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FROM THE ANALYSIS OF A PATIENT WITH Ce OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY

BY

J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTYN LEIDEN

At the beginning of June 1920 a baker’s assistant aged forty- three came to me for treatment on account of a torticollis tic from which he had been suffering for about three years. It had at first caused him but little inconvenience, but had become very much worse in consequence of several emotional experiences. The man now displayed an almost continual tonic cramp in the muscles innervated by the spinal accessory nerve, which only occasionally ceased for a moment. Only during sleep was he un- disturbed. At the same time he suffered from anumber of other tics in his hands: he smelt at his thumbs, held his hand before his eyes, lifted up the lapels of his coat, etc. He had at first in- tended these tics as para-tics (in the sense of a patient of Meige’s): if he merely raised his hand to his face he could over- come the torticollis. But now they continued in a compulsive way without his being able to exercise the slightest influence on them. He had been forced to give up his work, which was to take round bread in a baker’s cart, because he could no longer push the cart. He could not look straight up the road because his head was absolutely askew, and as he continually held one hand up to his face he had to push the cart along with the other hand alone which was only possible for a short time. During the treatment it soon became evident that there were a number of other symp- toms. For more than a year he had been psychically impotent;

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140 J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTIJN

he scarcely dared go out into the street any longer, for as soon as he got into a lively street he felt incomprehensible anxiety; and he was also very much afraid of smoking—as soon as ever he tried the tics grew so powerful that it was impossible.

Several hours having been taken up with his explicit descrip- tions of the various emotions he had experienced, I wished to start the analysis in connection with his dreams. He told me, how- ever, that he scarcely ever dreamed and a dream he had happened to have the night before brought nothing that could be interpreted. (Much later we were able to analyse this dream which contained hidden the most important complexes.) I therefore enquired about earlier dreams and he told me the following one which he said he had often dreamed when he was about twelve years of age.

‘Ll fell into a hole and sank very far down; the longer it lasted the deeper I fell. At the end I screamed aloud and then woke up.

I now asked the patient to direct his attention to this dream and to tell me without criticism the thoughts that occurred to him. I thus in no way prepared the patient for what could be discovered by the analysis of dreams; the first dream had told us nothing; that anything like symbolism of dreams existed was absolutely unknown to the patient, who came of uneducated people. He gave a very long-winded account of his trains of thought and passed quickly from one theme to another. I repeat what he said, only insignificantly abbreviated, in his own words and order. I use the sign + to indicate the points at which I asked him again to direct his attention to the dream.

7 ‘I am now thinking of my wife when she had to go to hospital.’ (That had happened a year earlier.) ‘I am thinking: if I were to lose my wife! And I am thinking of my mother. My father was always grumbling, but I could get on with him well enough. I could not believe that Mother was dead and that I had not seen her.’ (His mother had died three months before at a time when he had not seen her for some months.)

7 ‘I must think of my father’s illness and that he was such a nuisance when there was anything thé matter with him. He was very bad-tempered and grumbled about nothing. Mother was quite different. It was always grumble, grumble and nothing else. When he was in hospital he behaved just as if he thought to himself: “T would rather you were zof with me than with me.” That was because of my sister Trien. Father loved Trien more than me,’

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 141

7 ‘When I sank into that hole I had the same fear that I have with my wife.’ (This refers to something he had told me a few days earlier—namely, that towards the end of the time when he had still been potent violent fear used to attack him during and after coitus.) ‘The feeling is exactly the same: whether J fall into that hole, or whether I go to my wife. I have the same Sear.’

j ‘I am thinking of the time when Mother was buried. After the burial I went and looked into the grave. That hole was also a cleft in the earth.’

I give these trains of thought in full chiefly on account of the sentences in italic. In these the patient spontaneously equated the falling into the hole with coitus and the fear in his dreams with the fear during coitus. This uneducated man instinctively under- stood the symbolic meaning of the dream. And on closer investiga- tion we can find a distinct connection in all his other ideas which apparently had nothing to do with the dream. The idea that his wife might die first arose from this symbol of coitus and then came the thoughts about his parents which were clearly directed by an Oedipus complex. His comparison of the hole with his mother’s grave makes the incestuous nature of the dream-wish still more apparent. The patient compared this dream to coitus with his wife, whereas the dream took place when he was twelve years of age; it could not therefore mean coitus with his wife, and the other associations made it clear that it was an incest dream. Naturally I did not yet tell the patient anything about this latter interpretation and contented myself with accepting his own explanation, which was that the dream was an equivalent to coitus. Soon, however, came an abundance of other statements about his maternal complex and it became clear to him as well as to me that he cohabited in phantasy with his mother during coitus with his wife. His dread during coitus was naturally the fear of incest—the same fear he had had in that dream when he was a child.

In another dream which he soon brought the patient associated in a manner which made it evident that sexual symbolism was at once clear to him, The end of this dream, which could be adequately analysed, was as follows.

‘A dog was swimming to the bank of a pond. A thin layer of ice was on the water. On one side the bank was lower; there I went into the water a little. To do this I had to break the ice with my foot. Then I saved the little dog from the water.’

1ro*

142 J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTIJN

There were several important associations to this. The saving of the dog made him think of the confinement of his sister Trien at which he had been present several years ago, and the breaking of the ice made him think of the tearing of the perineum, It is well known to all analysts that the saving-dream is founded on birth symbolism; I consider it well worth notice, however, that an uneducated man should make these associations quite of his own accord. The next association was this: ‘That when I came to my wife I pushed up against something that I was afraid to break.’ When I asked for an explanation of this idea he told me that during coitus with his wife he had never gone further with his penis than to the vulva. When he had pressed up against the hymen his wife had shown slight signs of pain and therefore during ten years of marriage the patient had never ventured to penetrate into the vagina. In this dream he compared the crust of ice to the hymen and the breaking of the one with his foot to the penetration of the other with his penis.

Further it soon became evident that beside the fixation on his mother there also existed a fixation on his sister Trien. This fixation had existed since his fifth year when Trien, who was two years older, had often taken him to bed with her and forced him to infantile coitus experiments.

The analysis had gone on without difficulties for about six weeks and the family complexes had grown more and more dis- tinct. Several important memories from his youth and from later years, which he had forgotten at the outbreak of the neurosis, had been recalled chiefly in connection with dreams. In spite of this, however, his relationship to his brother Kees, who was six years his senior, had not become clear. Meanwhile he produced dreams in such over-abundance—doubtless out of resistance—as to make it impossible to single out more than a few for complete analysis. The patient was very much afraid of his brother who was, according to his description, a mauvazs sujet, We had in part discovered the cause of this dread. When, as a child, he had gone to Trien he had observed that Kees too came regularly to her. He had then always been jealous of Kees and when he himself had been with her he had always been afraid that Kees would catch him. As he also unconsciously tried to identify his wife with Trien, he reproduced this infantile situation in his married life. He always suspected Kees of having relations with his wife,

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 143

though he saw perfectly well that there was no adequate ground for this suspicion. His fear of Kees was certainly in part the fear of the punisher of incest, as Kees had for the most part taken over the réle of father in the neurosis. The constellation patient- Trien-Kees formed a new edition of the Oedipus constellation. But I felt perfectly sure that a positive connection with the brother must exist. They had been friends, particularly when young lads, and he had always taken Kees as a model; Kees had introduced him to town and night life in Rotterdam. Also I could not find an explanation for the fact that the patient insisted without any apparent reason on the idea that his torticollis must be in some way connected with his brother. | Besides, although almost all possible kinds of perversities had come up during the analysis, there were to my surprise no state- ments worth mentioning concerning homosexuality. I proved to “be right in the supposition that this must be strongly repressed and in some connection with his brother. We first discovered this after he had related a dream to me. The dream finished with the words: ‘A Bolshevik was following me; he caught hold of me and I awoke very frightened.’ To this closing passage of the dream the patient gave the following associations. (1) ‘This Bol- shevik was my brother who probably fought as a leader in Ger- many. He caught hold of me by my shoulder and wanted to throw me to the ground. And he did throw me to the ground. I could not see whether he had something—an object—in his hands.’ (2) ‘That he also threw my wife to the ground in that affair with the herring.’

The affair with the herring was as follows. His brother had once attacked the wife of the patient with a herring and she had laughed a great deal. Nothing further had occurred. But the way his wife had laughed had reminded him of the manner in which she always laughed during coitus and he had (probably justly) felt that a sexual attack had taken place in that otherwise harm- less incident. That the brother had thrown his wife down on that occasion was not true; this false memory evidently only served to emphasise more distinctly the conformity between the ‘attack’ against his wife and the one against himself in his dream. Although other parts of the dream also indicated homosexuality [ only drew his attention to the fact that he was comparing his brother’s attack with a sexual attack and that, so far, we had

144 J. WESTE RMAN-HOLSTIJN

always found wish-fulfilments in his dreams. The conclusion na- turally drawn by the patient, that he wished for a sexual attack from his brother, made him laugh—a laugh that puzzled me for a moment but did not shake my opinion, though I did not defend it any further. And it soon turned out that his dream had made the first breach in the battlements that separated his homosexuality from his consciousness.

On the following day the first thing the patient said to me was: ‘J dreamed all last night that] went with my wife all night long.’ I unquestioningly considered this dream to be a hetero- sexual protest-dream. In the following analysis hour there suddenly arose the remembrance of mutual onanistic acts at the age of about thirteen. I am convinced that he had really forgotten— repressed—these things. I had formerly often expressly enquired about them and he expressly denied them: and there could be no idea of concealment. Besides he had told me worse things tham these rather innocent juvenile sins. Next time the patient came with the following recollection. When he was about four- teen he used to go down to the sea for a swim and an old man who was ‘from the reverse side’ used to come and look at him through a telescope. He always stood there and admired him. He was dreadfully disgusted with the man. He was always afraid of his coming after him. Much later when he went for a walk with his wife and would see him coming, he would run into some other street so as not to meet him. If he did meet him he would tremble all over. Of course I now told him that this groundless fear must have had some reason, and as the old man had given no further single occasion for it the danger must necessarily be hidden in the patient himself. This explanation made an evident impression on him. He remembered later on that in his twentieth year he had had a similar anxiety dream in which the old man had attacked him in the same manner as his brother had done in the other dream and with manifestly sexual purpose. And now it was not long before he remembered things that were of the greatest importance in connection with his homosexual fixation on his.brother. When he was at most four years of age, even before he had been with Trien, he had been forced by his brother, with whom he slept in one bed, to give him manual satisfaction. It can be ascertained that this really happened at that early age by the fact that the patient had a ‘brain-fever’ in

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 145

that year after which he no longer slept together with Kees, and further because he remembers that no fluid was ejaculated by Kees who. was six years older than he. Kees often also threw his legs over those of the patient in order to perform the manipula- tions in a sort of coitus position. The patient had suffered all this much against his will but at the same time not without pleasure and interest; he had soon wanted to touch Kees all over and had also begun to produce an erection of his own penis by friction when he was alone.

