And Bergson was right. The hysterics were crossing the thresholds of Freud’s consulting room, bringing with them imaginal diseases, because there was nothing wrong with them that had a physical cause. Freud’s theories around that time highlighted repression as the defense mechanism, although in the future, other defense mechanisms would be enumerated. Freud saw symptoms, slips of the tongue, and dream symbols as representing the return of the repressed. Early on, in 1895, Freud and Breuer wrote Studies in Hysteria, which showed symptoms at work in the case of Anna O (aka Bertha Pappenheim). Anna O. was arguably the founding patient of psychoanalysis. She called her experiences after being hypnotized the “talking cure” and jokingly called her cathartic experiences “chimney-sweeping,” where after hypnosis, she would give utterance to her hallucinations and be relieved of her symptoms. Later, hypnosis was replaced by free association, and analyses became longer, until they became “interminable.”

Freud learned that fantasy played a role in some stories of seduction. To the unconscious, there was no difference between fact and imagination. Fantasies are important and strong enough to cause things to happen, which was the case with some hysterical symptoms. Although Freud initially felt that hysteria was caused by repressed sexual memories, in his famous “seduction theory,” he later modified the theory. Freud later theorized that “fantasies of seduction” and not actual experiences of seduction, were the cause in most cases. While this revision may in part have been economically and politically motivated, it nonetheless further demonstrates the power of the imagination. Freud rocked the Victorian world with discoveries, which Tarnas (2006) explicates:

the Oedipus complex, the sexual etiology of neurosis, the erotogenic zones, the existence of infant sexuality, the resistance of the conscious ego to the unconscious instincts, the return of the repressed, and many related concepts and insights.

In all of these, the theme of Promethean liberation of the Dionysian can be discerned on many levels. In terms of intellectual history, Freud's achievement can be recognized as the rationalist Enlightenment's entrance into the Plutonic underworld of the instinctual unconscious, the revelation of the “broiling cauldron of the instincts.” ( p. 175)

In July of 1895, Freud had a revelation about dreams, and after conducting his own self-analysis in 1897, he wrote his seminal work The Interpretation of Dreams, which was actually published in 1899, but bore a 1900 publication date. In Freud’s pioneering work, he hailed dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious.” Interestingly for us, in 1909 Freud added a footnote to Interpretation of Dreams in speaking of dreams of birth notes: “moreover the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety” (Freud, 1900/1998, p. 436 ftn 2). Freud’s self analysis was precipitated by his father’s death in 1896. 1896 is also the year that Object Relations play theorist Donald Winnicott was born, as was Chicago author, Maurine Dallas Watkins. P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books was born in August 1899, while Milton Erickson, Walt Disney, and Werner Heisenberg were all born on the same day—December 5, 1901.

After the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud went on to write The Psychopathology of Everyday life in 1901. In 1905 Freud published three of his best known works: Three Essays on Sexuality, Jokes and the Unconscious, and the story of one of his patient’s Dora, which was a case history, but it read like a detective novel. Freud’s first published analysis of a literary work, “Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva” was published in 1907 and Freud also gave a talk on “Creative Writer’s and Day-Dreaming” that year which was published the following year in 1908. We will explore "Creative Writers and Daydreaming" later. In 1930, Freud would win the Goethe Prize for Literature for his writing.

Jung and Flournoy and the Importance of Psyche’s Myth and Play

Jung wrote his dissertation on occult phenomena in 1902 and went on to work on the word association experiments with Bleuler in 1904. The word association experiments led to Jung's theory of complexes, and also formed the basis for lie detectors. Freud and Jung began corresponding in 1906, after Jung sent Freud his findings. They first met in person in 1907, and traveled to America together in 1909 for the Clark lectures. On this trip to America, Jung began to realize that his relationship with Freud was doomed. On the trip, Freud and Jung analyzed each other’s dreams, and at one point, Freud refused to share some personal information with Jung, because Freud could not risk his authority; Jung also found that many of Freud’s interpretations were not very insightful. It was during this time that Jung had his important dream about the house with two stories, and his knowledge that he had to explore the whole house, including the cellar. This dream led him “for the first time to the concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ and thus formed a kind of prelude” to Symbols of Transformation (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido)" (Jung, 1989/1961, pp. 158-159). The publication of this book in 1912, led to the end of both Freud's and Jung's friendship and their also professional relationship. Jung relates that Symbols of Transformation “dealt with the hero’s struggle for freedom” (p. 155).

Mythical thinking, like the Olympics, made a comeback around the turn of the century. As previously mentioned, Frazer published The Golden Bough in 1890, and in 1910 published Totemism and Exogamy, which influenced Freud when he later proffered his own myth of the primal horde in Totem and Taboo (1913). Downing (2002, lecture) postulates that depth psychology began with Freud’s realization: “I am Oedipus” in 1897, and the Oedipus complex later became of central importance in psychoanalysis.

Jung’s break with Freud had mythological roots, too. In Jung’s work with psychotic patients, he saw that not only was the Oedipal myth being enacted, but that other myths were important as well. This led to Jung's formulation of the idea of the collective unconscious. Theodore Flournoy was an advisor to Jung and recommended the “Miller fantasies” to Jung, which he would write about in Symbols of Transformation of Libido (Jung 1912/1976).

