SOME PSYCHOANALYTIC IDEAS APPLIED TO ELATION AND DEPRESSION

Looking back over this exposition, I see that from first to last I have been overtly or tacitly concerned with the meaning of words, which some may think an unimportant matter. I should disagree with any such opinion. When Freud explained what he meant by the statement, "The hysteric suffers from reminiscences," he chose an allegory that depended on philology. A hysteric, he explained, was like a modern Englishman who wept every time he passed Charing Cross, etymologically chère reine Cross, so named because at this spot the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor stopped on its way from London to Westminister in the year 1204 and a cross was erected to mark the halt.

Let us not suffer from reminiscences. Even if we transiently must accept the vocabulary of our ancestors and if we speak of manic-depressive states, of depressive equivalents, and persist in believing in underlying depressions, let us at least be aware that we are in the 20th century, that time separates us from the burial of the dear Queen and from the originators of the old terminology. A quiet tear may be in order, but it should not blind us to the busy modern traffic.