: In the meantime several determinants for the torticollis tic appeared. It had always seemed remarkable to me that this tic had developed gradually without the patient’s being able to tell me when it had actually begun. We know that such tics usually begin after an organic trauma in the region of the neck or (and Meige and Feindel give a few good examples of this) after a voluntary movement of the head, usually during some strong emotion, which movement is later repeated against the will of the patient. When the analysis had continued thus far memory of the first appearance returned. When relating how he used to look round anxiously to see if Kees were coming in when he was with Trien, he suddenly thought of the following incident. One night when desiring to cohabit with his wife (shortly after the death of his sister Kaatje, three years ago) he had suddenly started up in fright just before the supreme moment because he had the feeling that Kaatje was coming into the room. He had turned round towards the door convulsively, and he showed me quite of his own accord how it had. been exactly the same movement that he was forced to make continually. Lying on his stomach over his wife he had lifted up his head sideways and thus made the typical movement of a cramp of the spinal accessory. Later on he had always been forced to listen and turn round involuntarily whenever he wished to go to his wife, and this had finally made sexual intercourse quite impossible. The patient now immediately went on to tell me that he had once before looked up in the same direction after Kaatje when there had been good reason to do so, He had made his girl masturbate him in a road into which the windows of Kaatje’s room opened sideways from above him. ‘And,’ he said ‘I turned in the same way when I was with Trien as a child and looked up to see whether Kees was coming’. This equating of Kaatje and Kees was often repeated during the analysis. Kaatje had a

146 J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTIJN

masculine character and she always appeared as a castrated man in his phantasies; this idea was founded on the fact that she had a bleeding wound in the anus which she was said to have always had and to which she succumbed in the end. She had been the head of the household for some time and all the others had stood in awe of her and had to obey her. She had also caught him once when he was masturbating. She was very religious and re- presented to him the repressing element in his family. In this last she was again linked with his brother Kees who, as a direct father-representative, made him refrain from ‘forbidden fruit’ without the roundabout way of morality.

The following determinants could be found for the tic:

1. Reproductions of the situations above described, therefore dread of the punisher of incest. :

2. Homosexual desires which he had for his father, Kees and Kaatje, who made him look the wrong way round and prevented heterosexual actions.

3. Onanism equivalent. The tic had begun to be severe after he had given up onanism (for reasons to be dealt with presently) and had become impotent. The hcad and neck were penis symbols for him. His libido had, so to speak, turned from the genitals to his head and neck.

4. Self-punishment. This very masochistic patient punished himself with this illness for his infantile as well as for later sexual sins. (He ‘gave himself one in the neck’ was his usual ex- pression.)

I will now just mention a few of the results of further ana- lysis so as to be able to proceed to the reconstruction of the neurosis.

Even before his fourth year an Oedipus-situation existed and distinct sadistic and anal-erotic traits were distinguishable. The genital apparatus only began to play a more important réle after the above-described acts with his brother and his sister Trien. Since then his relationship to his brother was determined by: (1) A feeling of inferiority, envy of the penis, a constant desire to surpass him. (2) Envy, and fear that he would send him away from Jrien (a repetition and representation of the Oedipus con- stellation). (3) Awe and homosexual fixation. The following conflict ruled his life: Inclination to his mother and Trien, on the other hand fear and inclination towards his father and brother. His

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 147

sister Kaatje was added to the latter group of those of his own sex for the reasons mentioned above.

This disturbance in the development of his libido was another reason why he bore for the most part polymorphous-perverse traits in later life. He was a sadist towards all women, men, and animals with whom he came in contact and a masochist in his phantasies. At the age of about eighteen years as a symbolic self-castration he actually mutilated- his face and neck with a knife to a not inconsiderable degree. He was an exhibitionist in his fifteenth year; remained coprophilic all his life; and practised cunnilingus. He liked to eat with hands on which semen or vaginal- secretion had dried up and was a strong leg-fetishist towards the female sex. The leg was the maternal penis of his childhood’s phantasy. This conception had over-determined his homosexuality: a well-known aetiology.! At the same time his narcissism was particularly developed. .:

His Oedipus complex and homosexuality remained always in a state of repression (the latter with the exception of a short phase of mutual onanism). He had repeatedly had sexual inter- course with Trien till his sixteenth year, without penetration. He looked for his mother’s z#age in all women he fell in love with. His first non-auto-erotic onanism was accompanied by phantasies about a woman twenty years his senior. He often went with prostitutes. The repressed but abnormally strongly developed homosexuality left behind a number of symptoms. He could not stand being looked at by a man for any length of time. Often, when sitting in a café in which he thought some man had looked at him too long, he would get up, rush out into the street and curiously (or comprehensibly) thrash the first man he came across, At the time he himself did not know why he did it; but at his rather low moral level (he also drank a good deal) he was not troubled by his conscience.

He married when he was thirty-two and it was soon clear that it could not be a happy marriage in consequence of his pronounced mother- and sister-complex and his strong narcissism. While he unconsciously tried to identify his wife with his mother, he had a dread of incest which prevented the separation of his libido from the mother-zszago and its transference on to his wife. In spite of his being very passionate he never ventured to break

‘Cf, Tausk: /uternationale Zeitschrift fir Psychoanalyse,1914.Bd. U.S.31.

148 J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTIJN

the hymen but ejaculated in the vulva. The conflict was heightened because his parents and Kaatje lived in the same house with him and because his beloved sister Trien was (of course) unhappily married. As he became impotent with his wife he soon returned to prostitutes, with whom he could obtain satisfaction because he could penetrate; but the repression was soon extended to all women and he grew impotent with prostitutes as well. But he returned with success to onanism which he practised four or five times a day for many years. It was chiefly accompanied by phantasies of women’s legs (for the meaning see above). His repeated attempts at coitus being unsuccessful, he practised onanism lying over his wife in the position of coitus. He also hated her and had death-wishes directed against her for which he could not account.

Three years before the analysis the conflict was brought to a head by two events. The first was his brother’s return from Germany, which reawakened all the infantile desires and fears which we have shown the patient had for him and which had been slumber- ing in the later years. Besides, his brother was a drunkard and the patient’s obsessive suspicion that Kees wanted to approach his wife and was always persecuting him was perhaps not utterly groundless so far as the first was concerned. The second event, which occurred shortly afterwards, was the death of his sister Kaatje, the religious, pious woman for whom he always had the greatest respect. If the whole family had made a complete confession Kaatje could have gone straight to Heaven. (A Catholic colleague tells me that this idea has no doctrinal basis.) The patient did not feel himself capable of making the confession. For not only did he lack the courage to tell all his sexual sins, but he would also have had to say that he had never yet confessed honestly in all his life. The first communion had been a very unpleasant ex- perience to him, as he had concealed at the previous confession the regular sexual manipulations with Trien.

At that time the torticollis had appeared, the first appearance of which we have discussed above. Shortly before he had, however, had a sneezing tic for some time when Kaatje had still been lying ill. When he had tried to cohabit with his wife he suddenly began to sneeze, and later even when sitting downstairs in the room and only thinking of coitus the same thing occurred, so that he had to give up all idea of it. The reason of this curious tic was easily found. Kaatje snuffed tobacco a good deal and had formerly

a

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 149

often offered him a pinch. But, curiously, he seemed not to be susceptible to it, and if he pressed ever so much tobacco into his nose he could not bring himself to sneeze. Now he sneezed without any snuff. The well-known meaning of sneezing as a coitus- equivalent was here again confirmed by associations (cf. below, the frequent association ‘snuff-box—femininity’; further his in- clination to sniff voluptuously at the vulva and to enjoy faecal smells). Here, exactly like the torticollis, it meant therefore the turning away from his wife towards Kaatje (to Kaatje’s snuff-box). The torticollis now soon appeared independently directly his thoughts threatened to run in a sexual direction.

A short time afterwards his wife was taken dangerously ill. A wild fear that she would die came over him. He was in danger of being entirely exposed to his homosexual family- complexes which had been so much strengthened by recent events. At the same time he was unable to return to his heterosexual debauches and perversities because the resistance had become so strong. There was only one way out of it all: his wife must be kept alive and he must love her at all costs. An awful horror and disgust of onanism now came over him. When his wife re- covered, his aversion was changed into neurotic love. He wanted to do everything for her, thought and lived only for her, and was cross when anybody made even the slightest remark about her; but he had now grown utterly impotent and even his former onanistic pseudo-coitus was no longer possible, At the same time the torticollis grew more pronounced, though it was still not exactly troublesome. It is notable that simultaneously his love relations to Trien were reversed. The heterosexual fixation on this sister had been the chief reason why he had not been able to ~ attach himself to his wife. The constellation ‘love for Trien, hate against his wife’ was wholly repressed and changed to the contrary in consciousness ‘hate against Trien, love for his wife’,

A year after these events his father died, an occurrence that had but a small aggravating jinfluence on his condition. The re- ‘pression was at its height and his homo-libido was attached for the most part to Kees, the repressing and forbidding tendencies proceeding chiefly from the zmagines of Kees and Kaatje. It had been the Oedipus constellation that had determined the relation to his father during recent years and that had caused a slight continuous irritation between father and son.

150 _ J. WESTERMAN-HOLSTIJN

Another year later—a year before he came to me for treatment— a violent quarrel with Trien had occurred, after which the torticollis had become very troublesome. When the patient started treatment he stated that the torticollis had begun after that quarrel; it was only later, in the course of the analysis, that he came to remember that he had been affected with it during the last three years, a statement corroborated by his wife. Now the quarrel with Trien had broken out on account of a remark she had made about his wife. His mother lived above them in the same house and Trien had once come and said that his wife had not washed the mother’s underclothing clean enough. Thereupon he had flown into a passion. }

According to the description, Trien was an hysteric with a strong mother-complex, who had suffered from hysterical attacks through all the years that her mother had lived with her. She now managed to persuade the mother to leave the patient’s house and move to hers. A regular battle for the mother ensued in which the sister conquered right along the line and the patient was forbidden to enter his sister’s house. The tic now gradually took a tonic form, only suspended from time to time for a moment. After two months the mother died without his having seen her again and he heard accidentally of her death from strangers. At the funeral he stood outside the churchyard gate to watch. When the relatives went away he entered to throw a handful of earth on her grave.

One can understand that his state of health only became worse after all these events, the consequences of which were as follows. Intensified repression took place and also regression of the libido to still more prohibited objects. His illness became worse and reached the form we began by describing, making work and going out impossible. If he wanted to be shaved his head had to be forcibly held fixed by a man. He was afraid to think of anything connected with his former life, and for years he had never thought of the sexual actions described above. Sometimes he had the following obsessive thought which he himself found curious: ‘I should like to remain always as I am now.’

After an analysis of about ninety hours the treatment had to be stopped. The patient was being treated gratuitously in the Leiden University section of the Rhijngeest Sanatorium where he led a comfortable and lazy life, while his wife had to work

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 151

hard at home for the daily bread. Under these circumstances, which are well-known to be unpropitious for psycho-analysis, his illness was soon used for the purpose of being allowed to remain. As a Satisfactory improvement had been secured as well as a strong transference and insight on the part of the patient, so that one could expect that his libido would find new social directions, the patient was sent home.

The therapeutic result of the analysis was as follows. The torticollis soon changed from a tonic to a clonic cramp and diminished regularly in strength. Towards the end of the analysis it became a little worse, for reasons which we shall presently discuss. Still, at home the patient soon got so much better. that he now only spoke of ‘slight twitches” which gave him no trouble. At all events many of his associates scarcely noticed them, or. only on careful observation, and considered him entirely recovered.

I, however, had involuntarily made a mistake by predicting indeed a possible recovery in answer to a question from his wife (my opinion being founded on Oppenheim, Meige and Feindel, and others). But, considering that the tic had already lasted three years, the prognosis guoad restitutionem ad integrum was unfavourable. This opinion became known to the patient, Having tried to avoid all suggestion, I may thus have indirectly practised suggestion 7” malam.

I succeeded in analysing separately all the other (para-) tics and they either entirely ceased or only appeared very rarely. His dread of moving among people, chiefly among men, vanished completely; he often went to concerts, walked in the street or moved amongst people without the slightest difficulty. He felt as if he had been ‘set quite free’.

He had worked again for six months without any trouble. His impotence was at an end. He had broken his wife’s hymen and cohabited regularly. His married life -which had always before been unhappy was now, according to both him and his wife, as happy as possible. To her great surprise the wife suddenly found herself happier in her married life than she had ever been before. All his jealousy had disappeared. He was no longer afraid of his relations nor did he hate them; after all that had happened, how- ever, a reconciliation was scarcely possible. He also confessed everything to his priest.

