Psycho-Foundation

"But, my dear, you shouldn't tell your d-r-e-a-m-s like that in public. Don't you know what that m-e-a-n-s ? Buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz."

The dreamer goes home startled, curious, full of vague notions and curiosity, a prey to delicious contemplation of the "sublimations" from "suppressed desires" her (his) friend has hinted, more or less darkly, more or less ignorantly. Practising "doctors of psychoanalysis" are not now uncommon in the world, charlatans of the sort that has battened on prevailing mental and medical fads since a skulking witch-doctor first sold a pickled dog's eye to a savage with a bellyache.

Against these latter and to stem the tide of hurtful misconception they see rising, friends and relatives of Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, pioneer investigator of "unconscious mentation," have urged him to accept the presidency of an International Psychoanalytical Foundation.

Scholarships to Berlin and Vienna, free treatment to poor patients and the dissemination of authentic literature would constitute such a Foundation's program. Last week Dr. Freud acquiesced, stipulating that a governing committee must do the work and leave him free to pursue his own work, which is from 8 a. m. to 7 p. m., receiving patients, writing at books until midnight (TIME, Oct. 27).

U. S. figures sure to figure in the Foundation's foundation and upon its governing committee: Dr. Clarence P. Oberndorf of Manhattan, onetime (1923) President of the American Psychoanalytical Society and Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis; Dr. Abraham Arden Brill* of New York University, "first U. S. practitioner of Freud's doctrine" and a U. S. translator of his works; Dr. Edward L. Bernays, Manhattan, "counsel on public relations" and nephew to Dr. Freud.

A film entitled The Mystery of the Soul was also announced last week. Produced by the Berlin concern UFA, every foot will be planned, scrutinized by Dr. Freud. The subject: popular demonstration of psychoanalysis.

*At the time of the trial of Murderers Leopold and Loeb in Chicago a year ago, Dr. Brill attracted attention by declaring that George Washington and Woodrow Wilson as well as the murderers were "schizoids," i. e., independent persons, progressing on aims tangential to the tendencies of the day. Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt he classed as "syntonics," i. e., persons following a line which, however set, synchronizes with their surroundings.