Flournoy’s work was also most important for play. His five-year study of a medium beginning in 1894 and published in 1900 in From India to the Planet Mars, not only had an effect on Jung, but also influenced Flournoy's own work on the unconscious. Flournoy studied the different functions of the unconscious, which he identified as creative, protective, compensatory and ludic, or the play function. This ludic or mythopoetic function as it is sometimes called, was “manifested in the romances of the subliminal imagination” (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 317). While other functions of the unconscious had been studied by others, Flournoy was the great explorer of the ludic function with his studies of mediums. Ellenberger remarks:

In this conception the unconscious seems to be continually concerned with creating fictions and myths, which sometimes remain unconscious or appear only in dreams. Sometimes they take the form of daydreams that evolve spontaneously in the background of the subject’s mind (a fact hinted at by Charcot). Sometimes these fictions are acted out in the form of somnambulism, hypnosis, possession, medium’s trance, mythomania, or certain delusions. Sometimes the mythopoetic functions express themselves organically, and this suggests one of the possible concepts of hysteria. It is surprising, however, to see that the notion of the mythopoetic function of the unconscious, which seemed so promising, was not more fully investigated. (p. 318)

Thus at the turn of the Twentieth Century, it is safe to say that the imagination was ascending, the repressed were returning, and the marginalized were breaking through not only in dreams and symptoms, but in everyday life as well. Depth psychology realized the power of fantasy, that children were polymorphously perverse, and that events of early childhood were of major importance. Imagination and childhood would “get their own show.” Childhood got its own timeslot and imagination was soon celebrated in story, on stage, and on the silver screen.

Childhood Comes Of Age

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Groos and Carr were both studying play in animals and humans. Groos’s book on animal play was published in 1898, and his book about play in humans was published in 1901, while Carr’s studies came out in 1902. Additionally, work was being done on the idea of neoteny, i.e., the retention of youthful characteristics into adulthood. Although the term “neoteny” was coined in 1884, it made its first English appearance in 1901 in Gadow's work on reptiles. Havelock Ellis described it without using that word in 1896 and so did biologist Boaz. Fellow, Jackel, and Girard recognized this concept as well in 1901 (Montagu, 1983).

In 1904, the age of the child was declared and children’s rights were one of the main tenets of the progressive movement. The 20^th century was “the century of the child” (Batchelor, 2002, p. 38). Berry (2003) notes that “childhood” as a time was born, and childhood imagination and fantasy stories, once frowned upon, were now looked upon favorably, with notable children’s books, like The Wind in the Willows (1908), and The Wizard of Oz (1900) appearing. James Barrie’s character Peter Pan was first introduced in an adult novel, Little White Bird in 1902, and then became the hugely successful stage play Peter Pan in 1904 before it was novelized as Wendy and Peter in 1911. Barrie boldly brought the imagination to the stage in Victorian England as never before, with all kinds of nonsense, such as flying and crocodiles swallowing alarm clocks. David Magee, who wrote the screenplay for Finding Neverland (Forster, 2004) said:

It was groundbreaking to have dogs and animals and kids and this kind of frivolity on stage at this time because, look at how everyone was dressed and the well to do would come out for a night of theater, and the notion of having this level of fantasy and children flying completely revolutionized the theater and was one of Barrie’s great gifts to theater.

Adolescence "came of age" at the turn of the Twentieth Century, too, or rather became a distinctive stage in the human life cycle, complements of Stanley Hall in 1904.

Ain’t We Got Fun?

The turn of the Twentieth Century was also a time of amusement and fun. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, also called White City, celebrated the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in America, and showcased the world to the marvels of the day. Among the many wonderful things that White City introduced was the Midway Plaisance, a mile long stretch of arcades and amusements of every kind, including the first Ferris Wheel. The Midway Plaisance was such a big hit, and was so tremendously successful economically that it changed the face of amusement from then on. White City inspired the builders of Coney Island, which began in 1895 with Sea Lion Park, followed by Steeplechase Park in 1897; Luna Park and Dreamland opened later in 1904. Rides that had been showcased at White City and the following Buffalo Exposition of 1901 ended up at these parks. "Hales Tours," a distant ancestor of Disney and Lucas's "Star Tours," featured a train car theater that showed movies filmed from trains, and simulated the jostling action.

Lights Camera Action —The Film Industry Begins

The First Films—The Magic Of Méliès

In 1895, the Lumiere brothers projected the first moving pictures, although the movie machine and the photographic gun were invented in the preceding two years. Most of the earliest films merely captured scenes from real life, until George Méliès came along, because unlike the technological background of the other film pioneers, Méliès's background was in entertainment. Méliès made his first film in 1896, and in 1899, Méliès introduced dissolves, time-lapse photography and artificial lighting into his films, using magicians tricks as well as some of his own. In 1902, Méliès classic movie A Trip To The Moon (Le Voyage Dans La Lune) as Berry (2003) notes, gave us two different perspectives on the same event—the aftermath of moon landing. At first we see the famous shot of the man in the moon with a rocket ship having landed in one of his eyes, and then the same event is shown again with the explorers disembarking from the rocketship. Méliès’ films depended on a degree of fantasy and trickery for their impact and he is credited as the founder of cinema fantasy and the originator or precursor of horror, science fiction, and dark comedy (Allen, 1979).

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