I still wish to deal with one more phenomenon, namely, his fear of smoking a cigar or a pipe. A cigar represented for him, as one

152 J. WESTER MAN-HOLSTIJN

would expect, the penis, i. e. his father’s and brother's; the pipe had a vaginal and rectal significance. During the high tide of repression in the latter years everything sexual, and therefore smoking, had been reached by repression. He had therefore re- acted with fear and an augmentation of the torticollis to every attempt or thought of smoking. The resistance diminishing during the analysis, smoking became so to speak free from repression, and his libido, which had been diverted from the genitals to the head and neck, found it possible to obtain satisfaction in smoking. The result was that the patient now began to smoke passionately, and when he smoked, his neck did not twist at all (a result that had not been obtained by any one of the para-tics). In order to produce a final damming-up of libido I forbade smoking towards the end of the analysis, whereupon the torticollis instantly in- creased. In this phase the anal-erotic components appeared. Never- theless I would not assert that they could not have been analysed without this renunciation.

When words were called out to the patient, he reacted not only with associations, which he described at great length, but frequently also with a series of words which he said very quickly one after the other. I here cite small selections from such series on account of their interest.

a. Finger, hand, foot, manliness, key, cigar.

6, Ear, femininity, path, kitchen, cellar, stairs, railway station.

¢. Tobacco, tobacco-pouch, femininity, snuff-box, living-room, bed.

ad. Smoking, tobacco-jar, cigar-stand, mother.

é. Tobacco-box, cigar-holder, snuff-box, femininity, pipe, tobacco chewing-tobacco, wife.

These series were given as free associations without reflection or criticism. Very striking are in (a) the series of symbols of the penis, in (4) and (c) symbolism of the vagina. The association ‘foot—manliness’ was very common from the beginning of the ana- lysis. He never spoke of a key with this exception and the word appeared here really very appropriately. The association ‘femininity— snuff-box’ in (¢) and (e) draws our attention to the symbolism of sneezing dealt with above. ‘Cigar-stand—mother’ is naturally in connection with the symbolic meaning of the cigar.

I have just read Ferenczi’s paper in this Journat.1 Many of

! 1921, Vol. Il, p. 4. mM |

A PATIENT WITH CRAMP OF THE SPINAL ACCESSORY 153

his observations are in accord with what took place in the case here described. It was particularly clear that the torticollis as well as the para-tics were onanism-equivalents. Where the patient showed distinct narcissism, they were also easily to be comprehended as narcissistic symptoms of disease. But they did not take up such a separate position that it was not easy to fit them into the structure of the complicated building-up of the neurosis; on the contrary they were pushed to the front by several determinants as cardinal symptoms of the neurosis.

ANALYSIS OF A DREAM OF DOUBT AND CONFLICT BY A. S. STRACHEY LONDON

The patient, a married woman, but childless, brought the following series of three dreams dreamed in one night.

First Dream: ‘1 had eaten a slice of cake that had been put by in a tin. My husband commented on the fact. I replied that he would still find the slice there; that it was not eaten. He again pointed out that I had eaten it. I wanted to tell him that I thought I had only eaten it in my dream; but all I could say was that I had somehow not zea//y eaten it, and that he would still find it in the tin,’

Associations: ‘1 had come home after dinner in the evening, and had felt tempted to eat a piece of cake that had been put out for me. My husband intimated that it might spoil my digestion if [ did, and | put the cake in a tin to keep it till the next day’

The emphasis on the word ‘really’: ‘Ina manuscript that I had been correcting on the previous evening, I had had to read a difficult passage aloud several times over. The sentence contained an italicized word, the word “appearance”, in the sense of being opposed to reality.’

It is evident from the complication of the dream, and from the importance attached in it to the question of having or not having eaten the slice of cake, that the slice of cake cannot in this instance have a straightforward meaning. As is known to psycho- analysts, eating something, in its symbolic meaning, very commonly represents becoming pregnant. It has probably received this meaning from infantile theories of conception, the most general of which is that pregnancy takes place through the mouth, from swallowing some kind of food. The question whether the patient had really eaten the cake or not would therefore resolve itself into the question whether she was with child or not. The fact that the patient connects her emphasized ‘really’ of the dream with the italicized ‘appearance’ of the manuscript seems to accentuate the alternative character of the dream-thoughts, to dwell upon the contrast between reality and

154

ANALYSIS OF A DREAM OF DOUBT AND CONFLICT 155

unreality. And it seems that the dreamer, after some doubt, adopts the view that her being with child is unreal.

Nevertheless, this last point is not so clear as it seems. Apart from the consideration that the patient was in fact not with child at the time, and had therefore no motive for asserting it in her dream, it is well-known that when a person dreams he has only dreamed a thing, it is usually a sign that that thing is something real and important. Indeed, it may be said (I am quoting Freud) that this is the only method known to the dream of conveying the notion of reality. If we now further suppose that our patient's emphasis of the word ‘really’ was not designed to point its contrast to the italicized word ‘appearance’ but to indicate an assimilation of the two,—to indicate that the word really meant was ‘appear- ance’—then the whole dream would seem to require to be inter- preted in precisely the opposite sense. The dreamer would be asserting that her pregnancy was not supposititious, that she had not conceived only in ‘appearance’.

At this point we must fall back upon another consideration. The oral character of the conception places it under the heading of an infantile phantasy. The dreamer’s affirmation of the reality of her pregnancy may, therefore, ultimately relate to an infantile phantasy. Eating the cake, in other words, may stand for having had (and still having) an infantile phantasy of pregnancy, of being with child in phantasy.

We now see that both meanings may be present in the dream. The more superficial dream-thoughts might indeed simply be: ‘It is not true that I am with child; there is no cause for believing that’; whereas the less obvious thought would run something like this: ‘It is true that I have an infantile phantasy of pregnancy, and that I once supposed I was with child, or could get with child, by way of swallowing food. And this phantasy does really still exist in me.’ In what relates to the uncertainty and confusion of thought expressed in the first part of this dream, I shall have more ‘to say later on.

Second Dream: ‘\ was correcting some manuscripts and asked my husband, concerning some word, whether it would “wo” in italics, or whether it was “wo” in italics—I can’t exactly remember the words I used. I think I asked him more than once, and did not use exactly the same words each time.’

‘Then I awoke and remembered this and the first dream. The

79}

word “wo” rhymed with “go”.

It

18607 “oS A. S. STRACHEY

Associations: ‘The night before I had been occupied in correcting a manuscript of a translation from the German with my husband. A certain sentence had been very obscure in the English version, and I had had to read it aloud several times over. (This is the sentence already mentioned in connection with my first dream.) It contained a word in italics, so that every time I repeated the passage I had had to emphasize the word.’

Ln wtalics: The italicized word, as we already know, was ‘appear- ance’ as opposed to reality. Therefore being ‘in italics’, besides

meaning being emphasized, may stand for being ‘apparent’ in the

sense of being unreal. ‘In italics’ also introduces a play upon the patient’s own Christian name, which was Alix (‘in it, Alix’). We shall return to this later.

We see that the expression ‘in italics’ is employed to effect a condensation of two opposing notions, ‘very marked’ and ‘unreal’. The theme of contrast, which in the first dream found expression in the emphasis on the word ‘really’, seems here, too, to turn upon that emphasis.

Wo: This suggested ‘woe’ ‘distress’ to the patient. The word cognate with ‘woe’ in German is ‘Weh’ (‘pain’). The poetical form of this word is ‘Wehe’, and ‘Wehe’ in ordinary language means the pangs of childbirth. This was known to the patient, At this point she said: ‘I recollect that I had been comparing German and English auxiliary verbs yesterday, and had been reminding myself that “er wird” means “he will”, and “er will” “he wants to”; so that the transposition of German “w’s” into English “w’s” may have been running in my head’.

The association of ‘wo’ with ‘Wehe’ was, of course, further facilitated by the events of the day before, on which the dream was based,—by the previous evening’s work of comparing an English translation with the German original. It may be added that in that

a i a eer

1 Possibly the English word which was replaced by ‘wo’ in the dream was ‘throe’. Her own associations took her as far as ‘woe’, and _ half accounted for the presence of a ‘w’. ‘Throe’ would of course be directly associated in any English mind with being ‘in the throes of childbirth’. It would then appear as if the dreamer, in her attempt to conceal the all-betraying word ‘throe’ by substituting ‘ wo’ for it, had not mended matters very much. It is true that the connection between ‘wo’ and the childbirth theme was more circuitous in its new form, but it was none the less traceable, as we see.

ANALYSIS OF A DREAM OF DOUBT AND CONFLICT 157

translation there had been a description of childbirth and that the word ‘Wehen’ had been used.

We may assume, then, that ‘wo’ stands for labour in child-bed.

*“Wo’ next suggested the word ‘wo’ ‘whoa’ as applied to horses to make them stop. This association may supply a determinant for the appearance of the cart-horse in the third dream.

In this dream, therefore, the patient seems to be asking herself whether the pains of childbirth are very excessive in reality, or are only supposed to be so. :

Third Dream: ‘A woman told me that she was with child, and begged me to give her some of the drug that I possessed, so as to alleviate the pangs of childbirth. She appealed to my sympathy, saying that she was already elderly, so that her pains would be very severe, and that she was a colonel’s widow. I refused, although there was enough of the medicament for her and for myself. At ‘the same time I was ashamed of my hardness of heart and could not understand it. During this scene I saw the Colonel’s wife before me in the shape of a heavy cart-horse with its hindquarters turned towards me so that its anus was plainly visible.’

Associations : ‘The translation we had been going over the evening before introduced a scene of childbirth, in which the woman’s son, a boy of nine, had been present, and, although unable to see much, had gathered what was going forward from his mother’s groans and from the conversation of the persons attending her.’

The woman: ‘I was thinking yesterday that giving birth to a child, if ever I had to doit, would be very painful for me, since I am now nearly thirty; and that I had every right to insist on its being rendered as painless as possible.’

‘My mother gave birth to me at the age of 34, and she used frequently to tell me how agonizing the pain had been, and how she longed for the occasional whiffs of chloroform which had been administered to her during the latter part of the process, Later on, when I was about ten or twelve, I remember her suffering very acutely from attacks of colic and diarrhoea, and having to lie down and take pills to alleviate the pain. I think I recollect hearing her groan. I distinctly remember thinking at the time that her pain could not be as bad as she made out, and feeling no sympathy for her.’ The ultimate connection which subsists in the mind between colic and childbirth need scarcely be pointed out.

158 A. S. STRACHEY

From the two associations here given, it is evident that the patient makes the woman represent first herself and then her mother. This would involve at least a partial identification of herself with her mother. .

A colonel’s wife: This brought up in the patient’s mind the recollection of a journey she and her husband had made across the Adriatic under very trying circumstances, on which occasion a middle-aged lady, travelling alone, had applied to them for help and companionship. She was a colonel’s wife. Her name, which unfortunately cannot be given here, also serves to indicate the patient’s attitude towards her mother during her attacks of colic—i. e, in labour—and perhaps towards her own state of mind regarding childbirth.

The colonel’s wife also brought to mind a certain colonel’'s daughter? whom she had known slightly and of whom a friend had said that her mouth was like ‘a horse’s behind’, meaning its anus. This serves as a second determinant for the appearance of

The heavy carthorse: This in itself, of course, is very well suited to represent either of the parents and is a familiar symbol for them. From being heavy it would be indicative here of the pregnant mother. Another determinant was supplied by the patient, who said: ‘I had been wondering yesterday whether I had been right in inter- preting a horse which figured in the dream of a friend of mine as the dreamer’s father rather than his mother, and thinking that the latter interpretation would have been better.’

The horse's anus being visible presents no difficulty. The patient knew in her dream, she said, that this was the part of the horse through which birth was going to take place. It therefore helps to associate her mother’s colic with labour-pains. And it also carries on the oral character of the patient’s birth-phantasy.

Kefusing to give the drug was interpreted by the patient as affirming her disbelief in the woman’s sufferings. This view of its meaning is borne out by the patient’s conscious and acknowledged attitude towards her mother’s attacks of colic.

