Kilroy was Here

To me it seems most fascinating to observe how unconscious contents and mechanisms constantly penetrate our lives, force us, and I mean all of us, to unreasonable emotional actions and behavior, influence our thinking and lead to mental productions which defy all rational explanation. To demonstrate the unconscious origins of such irrational manfestations is to teach “living psychoanalysis”, a procedure which otherwise can hardly be accomplished outside the strictly psychoanalytic situation.

The most convincing psychoanalytic experience is the analysis of dreams. The understanding of their content and of its connection with and influence upon the present day life situation of the dreamer is the source of overwhelming evidence for the existence of the unconscious and of its dynamic power. We know that it is hardly possible to give such evidence to persons, who do not undergo psychoanalytic treatment, and therefore welcome the opportunity of demonstrating the manifestations of unconscious contents in other mental products which are easily accessible to anyone, as for example in literary productions of all kinds, in folklore, folk customs, and so forth. The emotional participation in these and the objective observation of the behavior in connection with them, made possible through the interpretation of the unconscious content, impresses itself upon those persons who are capable of such objectivity and who are not too resistive against psychoanalytic insight. Marie Bonaparte's collection of war myths (1) and their unconscious contents, the demonstration of the different mental mechanisms applied in their production and of the psycho-economic purpose they serve is an excellent example of the type of work I have in mind.

Myths and legends are those mental products which are the closest to dreams. In their unconscious content they are so much alike that Freud called myths the “secular dreams of mankind.” The myths and legends produced by