginary, that he had no organs susceptible of causing such pains, and that he has no occasion to have them. He is subjected to that concept and is unable to transcend it.
Is not the I-concept, to which we, so-called non-primitive people, are subjected, just that?
Dream Figures. 'As Below ...'
It may be useful to re-emphasise that not only the protagonists but everyone who appears in our dreams is the dreamer of the dream. This should be obvious enough, but until thought of and tested it is apt to be denied. Whatever name and apparent identity is attributed to dream personages, it can readily be perceived, not merely theoretically, that such persons are not in fact the individuals named as they were or are, even in memory, but the projection on to those names of a concept of the dreaming mind utilising just sufficient traits drawn from memory to give some verisimilitude to the attribution of identity. Whatever name and identity the dream figure is given, he is always based on psychic elements of the dreaming mind.