Recollecting what has been said about the patient’s identification of herself with her mother, we may suppose that in this dream

1 Here again the colonel’s wife is associated first with a colonel’s wife, and then with a colonel’s daughter, thus carrying on the identifi- cation of daughter and mother,

a4

a =P Fe,

‘ae (fips Ti Shoe

ANALYSIS OF A DREAM OF DOUBT AND CONFLICT 159

her thoughts ran somewhat like this: ‘My mother declares that she suffered great agony in childbed; and so shall I, then. But then they add: ‘I don’t believe that she did suffer such extreme pain;’ (‘I refused to give her the opiate’) ‘and if she did not, no more shall I.’

Summary: The theme of conception and childbirth was obscurely presaged in the first dream in a symbolic form, and only found expression in a very covert and unsubstantial way, by means of verbal associations, in the second dream. At last it discloses itself in an undisguised manner in the third and final dream. In this series of dreams, nevertheless, it seems possible to distinguish an unbroken current of thought, which seems to be the following: ‘Provided that I am not with child myself—that my pregnancy is only an infantile phantasy, which I admit to having—and I have nothing to apprehend that way’ (first dream), ‘I am prepared to begin to doubt whether, after all, child-birth is such a dreadfully painful business in reality’ (second and third dreams), ‘As my mother has led me to suppose’ (third dream).

The general situation of the patient at the time of her dream is not without interest as throwing further light upon it. The patient was just then in the middle of a conflict concerning childbirth. Her conscious attitude towards pregnancy and everything connected with childbirth was one of fear and aversion, Now in view of the fact that she suffered from chronic constipation and was in the habit of taking laxative pills regularly for it, and in view of other facts connected with her constipation, the analyst had come to the con- clusion that it was psychologically determined, and that it expressed a phantasy of pregnancy, in which taking the pills symbolized con- ception. A few weeks before the dream happened, accordingly, he had recommended her to stop taking them, hoping thus to bring the conflict to a head. The patient had followed his advice, although by no means convinced of the truth of his view or the wisdom of taking such a course. Her dream is a reaction to this abstinence. The uncertainty! expressed in the first half of the first dream, as to whether she had or had not eaten the cake, will thus be seen to reproduce her doubt in waking life as to whether the analyst

——saa*

1 The dispute between her and her husband in the first dream represents this difference of opinion between her and the analyst. The substitution of her husband for the analyst needs no explanation.

160 A. S. STRACHEY

was right in thinking that swallowing her pills had meant to her conceiving a child. When she then has the idea that she may have eaten the cake ‘in her dream’ (i.e. in reality), it is evident that she is ready to change her doubt into conviction, ‘and to confess the existence of her phantasy and incidentally the symbolic value of her pills.

This transition from incredulity to belief is again the theme of the third dream. The analyst’s conduct in denying her her pills becomes the subject of her thoughts. We may assume that her action in denying the colonel’s wife her drug represents the analyst’s action towards her. And, from the fact that she puts herself in the analyst's place and identifies herself with him in his line of conduct, we must infer that she approves of it. Once more she confirms his view that taking the pills symbolized getting with child. But a second conflict has arisen in this dream. It centres round the same problem, but is concerned with emotional values. The patient’s thoughts are not so much occupied with the existence or non- existence of an infantile phantasy but with the bearing of such a phantasy upon life.t This second conflict has already been clearly shown in the analysis of the third dream. The transition here indicated is that from having shrunk from the situation of her phantasy the patient has come round to a less gloomy view of it.

Thus the dream is based upon a double conflict, an intellectual one and an affectual one. And we should not be surprised to find somewhere in it a representation of the very complicated and intense train of thought that was proceeding in the patient at the time. This would be what we should call the functional aspect of the dream, in allusion to Silberer’s ‘functional phenomenon’. In its functional aspect the dream has as its contents the dreamer’s Own mental processes. It is probable that in the question asked in the second dream we can discover a functional aspect of this kind.

‘ There can be no doubt that the patient’s emotional attitude to pregnancy and childbirth was not normal. It was most probably the out- come of some very strongly repressed infantile phantasy of being with child. The question, therefore, of whether she had had a phantasy of that kind would naturally be very intimately connected in her mind with the second question—of whether she was able to face the realization of her phantasy. The second conflict arose from the first; because the same repressive forces which had obliterated her infantile phantasy from recollection had also reversed her feeling towards its content.

ANALYSIS OF A DREAM OF DOUBT AND CONFLICT 16!

If we take the pun in it seriously and the question therefore as being addressed by the dreamer to herself, it would run ‘Is this “wo” (i.e. childbirth) im i, Alix?’, meaning ‘Are your thoughts engaged upon the subject of giving birth to a child?’ The dreamer is examining her mind concerning that conflict between denial and acknowledgment of her phantasy and between dislike and toleration of it which characterizes the dream as a whole. Is it, furthermore, too daring a suggestion that the ‘wo’ in the question, through its second association with ‘whoa’, and in virtue of the rule of representation by opposites,—a form of representation to which the patient was very much addicted— may be made to stand for ‘gee-up’, for getting on! (without prejudice to its meaning of stopping still, of course)? In that case, another sense, again a functional one, of the question would be ‘Shall I make this step (or shall I stay where I am)?’

We therefore see that in its more general aspect—taken, that is, in relation to the patient’s analysis—the dream is of great im- portance as marking the step from a repudiation of an unconscious phantasy to an acceptance of it. And besides the dream as a whole illustrating this transition, we have noted that each of the three separate dreams reflects the same change of attitude from different angles, re-states the process from another point of view. In the first dream, there is, to begin with, her denial of having eaten the cake,? then the dispute about it, and finally her suspicion that she has in truth eaten it,—a suspicion which she is not able to speak aloud. In this dream the accent is laid upon the truth of the existence of her phantasy of pregnancy. In the second dream there is her threefold question, ‘Am I really concerned with giving birth to a child?’ ‘Is it very painful?’ and ‘Shall I go forward in it?’ The accent here is upon her own deliberations concerning the step she is taking. Finally, in the third dream, there is the woman

‘ The patient’s own association was that ‘wo’ rhymed with ‘go’.

* It is true that at the opening of the dream the situation is simply that she has eaten the cake. But this is before any complication has arisen or any particular interest become attached to the question. I think, therefore, that we are justified in taking this statement as a dona fide one, The patient had, in fact, wanted to eat the cake the night before, and so her wish was represented as fulfilled in the dream. The cake is still a cake here. It does not become a symbolic cake until, so to speak, the action begins.

162 A. S. STRACHEY

—herself—whosshrinks from the idea of bearing a child; and then there is the dreamer—the analyst—who refuses to give her the drug, who dismisses her apprehensions. The accent here falls upon the readjustment of her attitude to childbirth entailed by the con- fession of her phantasy,—upon her emotional acceptance of it, as it were,

One more word as to the technique of the dream. It is inter- esting from two points of view. In the first place, supposing ovr interpretation of the first dream to have been correct, it furnishes another instance of the rule that a dream within a dream represents reality. In the second place it goes to support the theory that dream-work is essentially of an uncreative character. The ingenious interplay of German and English words which composes the second dream gives, at first sight, the impression that a high degree of intellectual invention has gone to its construction. But as a matter of fact both the general setting (the comparing of German with English) and the more particular elements (the repetition of the sentence containing the emphasized word)—and, indeed, the very words themselves, are, except for a few modifications, reproduced from events out of waking life. Such modifications as were made were done so ona strictly economical basis. They were presumably as many as and no more than were required to make the dream suitable for expressing certain thoughts that were occupying the dreamer’s mind at the time, and to place it in the service of an unconscious tendency.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE

BY

S. FERENCZI

BUDAPEST

In establishing the symbolic relation of an object or an action to am unconscious phantasy we must first have recourse to con- jectures, which necessarily undergo considerable modifications and often complete transformation with wider experience. Indications flooding in on one, as they often do, from the most diverse spheres of knowledge offer important confirmation; so that all branches of individual and group psychology can take their share in the establishment of a special symbolic relation. Dream-inter- pretation and analysis of neuroses, however, remain, as before, the most trustworthy foundation of every kind of symbolism, because in them we can observe z# anima vili the motivation, and further the whole genesis, of mental structures of this kind. A feeling of certainty about a symbolic relation can, in my opinion, only be attained in psycho-analysis. Symbolic inter- pretations in other fields of knowledge (mythology, fairy-tales, folk-lore, etc.) always bear the impress of being superficial, two- dimensional: they tend to produce a lurking feeling of incertitude, an idea that the meaning might just as well have been something else, and indeed in these fields there is always a tendency to go on imposing new interpretations on the same content. The absence of a third dimension may well be what distinguishes the unsubstantial allegory from the symbol—a thing of flesh and blood.

Bridges often play a striking part in dreams. In the inter- pretation of the dreams of neurotics one is frequently confronted with the question of the typical meaning of the bridge, particularly when no historical fact apropos of the dream-bridge occurs to the patient. It may have been due to some coincidence in the material furnished by my practice that I should be able to replace

163

164, S. FERENCZI

the bridge in a whole series of cases by sexual symbols as follows: the bridge is the male organ, and in particular the powerful organ of the father, which unites two landscapes (the two parents in the giant shapes in which they appear to the infant view). This bridge spans a wide and perilous stream, from which all life takes its origin, into which man longs all his life to return, and to which the adult does periodically return, though only by proxy— through a portion of himself. That the approach to this stream in dream-life is not direct but by means of some kind of supporting plank or stay is intelligible in the light of the special characteristic of the dreamers: they were without exception suffering from sexual impotence, and they made use of this genital weakness to protect themselves against the dangerous proximity of women, This sym- bolic interpretation of the bridge-dream proved true in numerous cases; I also found confirmation of my assumption in a popular folk-tale and in a French artist’s drawing of an obscene topic: in both an enormous male organ figured, which was extended over a wide river, and in the fairy story was strong enough to carry a heavy team of horses with their load.

My view as to this symbol received final verification, and at the same time took on the deeper significance that belonged to it but had been previously lacking, from the communications of a patient who suffered from bridge-anxiety and from eaculatio relardata, Besides a variety of experiences which were calculated to arouse and to heighten in the patient the apprehension of castration or death (he was the son of a tailor), the analysis disclosed the following terrifying episode from his ninth year; his mother, a midwife (!), who idolised him, would not be parted from him even on the night of agony in which she gave birth to a girl-child, so that the little boy, if he could not see the whole process of the birth from his bed, was at least obliged to hear everything, and from the remarks of the people tending the mother was able to gather details: about the appearing of the infant and then its withdrawal for a time once more into the mother’s body. The boy could not have escaped the apprehension which irresistibly seizes the witness of a scene of -birth; he imagined himself in the position of the child, which was going through that first and greatest anxiety, the prototype of every later anxiety, which for hours together was being drawn to and fro between the mother’s womb and the outer world. This

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE 165

to and fro, this isthmus between life and what is not yet (or no longer) life, thus gave the special form of bridge-anxiety to the patient’s anxiety-hysteria. The opposite shore of the Danube signified for him the future life which, as is usual, was modelled upon ‘pre- natal life.1 Never in his life has he yet gone over a bridge on foot, only in vehicles driven very fast and in the company of a strong personality dominating his own. When, after adequate development of the transference, I induced him for the first time to drive across the bridge with me once more after a long interval, he clung to me like a vice, all his muscles were stiffened to tautness, and his breath held. On the return journey he behaved in the same way, but only as far as the middle of the bridge; when the bank this side, which for him meant life, became visible, he loosed his grip, became cheerful, noisy and talkative. The anxiety had vanished.

We are thus enabled to understand the patient’s apprehension in the proximity of female genitals,and his incapacity for complete surrender to a woman, who always meant for him, though un- consciously, deep water with the menace of danger, water in which he must drown if someone stronger does not ‘hold him above the water’.

