lesion into consciousness, and the accuracy of the revelations thus obtained has been tested by independent witness.  Freud has, however, long abandoned the induction of any degree of hypnosis; he simply tries to arrange that the patient shall feel absolutely free to tell her own story, and so proceeds from the surface downwards, slowly finding and piecing together such essential fragments of the history as may be recovered, in the same way he remarks, as the archaeologist excavates below the surface and recovers and puts together the fragments of an antique statue.  Much of the material found, however, has only a symbolic value requiring interpretation and is sometimes pure fantasy.  Freud now attaches great importance to dreams as symbolically representing much in the subject’s mental history which is otherwise difficult to reach.[275] The subtle and slender clues which Freud frequently follows in interpreting dreams cannot fail sometimes to arouse doubt in his readers’ minds, but he certainly seems to have been often successful in thus reaching latent facts in consciousness.  The primary lesion may thus act as “a foreign body in consciousness.”  Something is introduced into psychic life which refuses to merge in the general flow of consciousness.  It cannot be accepted simply as other facts of life are accepted; it cannot even be talked about, and so submitted to the slow usure by which our experiences are worn down and gradually transformed.  Breuer illustrates what happens by reference to the sneezing reflex.  “When an irritation to the nasal mucous membrane for some reason fails to liberate this reflex, a feeling of excitement and tension arises.  This excitement, being unable to stream out along motor channels, now spreads itself over the brain, inhibiting other activities.... In the highest spheres of human activity we may watch the same process.”  It is a result of this process that, as Breuer and Freud found, the mere act of confession may greatly relieve the hysterical symptoms produced by this psychic mechanism, and in some cases may wholly and permanently remove them.  It is on this fact that they founded their method of treatment, devised by Breuer and by him termed the cathartic method, though Freud prefers to call it the “analytic” method.  It is, as Freud points out, the reverse of the hypnotic method of suggestive treatment; there is the same difference, Freud remarks, between the two methods as Leonardo da Vinci found for the two technical methods of art, per via di porre and per via di levare; the hypnotic method, like painting, works by putting in, the cathartic or analytic method, like sculpture, works by taking out.[276]