began with K had eloped with his best friend and that he
had vowed never to mention her name again. Upon Dr. Brill's suggestion
he tried to think of the unfaithful lover as Miss W., but soon
returned, saying that he was stammering worse than ever. Investigation
showed that the additional unpronounceable words contained the letter
W. When he was induced to renounce his oath never to call the girl's
name again, he found that he had no more difficulty with his
speech.[43]

[Footnote 43: H. Addington Bruce; "Stammering and Its Cure,"
_McClure's_, February, 1913.]

Thus we see that even the halting tongue of a stammerer may point the
way to the buried complex for which search is being made.

Since there is no accident in mental life, and since there is behind
every action a force or group of forces, no smallest action is
insignificant to the person trained to understand.

If this at first seems disturbing, it is only because we do not
realize that there is nothing within of which we need be ashamed.
People are very much alike, especially in the deeper layers of their
being. What belongs to the whole human race does not need to be
hidden away in darkness. There is nothing to lose and everything to
gain by an increasing understanding of the chance signals which reveal
the forces at work within the depths of the mind. To the analyst every
little unconscious act is a valuable clue pointing toward the end of
his quest.[44]

[Footnote 44: For further discussion of this subject, see Freud's
_Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_, translated by A.A. Brill.]

=The Aim of Psycho-Analysis.= As we have seen, the object of all this
technique is the discovery and the removal of the resistances which
have been keeping the emotional conflicts in the dark. It is a long
step just to learn that there are resistances; and by reliving, bit by
bit, the earlier experiences responsible for unfortunate habits, we
find that the habits themselves lose much of their old power. They can
be seen for what they are, and changed to suit present conditions. A
wish is incomparably stronger when unconscious than when conscious;
and the old stereotyped, automatic reactions tend to cease when once
they have been seen for what they are. They become assimilated with
the rest of the personality and modified by the mature attitudes of
the conscious mind. The person then re-educates himself by the very
act of discovering himself. In other cases, the uncovering i