In my opinion, the two meanings ‘bridge = uniting member between the parents’ and ‘bridge = link between life and not-life (death)’ supplement each other in the most effectual manner: the father’s organ is actually the bridge which expedited the unborn (the not yet born) into life. This latter additional inter- pretation alone gives to the simile that deeper sense without which there can be no true symbol.

It is natural to interpret the use of the bridge-symbol as it occurs in cases of neurotic bridge-anxiety as representing purely mental ‘connections’, ‘linking’, ‘associating’ (Freud’s * word- bridge’)—in a word, as a mental or logical relation, that is, to take it as an ‘autosymbolic’, ‘functional’ phenomenon in Silberer’s sense. But just as in the given instance solid material ideas about the events at a confinement form the basis for these phenomena, my own view is that there is no functional phenomenon without a material parallel, that is, one relating to ideas of objects, Of

1 Cf. Rank's detailed discussion of the Lohengrin-legend with con- firmations from folk-psychology.

166 S. FERENCZI

course, in the case of narcissistic stressing of the *‘ego-memory systems’,! association with object-memories may fall into the background, and the appearance of a pure autosymbolism may be produced. On the other hand it is possible that no ‘material’ mental phenomenon exists which is not blended with some memory- trace, even though only a faint one, of the self-perception ac- companying it. Finally it may be recalled in this connection that in the last analysis nearly every symbol, perhaps indeed every one, has also a physiological basis, i.e. expresses in some way or other the whole body or an organ of the body or its function.*

There are contained, I think, in what has been so far intimated, the main outlines along which a topographical description of the formation of symbols might be constructed; and since the dynamics of the repression active in it has been already described on a former occasion, * there still remains to be supplied (in order to gain ‘metapsychological’ insight, in Freud’s sense, into the essential nature of symbols) a knowledge of the distribution of the psycho- physical quantities concerned in this interplay of forces, and more exact data as to its ontogenesis and phylogenesis. ‘

The psychic material brought to the surface in the ‘bridge- anxiety’ appears also in the patient in a symptom of conversion hysteria. A sudden shock, the sight of blood, or of some bodily defect may bring about faintness. The occurrence which was the fore-runner of these attacks was supplied by his mother’s story that he came half-dead into the world after a difficult birth and that respiration was brought about with great trouble. This re- collection was the original trauma, to which the later one, his presence at his mother’s labour, could attach itself.

It need scarcely be specially mentioned that bridges in dreams may also originate in historical dream-material and be without any symbolic significance.

os ge ee es a es ae ee

* See my article on Tic. (This JournaL, Vol. II, p. 1.)

* Cf. the observations relative to this in the article ‘Hysterische Materialisationsphinomene’ in Hysterie und Pathoneurosen, Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek, No. 2, by S. Ferenczi.

* See ‘The Ontogenesis of Symbols’. Ferenczi: Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. 1916, Ch. X.

‘ Cf. Ernest Jones’s article on ‘The Theory of Symbolism’, Ch. VII of Papers on Psycho-Analysis, 1918.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE 167 POSTSCRIPT BRIDGE SYMBOLISM AND THE DON JUAN LEGEND

In the preceding paper on Bridge Symbolism I have tried to disclose the numerous layers of meaning which the bridge has attained in the unconscious. According to that interpretation the bridge is: (1) the male member which unites the parents during sexual intercourse, and to which the little child must cling if it is not to perish in the ‘deep water’ across which the bridge is thrown. (2) In so far as it is thanks to the male member that we have come into the world at all out of that water the bridge is an important vehicle between the * Beyond’ (the condition of the unborn, the womb) and the ‘Here’ (life). (3) Since man is not able to imagine death, the Beyond after life, except in the image of the past, consequently as a return to the womb, to water, to Mother Earth, the bridge is also the symbol of the pathway to death. (4) Finally the bridge may be used as a formal representation of ‘transitions’, ‘changes of condition’ in general.

Now in the original version of the Don Juan legend the motives (1-3) mentioned are so closely related to a strikingly clear bridge symbol that 1 may claim this relationship as a con- firmation of my interpretation.

According to the legend the famous woman-killer Miguel — Monara Vicentello de Leco (Don Juan) lighted his cigar with the devil’s cigar across the Guadalguivir. Once he met his own funeral and wanted to be buried in the crypt of a chapel built by him- self in order to be trodden on by the feet of men. Only after the ‘burial’ did he change and become a repentant sinner.

a. I wish to interpret the cigar lighted across the river as a variation of the bridge symbol, in which (as so frequently happens with variations) much of the unconscious repressed material has returned. By its form and the fact that it burns, the cigar reminds us of the male organ burning with desire. The gigantic gesture— kindling the cigar from one side of the river to the other—is eminently fitted to serve as a representation of the gigantic potency of a Don Juan whose organ we wished to portray in colossal erection.

b. His presence at his own burial may be explained by the idea that this phantasy of a double represents a personification

168 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE

of the chief part of Don Juan’s bodily ego, namely his sexual organ. In every sexual intercourse the sexual organ is actually ‘buried’ and of course in the same place as that of birth, and the rest of the ‘ego’ may look anxiously at this ‘burial’. The psycho-analysis of numerous dreams and of neurotic claustrophobia explains the fear of being buried alive as the transformation into dread of the wish to return to the womb. Moreover from the narcissistic point of view every sexual act, every sacrifice to woman, is a loss, a kind of castration in Stircke’s meaning,! to which the offended ego may react with fear of death. Scruples of conscience, phantasies of punishment, too, may contribute to the fact that a Don Juan feels himself nearer to hell, to annihilation, with every sexual act. If we explain, with Freud, the Don Juan type of love- life—the compulsion to sequence-formation, to the conquest of innumerable women (Leporello’s list!}—as a series of substitutes for the one and only love which is denied even to the Don Juan himself (the Oedipus-phantasy) we understand better the phantasy of punishment mentioned above: it requites for the supreme ‘mortal sin’.

Of course I do not pretend in these few lines to have revealed the hidden meaning of the Don Juan legend which still has many inexplicable traits, (for example, I may hint at the probably homo- sexual signification of the lighting of one cigar by another); I only wished to give a confirmation of the phallic, life and death sym- bolism of the bridge by its appearance among the typical sym- bols of death, birth and sexuality.

* See this JOURNAL, Vol. II, p. 170.

PLATO: A FORE-RUNNER OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS! By O. PFISTER ZURICH

Of all thinkers of the western world Plato was the first to observe our subject deeply and to describe it plainly. According to him, Eros, Love, is above all the instinct of sex or propagation. ?

He did not in the least depreciate the part played in life by these instincts; the union of man and woman for the purpose of procreation was to him a holy thing (Symposium, chap. 25). But love reaches still greater heights: in the body it seeks and finds the beautiful, noble and gifted soul (Nachmansohn, 78), so that impregnation becomes a spiritual deed. On the ground of this spiritualization Plato creates for himself a reason (or pretext) for praising the love of boys so highly, which as an ethical attitude he places above the love of women. He sees in philosophical tendencies a further exaltation of the love-instinct; Eros is turned to the abstract, to the world of ideas. Finally love attains divinity. Nachmansohn rightly says: ‘According to Plato, Eros and Love are one and the same thing, whether the love is that of parents

' The following notes form part of the historical introduction to a book which I am now writing on ‘The Developments and Misdevelopments of Love’. I offer them to the reader, not only because it is a joy to the analyst to rediscover some of Freud’s most profound and fruitful teaching in the work of one whose understanding of the soul of men has been one of the greatest wonders of history, but also for another reason. Plato is always counted among the noblest and most honoured thinkers; even his glorification of homosexuality is passed over leniently. But supposing that the most repellent doctrines of psycho-analysis are to be found already in his works? Will the analyst still be regarded as a heathen and Plato venerated as a divine prophet? However this may be, we will continue on our way in search of truth, indifferent to both slander and suspicion.

* Nachmansohn: ‘Freuds Libidotheorie verglichen mit der Eroslehre Platos ’. /uternationale Zeitschrift fir Psychoanalyse, 1915, Bd. Ill, S. 76.

169

170 O, PFISTER

for children, or of children for parents, of man for woman, of art or of science, or the love of God.’ To this he adds: ‘It is interesting that all the amplifications of the usual conception of the sexual instinct which Freud has made, much to the disgust of so many academicians, are to be found already in the works of the founder of the Academy (Plato)’. Plato recognizes a difference between com- mon and divine love' which is independent of these gradations, Plato’s kinship with psycho-analysis is, however, by no means exhausted by these valuable references. In order to show the profound knowledge of the minds of men that he possessed I will here quote a number of passages from his writings. * Tt sounds as if he had forestalled the views of the most modern form of psycho-therapy—psycho-analysis—when he says: ‘There are in the human body these two kinds of love, the desire of the healthy is one and the desire of the diseased is another; so too in the body the good and the healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged but discouraged. For medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and the desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not.’ The following goes even further: ‘The best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends is a skilful practitioner. Now the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist and dry, and the like’ (chap. 12). ‘Love... since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and healer of the ills which are the great impediments of the happiness of the race’ (chap. 14). Nearly all the technical, artistic and social activities arose from love; Plato mentions the following : gymnastics, agriculture, music, chivalry, poetry, archery, (chap. 12) metal-work, weaving, art of government, the love for the beautiful and the good (chap. 19). We must draw special attention to certain passages, first of all to his attitude toward music and its relationship to medicine. ‘,.. Harmony is a symphony and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of like elements short or long, once

—

’ Symposium, chap. 8. Compare Phaedrus, chap. 49.

PLATO: A FORE-RUNNER OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 171

differing and now in accord; which accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them ; and thus music, too, is concerned with the Principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. Again in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become double’ (chap. 12).

Here with his wonderfully acute perception Plato recognized the power of love in music, and in the sentences which follow he shows himself to be a remarkable psychologist in regard to morality and religion. The significance of his thoughts in these matters has only remained hidden because since his time, with the exception of Freud, hardly one person has embraced in a single vision the interaction of all mental processes and the working of the mind as a whole. ‘Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of divination which is the art of communion between gods and men—these, I say, are concerned only with the preservation of the good love and the cure of the evil. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feeling towards gods and parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of divin- ation is to see to these loves and to heal them’ (chap. 13). ‘And divination is the peacemaker between gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent, force of love in general’ (chap. 13). Religion also is simply a matter of understanding and directing the emotions which spring from the love-impulse.

The astounding thing in this is that the unconscious is already assumed as the seat of piety, although naturally the idea is not expressed in exact terms.1 (The idea was apparently taken over

* Compare Otto Wichmann: Platos Lehre vom Instinkt und Genie, Berlin, Reuther & Reichard, 1917. According to this author Plato con- tinually extended the concept of the unconscious (78); it is the seat of the gift of religious prophecy; only he whose senses are lost during sleeping sickness or mental illness and whose mental energies are restricted possesses in his unconscious condition the divine power of prophecy (69). It is the province of the spirits (69), of philosophy (79, 92 ff.), of the art of government and poetry (74).

It

172 O. PFISTER

from Socrates.) One need only point out the following passage: ‘Love ... is a great spirit, and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.... He interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the art of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices, mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether asleep or awake, is carried on’ (chap. 23).

To Plato philosophy too springs from Eros: ‘For wisdom is a beautiful thing and love is of the beautiful’ (chap. 23). Even further: ‘Generally all desire of good and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love’ (chap. 24). ‘And if love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with the good; wherefore love is of immor- tality’ (chap. 25). ‘Those who are pregnant in the body only betake themselves to women and beget children—this is the character of their love; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory and give them the blessedness and immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant— for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls. than in their bodies—conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?—wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name of inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate’ (chap. 27).1 In wonderful words Diotima describes through the mouth of Socrates what Freud calls subli- mation.

The whole passage is a great panegyric of love; it is not a purely sensuous enthusiasm but is dictated by profound psychological

* The metaphysical concepts according to which Eros plays a part in animals and in plants, in short, in all living beings, does not here concern us further.

