Ernest Jones

A psychoanalyst who worked closely with Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones is most well known for his book On the Nightmare, from which the following excerpt is taken. In it, Jones argues that humans create monsters as a way to help explain, or assign responsibility for, repressed desires and fears created by extreme emotions of love and hate. Acting on these desires or fears would mean admitting that a dark, or less socially acceptable, side of human nature exists. In an attempt to avoid this confrontation, responsibility for this darkness is projected onto the monsters created in the imagination. Jones' point is that repressing the fears or desires does not make them go away. They are simply buried in the unconscious mind, where they surface in the form of...