PLATO: A FORE-RUNNER OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 173

insight. The whole matter issummed up in these rapturous words : ‘This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these; in sacrifices, feasts, dances, he is our lord—who sénds courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness; the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; regardful of the good, regardless of the evil: in every word, work, wish fear—saviour, pilot, comrade, helper; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest: in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men’ (chap. 19).

We must draw attention to yet another peculiarity of the platonic idea of love: the redemption tendency. Numerous later philosophers (Aristotle among the first) seek pleasuré of a high order in the egoistic felicity of love. Plato, on the other hand, sees in love the striving to free the imprisoned, to heal the sick and to raise up the fallen,! and this is one of his most lofty ideas in this connection. We must, however, beware of confusing this redeeming love with the Christian concept. Plato is indifferent to the individual.

‘He therefore willingly permits child-murder on political and pedagogical grounds, in order to produce good citizens and also to prevent over-population ; in this sense he is a keen Darwinist snd believes in sexual selection; he would like the state to breed not only horses but also human beings.’ (Teichmiiller). Nevertheless, for him love is freed from the barrier of egotism.

We must lay stress on the depth and breadth. of vision which takes love as the basic force of the mind and as the creative principle, and follows it through all possible mental processes and actions, even going beyond the domain of experience into that of metaphysics. We do not accompany him into that territory which he himself describes only in mythological pictures, but we must still point out that such a careful positivist as Freud has also found in this source deep inspirations, which have proved of lasting value.2 In Plato we also find the beginnings of an evolutionistic

eer Nala ee yee ay a ae ! Teichmiiller; Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe, Bd. Il,

5. 374. : Freud: Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920, S. 55.

12*

174 - 0, PFISTER

mode of thought. Even the theory of sublimation is anticipated. No thinker in terms of evolution would object that the evolutionistic discipline was not maintained consistently throughout and that homosexuality, for example, was not recognized as the result of misdevelopment. In the same way we cannot complain that Plato discovered neither specific mental connections nor general psycho- logical laws. His work, as it stands, is a wonderful piece of

prophecy.

COMMUNICATIONS

DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE DURING ANALYSIS

BY

S, PFEIFER BUDAPEST

The patient whom I am treating for sexual impotence, was passion- ately in love with a girl who gave every indication of a corresponding feeling. As he intended to marry her, it was this love which led him to be analysed. When he proposed to the young lady, however, after some weeks of analysis, he received an unexpected but quite definite refusal. As a result he fell into a condition of which I will give the main features as they showed themselves during the im- mediately succeeding hours of analysis.

The patient became quite incapable of work, since he could not bring to it the necessary interest, although he made the attempt. He could not recall anything said, even though he was conscious of having listened. His sister and employer were concerned about his condition, but he was indifferent to them and remembered either not at all or very incompletely what they had said to him. Yet it appeared in the analysis that there had been an understanding of his sister’s comforting words, though to some extent elaborated. Until the second day after the shock he had no physical sensations, apart from an oppressive general feeling of discomfort. Not until the second analysis period did he find that his shoe was hurting his foot. The first evening he was quite seriously occupied with thoughts of suicide, and depicted to himself how he would arrange it, how the bullet would take off the top of his skull, etc. Still earlier he was busy with thoughts of sending to his faithless sweetheart an insulting and crushingly scornful letter. He had no appetite, and took nothing except some liquid food at night. ‘In spite of that’, he said, ‘I have had awful uneasiness in the bowels, with flatulency-pains.’ In addition he suffered from total sleeplessness.

175

176 S, PFEIFER

The analysis discovered two opposed libido-mechanisms, working one after the other, and to some extent simultaneously. Immediately after the brutal injury which the patient had suffered from his libido-object, he withdrew his whole libido from the painful outer world, and therewith his entire interest, to such an extent that he had no cognizance of the most elementary sensations, e.g. the pain caused by the pressure of the shoe. That the withdrawn libido and interest became concentrated in the ego and produced there a narcissistic libido-tension is proved by the almost completely similar case of another patient, in whom, after such a rejection, excessive masturbation made its appearance as an indication of and relief for such a narcissistic tension. This patient made a distinction between such masturbation and the masturbation of puberty, in noting that the latter was always introduced by mental pictures of erotic objects while the former was evoked merely by stimulating the penis. If experience confirms the existence of such masturbation without object-phantasies we may be able to draw a distinction between ebject- and narcissistic-masturbation. In the first case also there preved to be an attempt at immediate discharge of the ego tension, but here more in the direction of personality. ‘I believe in myself’ and similar thoughts assured him of his own value, and when he was alone he would whistle aloud and dance even in his misery.

But this defence-mechanism proved insufficient, probably because his source of discomfort was by this time introjected, so that for him total withdrawal from the painful outer world could not shut out the painful memory. There was no way open to him except to destroy the source of pain together with the ego that contained it. The proposed wounding letter shows decisively that hate against the former sweetheart, now set free with the breaking down of the love relation, was in this case the xadius vector. In killing himself the patient was going to destroy also the former libido-object, through an obvious identification with the object, by turning the hate impulse against his own person. Planning to execute the deed in the presence of the loved one (either in phantasy or in actuality), in order to give her pain, has a similar motive and is frequently found among suicides,

But new possibilities for the withdrawn libido soon manifest themselves, and in each new disposition the libido must pass through, the whole developmental. process of its formation, this. following completely the main lines of development of the infantile sexuality,

DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE DURING ANALYSIS 177

and justifying the theory. The patient ceases to feed in the adult manner, and the taking of liquid food shows that he has regressed to the method which belongs to infancy. In my opinion, however, this is complicated by other factors. In the first place there should be mentioned the refusal to take food following the disappointment, which signifies not only a complete withdrawal from the world external nourishment as well as external excitants, perhaps originally one and the same, being ignored—but also an inverted ablactation, an active self-weaning. But I will desist from following up this track since it is only inferred from a short section of the analysis and is without further verification.

Several signs of strong anal regression are present and are to be regarded as a progression from the stage of regressive narcissism towards the anal-sadistic organisation. The violent bowel disturbances mentioned above should be compared with the fear experienced earlier, that if he lived together with his sweetheart he would disgrace himself before her by copious production of intestinal gases. Now he can no longer resist this impulse, since he has again invested with his libido the method of getting satis- faction which he previously gave up out of love for the normal sex-object. We may assume that at this fixation-point the elements of the regressive libido find an opportunity to combine with similar currents from the ego-reservoir.’ eS

Together with a strengthened defence against the increased danger from this impulse, appeared numerous anal-erotic memories (without exception very unpleasant), which came from childhood and else- where, and were to be ascribed to this reinforced component-impulse. But such obsessive thoughts as ‘I am undone,’ and ‘She has given me

1 I must here remark that I consider a part of the libido betraye by the bowel movements as entirely narcissistic, and therefore more primitive than the purely anal-erotic. Here a reference might be made to hypochondria (Cp. Freud’s ‘Einfiihrung des Narzissmus ’ and Ferenczi’s ‘Pathoneurosen’) of which the simultaneous appearance with increased narcissism, together with other analytical experiences, is in agreement with what has just been said. The above mentioned muscular phenomena must be considered as at the same level (dance). Perhaps we are dealing here with differences in distribution of the narcissistic libido among the different organs, and perhaps also with differences in the regression- stages of the libido itself.

* In Hungarian: ‘Le vagyok sajnalva’, a euphemism. for soiling.

178 S. PFEIFER

an evasive answer’—the first with a well-known anal-erotic double meaning, and the second leading up to the point of a scatological obscene joke—both show that the patient attempts to bring the injury coming to the ego from without into harmony with the danger threatening from the instinct within. It is here to be noted that such external injuries to the ego provide suitable opportunities for pro- jection of the inner menace from the instinct and for the simultaneous discharge of anal-erotic-masochistic impulses. (Here again the masochistic impulse is sadism turned against one’s own person). But the greatest outflow of energy is shown in the patient’s new choice of objects. It will not surprise us to recognise incest- libido as the chief factor of this, which he showed in strong fixation. The first soothing influence was exerted on him by the words of his sister with whom he lived, and who was his mother- representative. (The other patient, mentioned above, went back to his parent’s house when in a similar state, and spent there some time ‘as though in lethargy’). In connection with this sister the patient had related some days before that during the night he had withdrawn to a room for the purpose of thinking about his sweetheart. In this he did not succeed and on consideration remembered that that room was next to the bedroom of his sister. These thoughts, and the hearing of some noises in the bedroom, drove all thoughts of his sweetheart out of his head. In order to soothe him his sister had intimated that girls were all coquettes, and that she herself was no exception. Then the patient began to feel deep sympathy with one of his numerous nieces who, according to information supplied by his sister, was in love with him. He thought he ought to comfort this girl who could be made so happy by him. It should be understood that for our patient with his strong family-fixation, the female cousins formed a series into which he had resolved his mother-zmwago. The sleeplessness, which according to Radé expresses a flight of the enhanced narcissism from further augmentation, as well as the fear of the claims of the repressed object-libido, is brought to an end by a saving-dream in which mother, sister and sweetheart are saved in one composite dream-person. This dream forms also a functional picture showing that in this search among old and new libido objects he is beginning to save himself from being swallowed up in narcissism. Beginning from there his libido set out on side-tracks some of which had already been well worn

DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE DURING ANALYSIS 179

in the unconscious, and he developed towards the analyst a growing transference amounting to homosexual love, which on the one hand was connected through infantile traumata with the family complex, and on the other represented (through estrangement from women) flight from incest-love.

Later, when a glimmering hope appeared that it might be possible still to win the lady, came expressions such as ‘I was as if electrified’, or ‘It seemed as if I must jump out of my skin’. These show that only a part of the narcissistic libido could get expression by the paths mentioned above. Another part, for want of a suitable object, contributes to the augmentation of the primary narcissism, and so to the production of a potential tension with increased readiness for discharge.

In a few hours of analysis I was able to obtain this insight into the mechanism of libido movements after a violently broken-off love affair. This subject is to my mind very important, and I invite colleagues to discuss it, together with the numerous and very significant relations of the love-life during the analysis to the analysis

itself.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE FOLK-TALE

A REJOINDER TO A RECENT CRITIC BY G. ROHEIM BUDAPEST

An interesting paper by Mr.F.C. Bartlett! in one of the recent numbers of Folk-Lore deals with the claims of psychology in general to contain the key that will unlock the difficult and much discussed problem of the ‘folk-tale’ or ‘Marchex’. He tells us that the psycho- logical theories relating to the folk-tale have received new impetus from Freud’s study of dreams.2 However, he wishes to criticise all attempts to interpret the folk-tale as an ‘individual expression’ and devotes his chief attention to those who apply Freud’s views on dreams to the mechanisms determining the growth of the popular tale, particularly Rank (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero) and Riklin (Wish-Fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales).

He begins his criticism by telling us that ‘wish-fulfilment’ is not an acceptable explanation from the point of view of scientific psychology. For if a wish means only a ‘directed tendency’ the explanation is far too general, since it refers to an element which is present in all modes of human behaviour. If however something more definite is to be understood by wish-fulfilment, for instance the memory-image left by former satisfactions of certain bodily cravings, then these are themselves ‘the result of incoming ex- perience acquired in the course of the mental life and so them- selves call for explanation by reference to environment.®

Now this argument has a plausible appearance, but I think that if one really reads Freudian contributions to the study of the popular

F. SS Bartlett: ‘Psychology i in relation to the popular story’, Fotk- Lore, 1920, pp. 264-03.

2 idem: l.c. p. 265.

* idem: ibid p. 277. 180

<7

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE FOLK-TALE 181

tale and moreover if one knows something about psycho-analysis on the one hand and folk-lore on the other, there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the meaning of the term wish-fulfilment in this connection. To begin with a truism; popular tales are all told to a juvenile audience and usually end (particularly fairy-tales) by the young hero overcoming all obstacles and winning the fair lady. Now every human action is done for one of two reasons: either because it is useful and necessary, or because people find pleasure in it since it satisfies a wish. We may safely leave out of account use- fulness as a possible motive (apart from moralising additions) when applying this consideration to the folk-tale and come to the con- clusion that the tales are told, like fiction in general, for pleasure, because the juvenile audience delights in them. The child identifies ‘itself to a varying extent with the young hero of the story. It has an unconscious apprehension of the difficulties that stand ‘ ’twixt cup and lip’, between itself and the sexual object, and magnifies them into dragons and monsters. But all tales have a happy ending; the child obtains a fulfilment in imagination of those unconscious wishes which it cannot yet obtain in reality. The hero wins the maiden; this is the happy ending and it is not in the least doubtful what sort of ‘directed tendency’ is at work here. It is true that some folk-tale motives, like some dreams, contain wish-fulfilments of a still more elementary character: the dream of Nordenskiold’s hungering crew, mentioned by Freud?! as a case of a simple infantile wish with hunger as the actuating motive, may for instance be compared with the magic tablecloth desired in fairy tales. Nevertheless, in the large majority of cases we may say that the wish is of a sexual nature, and that its manifestations, even in fiction, are controlled by the psychic censorship and subject to the same measure of distortion as other products of the unconscious.

Here we glide over to the subject of symbolism and to the second error of our critic, He acknowledges the possibility of syinbolism in popular story, but he objects violently to the idea of a ‘universal symbolism’, to the principle ‘once a symbol always. a symbol’. Something may be symbolical for A who. tells

: Freud: Die Traumdeutung. 1911. S. 96, 97.

2 Cp. T. Jacobs: English Fairy Tales. 1907. p. 206. No. xxxix. Grimm: Kinder- und Hausmarchen. No. 36. With the copious notes and references of Bolte-Polivka: Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Haus-

marchen, 1913, p. 346.

182 G. ROHEIM

the story and not symbolical for B who retells it. We come here to the flaw in the author’s argument. If something is a symbol for A and not for B, then evidently A knows that what he is relating ig a symbol... but in this case it is no symbol at all in the sense in which we use this word in psycho-analysis, but something quite different, let us say an allegory or a metaphorical expression. By symbol we mean a substitute for something we are not conscious of, for a repressed unconscious concept. A symbol the story-teller would be aware of is therefore manifestly a contradictzo im ad- jecto. Like many others the author strangely fails to grasp that an unconscious concept is something of which we are really uot conscious. ‘In my childhood I learned’, he tells us, ‘from my mother and from others many popular stories. Some of them contained material of precisely the kind discussed by Riklin. Never till I read this book was I in any sense aware of that possible symbolic meaning with which he is preoccupied.* Well, it would have been most abnormal if as a child he had been aware of it, but that in no sense disproves the symbolic interpretation of folk-tale elements. When, however, our critic protests against ‘universal symbols’ and demands careful analysis for each case, we must acknowledge that he is right to a certain extent and that Riklin’s book, a premature

attempt to apply analysis to the folk-tale, is open to criticism from |

a psycho-analytical point of view as well. Still we must say a few

words on the idea of a ‘universal symbolism’ in psycho-analysis. —

When the analyst has obtained the same solution to the same problem on # occasions he will expect to find it again in case “+1 and if the dagger proves to be a substitute for the penis in a hundred dreams it is very likely that it will mean the same in the hundred and first. This is what is meant by ‘universal symbols’; every analyst knows that by applying this key to certain simple and typical dreams we have only fathomed their latent contents with a certain, and high, degree of probability, though absolute certainty can only be attained through individual analysis. The value of the symbolic interpretation when applied to the folk-tale as an heuristic principle lies in the fact that ‘what at first tends to appear a mere muddled mass may be shown to illustrate the most

1 Cp. Ernest Jones: ‘The Theory of Symbolism’, Papers on Psycho- Analysis, 1918, > Bartlett: Lc., p. 279.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE FOLK-TALE 183

pertectly determined order.’ Take for instance the ‘Three golden hairs of the devil’. A boy who is sent on an errand to the devil or another supernatural being has to bring an answer to various questions: (a) why a certain well will give no more water, (b) why a fruit tree will not bear any more fruit, (c) what is the matter with a certain princess or queen. The devil’s mother or wife helps him to get the information by hiding him in a cupboard or under the bed and telling her husband three times that she has been dreaming about (a) a well, etc., (b) a fruit tree, etc., (c) a girl, etc. and that she cannot sleep till these questions are answered. Now if we remember that the number three is one of the conventional ele- ments of folk-tale, and that the same episode although repeated three times still remains the same, we shall search for the same unconscious meaning in these three questions. There is a remarkable parallelism between the girl and the well; on the other hand the nature of the girl's ailment seems somewhat obscure. Fleur d’Epine is told that he will win the girl as his wife if he can make the waters of a certain well flow again.? There seems to be abundant reason for this marriage, for the youthful adventurer has made the princess, as well as all the other princesses he encountered on his voyage, enceinte.* In another variant the well is dried up on account of the immoral life led by the Red Emperor’s daughter.* The reason why the well refuses to give water and why the princess is ill is very often the same; a toad is obstructing the water or sitting under the bed of the princess. Frog and toad are well-known equi- valents of the womb in European folk belief,® so that is the direction in which we must look for the nature of the princess’s illness. Indeed we know quite well that she is pregnant—our Breton

‘ idem: ibid. p. 264, referring to Freud’s researches on dream-life.

: F. M. Luzel: Contes Populaires de la Basse-Bretagne. 1887, t. I, p. 135.

idem: ibid. t. 1, p. 124.

¢ Rona Sklarck: Ungarische Volksmiarchen. 1901. Vol. I, p. 33.

¢ A. Aarne: Der reiche Mann und sein Schwiegersohn. F. F. Com- munications No. 23. 1916, pp. 143, 145. For the variants and literary history of the tale consult this excellent monograph and the notes of Bolte-Polivka: 1. c. Vol. I, p. 276.

® See Réoheim: Adalékok a magyar néphithez. (Contributions to Hungarian Folklore.) 1920. p. 219. R. Andree: Votive und Weihegaben.

1914. p. 120.

184 ' G. ROHEIM e

variant is quite clear on the matter. In some variants her illness is said to be caused by the fact that she has vomited the Holy Wafer1—nausea being a symptom of pregnancy, and the Holy Wafer the symbol of the Saviour, the God-Child. If we continue the parallelism between the well, the tree and the woman we shall have to say that the questions why the well does not give any water and the tree does not bear fruit are equivalent to the question why a woman cannot give birth to her child, and this is really what the young hero wants to know. This is simply a slightly distorted version of the child’s typical question: how are children born, how did I come into the world? It is a well-known fact that this sexual curiosity of the child gains fresh impulse from ob- servations on the intercourse between his parents which he makes at an age when he is not thought capable of making any ob- servations,* and here we find the hero in a truly infantile situation, hidden beneath the bed, listening to what the grown-ups (the supernatural beings) are saying. They are talking about how children come into the world, just what our youthful hero would like to know.

Certain passages seem to indicate that here for once we have direct dream experience embodied in folk-tale. For are we not told that the devil (sun, dragon, etc.) is asleep and does not his wife (mother) tell us that she is being harrassed by oppressive dreams? Freud has shown that the impression received by the infant from observing the coition of his parents will persist in his dreams with the distortion habitual to dream-work. We shall therefore come to the conclusion that it is not the grown-ups who are dreaming, but the child, and that our tale only projects the idea . of being asleep from the hero on to the supernatural beings, In the child’s dream the situation is softened down; instead of looking at his parent’s cohabitation, he is only listening to their talk about how a child is born. But in the projection we get the original situation back once more; he is surreptitiously observing something that his parents are doing at night.

Now for another detail; every time the devil’s wife wakes the giant or devil she does so by pulling out one of his golden hairs. A AE EE ES es Sg cl LOL MEO SM SAP ee wae cece, ee LAL og a

* Rona Sklarck: 1. c. p. 33.

* See especially Freud; Aus der Geschichte einer infaritilen Neurose (Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV.), 1918, arid also Réheim: Die Urszene im Traume. /uternationale Zettschrift fiir Psychoanalyse, Ba. VI., S. 337.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE FOLK-TALE 185

I have given instances elsewhere of the hair as a penis-symbol;! what Samson loses with his hair is not so much his physical strength as his potency.? We touch here on another element which has its root in the Oedipus complex; the boy loves his mother, is jealous of his father, and wishes to punish him by castration for doing what he cannot do; and it is in this form, as the symbolic punish- ment for cohabitation, that the original scene appears in the dream. But the whole analysis rests on the assumption that the devil is a duplicate of the father, transformed into a devil by the boy’s Oedipus attitude. This and the whole chain of argument is con- firmed by the end of the story where the boy’s father, or rather step-father, who sent him on the dangerous errand is punished for his wickedness by being compelled to replace the ferryman (a sort of Charon) of the nether-world who is a duplicate figure of the devil himself. Now, if the tale tells us that two people who replace each other are equivalent to each other we may safely assume that this is correct. Thus our whole chain of assumptions is confirmed by a return of repressed elements at the end of the tale; at last it cannot help telling us who the devil really is,

This short analysis shows us what is meant or what ought to be meant by Riklin and others when they say that they can do without the ‘historical pedigree’ in interpreting a folk-tale. The fact is that by the help of a careful comparative study of the sequence of ‘motives’ which are united to build up a connected whole, besides comparing the same ‘motive’ as it appears in other tales, we may make use of our psycho-analytical knowledge of the general laws which govern the transformations of all psychic products to guess the latent contents of the tale. But this is only part of the tale, although the most important part from an analytic point of view. If we wish to know where the tale originated, how it came to be developed into a tale, out of what mythic material, belief, or custom it was formed, we must certainly make use of the usual methods of comparative folk-lore and social anthropology. Thus for instance we have the interesting suggestion of von der

—_———_— oo

t See ‘Psychoanalysis és ethnologia’, Zthnographia. 1918.

=: See L. Lewy: ‘Sexualsymbolik in der Simsonsage’. Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschafi, 1916, Ht. 617,

* For demonstration of this see Ernest Jones: Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens, I912, S. 88 et seq.

186 G. ROHEIM

Leyen who thinks that the ‘three golden hairs of the devil’ are an account of a shaman’s journey to the other world. In his trance he asks the supernatural beings how to cure a barren woman, make a well flow, etc.; a proceeding which would be really quite in keeping with the usual ways of shamans.? If we should be able to prove that these customs existed in the region where our tale started on its migration we should certainly have made another important step forward. The next thing would be to show whether the unconscious content of the tale is in keeping with the general psychic tendency dominant in shamanism (the shaman in the position of a child towards the supernatural beings, sexual character of his ‘knowledge’ etc.) and if all this has been done we may hope to give a sort of biography of our tale from its infancy to maturity and decay. We certainly do not think of doing without an ‘historical pedigree’ for it is here that the whole process of distortion, the mechanism of repression; and the return of repressed elements can be studied with some hope of success. The folk-tale as we have it to-day is a house with many floors; if we wish to go from attic to cellar we shall have to make use of all methods hitherto employed; the literary school (from Benfey to Aarne) for migration, social anthropology for the materials the tale is made of, psycho- analysis for the unconscious tendencies which take hold of those materials (custom, belief) and make use of them for their own purposes. This seems to be the legitimate claim to be advanced by psycho-analysis in bringing new light to the intricate problem of the folk-tale.*

1 F. von der Leyen: Das Marchen. 1911. S. 49.

* Thus we have acknowledged Mr. Bartlett’s criticism as legitimate to a certain degree although we must also point out his errors. Point (3) of his criticism (p. 281) where he requires an individual analysis of those who employed the symbolic ‘motive’ is a truly psycho-analytic postulate; only as everybody knows, it is hardly practicable.

Received Jan, 1, 1922.

A CHILD’S BIRTH-MYTH STORY BY S. HERBERT . MANCHESTER

Nesta is nine years old and has had a liberal education in sex. She was enlightened about the origin of children in early childhood; and now, as her sex interest is reviving, the lesson has been repeated to her.

This is how she elaborated the newly-won knowledge in her own way. She was going to tell a story and asked what it should be about. ‘About a red berry’ was the request; whereupon she told the following tale spontaneously, given here in her own words:

‘There was once a berry alone on a bush, and her husband had been plucked off, and she was so sorry, because she wanted to have some children, Then a little red berry rolled along near her, and she asked who it was, and it said: “Somebody plucked my mummy and daddy, and so I am all alone, and have nobody to take care of me.” Then the old berry said it had no children, and would the little berry be its child, and it would be its mother. So they agreed, and lived together.

‘After a while, one day the mother said to herself: “I wonder why little Reddy is scratching herself so much. — Why are you, Reddy?” “O mummy, I have to scratch, because I feel as if there’s something inside me.” “Oh,” said the mother, “we must go to the doctor.”

‘So they went to-Dr. Berry, and he said she must be cut open. So he laid her on some soft moss—’

(‘Didn’t she have chloroform?’ asked the listener.)

‘O no, but he poured some early dew on her, which is the same as chloroform for berries. Then he cut her open, and out came a little thing with two legs, two arms, and two wings. It was a fairy. It said it had been caught in a flower in the spring and made a prisoner, and then felt something growing around itself, and that was the berry. So then it flew away.

‘Then the berry woke up, and it was quite well, and it gave the doctor three bottles of rose water.’

8 187

=

188 | S. HERBERT

What is interesting about the above story is the fact that, though the sex information was given in a strictly rational, sci- entific manner, still the child felt the need of elaborating uncon- sciously in her own language and images knowledge that she already had consciously. The ‘mytho-poetical’ faculty is very strong in Nesta, and it enabled her to express in her own sym- bolic way what had occupied her mind intently for some time without her venturing to give open and direct expression to it. —

Her symbolism conforms entirely to what we are used to find in psycho-analysis. In the first place there is the reversal so characteristic of the unconscious. While the offspring grows inside the mother, the story has it that the berry grows around the fairy child, forming a receptacle for it. This receptacle has close resemblance to the idea of a ‘box’ which so often stands symbolically for the womb. Secondly it is not the old mother-berry, bereft of her husband, who gets with child, but little Reddy herself, thus showing a reversal ot generations.1 Little Reddy identifies herself with her own mother and becomes thus, as it were, the mother of herself. As a matter of fact, Nesta often mentions that she is going to have a lot of children. She simply carries out her wish in the story.

Furthermore it is interesting to note that Nesta represents the

birth of the fairy as taking place by a doctor cutting open the mother. She had been told only that the child comes out of the mother at birth without any further indication of the birth-process; she represents the latter symbolically in the typical way by ‘cutting- open’. (It may be said here that Nesta’s father is a doctor). ‘ That Nesta has a special attachment to her mother, whom she ' strongly resembles, is quite clear from the story, though of late signs have not been wanting which indicate that she is nearing the period of father-fixation.

Asked why Little Reddy scratches herself when with child, she naively answers: ‘Wouldn’t you do so, if something were wobbling about inside you?’ The displacement of the internal sensation to the skin gives a hint that skin erotism may some- times be due to pregnancy phantasies.

Finally it may be pointed out that Nesta asked the following day whether cats can have young without a husband. Though told that the male partner is necessary for reproduction, she had not been informed about the exact réle he plays.

' See Ernest Jones: Papers on Psycho-Analysis, 1918, chap. XXXIX.

COLLECTIVE REVIEW

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY

BY GEZA ROHEIM

BUDAPEST

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

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lust bei den Psychoneurotikern.’ Fahkréuch der Psycho- analyse. 1914. VI. S. 25-80.

. "Idem: ‘Uber neurotische Exogamie. Jmago. 1914. IIL. S. 499-501. | . Ankermann, Bernard: ‘VNerbreitung und Formen des Totemismus

in Afrika.’ Zesischrift fiir Ethnologie. 1915. XLVIL. S, 114-80.

. Idem: ‘ Totenkult und Seelenglaube bei afrikanischen Volkern.’

Ibid. 1918. S. 89-153.

, Larguir des Bancels, J.: ‘Sur les Origines de la Notion de l’Ame

4 propos d’une Interdiction de Pythagore.’ Archzves de Psychologie. XVII. 1918. p. 58.

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Archiv fiir Volkskunde. XX. (Festschrift fiir Hoffmann- Krayer.) 1916. S. 6.

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1919. 2 Volumes.

. Boil, Franz: ‘Oknos.’ Archiv fir Religionswissenschaft. 1918. S. 151. . Bork, F.: ‘‘Tierkreisforschungen.’ Anthropos. 1914. Heft 12. . *Brill, A. A.: ‘Die Psychopathologie der neuen Tanze.’ Jmago. 1914.

Il. S. 401.

1 The works marked with an asterisk are written from a psycho-analytic

standpoint. It seems appropriate from time to time to call attention to works which are not connected with psycho-analysis, but in which nevertheless material is collated in a way rendering it immediatcly available for expert psycho-analytic handling, and also to works which arrive at conclusions having a relation to psycho-analytic questions.

3" 189

190 | COLLECTIVE REVIEW

11. Buschan: ‘Das Mannerkindbett.’ Zettschrift fir Sexualwztssen-

schafi. Il. S. 203.

12. *£zsler, Robert: ‘Der Fisch als Sexualsymbol.’ /wago. Ill. S. 165.

13. *Federn, Paul: ‘Die vaterlose Gesellschaft.’ 1919. (Der Aufstieg Nr. 12/13.)

14. *Fekrie, Eugen: ‘Zum Verhiillen im deutschen Volksglauben.’ Schweizerisches Archiv fiir Volkskunde. 1910. XX. S. 120.

15. “Felszeghy, Béla: ‘A pan complexum’ (Pan-Complex). Auszadzk Szdzad.. 1910.

16. *Ferencei, S.:‘Zur Psychogenese der Mechanik.’ Jago. 1919. V. S. 394.

17. Foy, W.: Uber das indische Ioni-Symbol. 1916.

18. “Freud, S.: ‘Das Tabu der Virginitét.’ Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. Vierte Folge. 1918. S. 220.

19. * Giese, Fritz: ‘Sexualvorbilder bei einfachen Erfindungen.’ Jago. Il. S, 524. !

20. Hall, Stanley G.: ‘Spiel, Erholung, Riickschlag.’ Zedtschrift fir Sexualwissenschafit. 1919. VI.

21. Fellinek, Morton: A saru eredete, (The Origin of Shoes.) 1917.

22. *Fones, Ernest: ‘Die Empfangnis der Jungfrau Maria durch das Ohr.’

Fahrbuch der Psychoanalyse. 1914. VI. S. 135. flartley, C. Gasguoine: The Position of Woman in Primitive Society. - 1914.

24. “Kaplan, Leo: Grundziige der Psychoanalyse. 1914.

25. *Idem: Psychoanalytische Probleme. 1916.

26. *Idem: Hypnotismus, Animismus und Psychoanalyse. 1917.

27. Kreichgauer, P.D.: ‘Das Symbol fiir “Kampf” im alten Mexiko.’ Anthropos. 1914. S. 381.

28. Idem: ‘Die Klapptore am Rande der Erde in der altmexikani- schen Mythologie.’ Athropos. Bd. XII. XIll. S. 272.

20. *Levy, Ludwig: ‘Die Sexualsymbolik der Bibel und des Talmuds.’ Zezt- schrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft. 1914. I. S. 273, 318.

23

30. “Idem: ‘Die Sexualsymbolik des Ackerbaues in Bibel und Talmud.’ Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft. Ml. S. 437.

31. *Idem: *Sexualsymbolik in der Simsonsage.’ Zestschrift fir Sexualwissenschaft. 1916. Heft 6/7.

32. “Idem: ‘Sexualsymbolik in der biblischen Paradiesgeschichte.’ Imago. VN. 1917. S. 16.

33. Idem: ‘Die Schuhsymbolik im jiidischen Ritu’.’ Moxatsschrift Siir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Fudentums. 1918. LXIL S, 178,

34. Idem: “Ist das Kainszeichen die Beschneidung?’ /mago. 1919.

V. S. 290.

ik én -- ? =o

35-

36.

37- 38. 39.

40. Al.

42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

49.

50. SI.

52.

53- 54-

55:

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY 191

Lindworsky, P. F.: “Vom Denken des Urmenschen. Zugleich ein Wort zur Annaherung von Psychologie und Ethnologie.’ Aunthropos. 1917/18. Heft 3/4.

*Lowenthal, Fohn: ‘Zur Mythologie des jungen Helden und des Feuerbringers.’ Zestschrift fir Ethnologie. 1018. S. 42.

Marcuse, M.: ‘Vom Inzest.' Furistisch-psychiatrische Grenzfragen. I915. X. Heft 3/4.

Mogk, Eugen : ‘Das Ei im Volksbrauch und Volksglauben.’ Zestschrift des Veretnes fur Volkskunde. 1915. S. 215-23.

Parsons, Elsie Clew: ‘Links between Religion and Morality in Early Culture.’ American Anthropologist. 1915. p. 41.

Idem: “The Reluctant Bridegroom,’ Azthropos. 1915/16. XI.

Idem : ‘Discomfiture and Evil Spirits.’ Zhe Psychoanalytic

Review. 1916, Ill. p. 280.

*Pheifer, Siegmund :‘ Auferungen infantil-erotischer Triebe im Spiele.’ Imago. 1919. V. S, 213.

*Rank, Otto: ‘Der Doppelganger.’ /mago. Il. S. 97.

*Idem: Psychoanalytische Beitrage zur Mythenforschung., Inter- nationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek Nr. 4. 19109.

* Reik, Theodor: ‘Die Couvade und die Psychogenese der Vergeltungs-

furcht.’ Jago. 1914. Il. S. 400,

*Idem: ‘Couvade und Mutterschutz.’ Die neue Generation. 1915. XI. H. 7/8.

*Idem : ‘Vélkerpsychologisches.’ /uternationale Zeitschrift fir Psychoanalyse’. 1915. Ill. S. 180. .

*Idem : ‘Die Pubertitsriten der Wilden.’ /mago. 1915. IV. S. 125, 189.

*Idem: Probleme der Religionspsychologie. Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek Nr. 5. 19109.

*Idem: ‘Das Kainszeichen.’ /mago. V. S. 31.

*Idem : ’ ‘Psychoanalytische Studien zur Bibelexegese.’ /mago. V. S. 325.

Barbara, Reng: ‘Schlange und Baum als Sexualsymbole in der Vilkerpsychologie.’ Archiv fiir Sexualforschung. 1916. I. Heft 2.

Réheim Gésa:‘A medve-és as ikrek.’ (The Bear and the Twins.)

Ethnographia. 1914: S. 93.

*Idem: ‘Az élet fonola.’ (The Thread of Life.) Athnographia. IQI6. 5S. 275.

*Idem: ‘A kazar nagyfejedelem és a turulmenda.’ (The Kasarian

Grand-Duke and the Story of the Turul.) Zthknographia. 1917. Published separately 1917.

192 COLLECTIVE REVIEW

56. *Idem: ‘A kazdr és a magyar nagyfejedelem.’ (The Kasarian and the Hungarian Grand-Dukes.) Zthuographia. 1918. S. 142.

57. “Idem: ‘Psychoanalysis és ethnologia.’ (Psycho-Analysis and

Ethnology.) ‘I.Azambivalentia és a megforditas térvénye.’ (Ambivalence and the Law of Inversion.) Ztinographia. 1918. S. 49. ‘II. A symbolumok tartalma és a libidé fejlédéstirténete.’ (The Meaning of Symbols and the Developmental History of the Libido.) Ibid. S. 206.

58. *Idem: “Nefanda carmina.’ Ztkuographia. 1918. Jahrg. XXIX. 271:

59. *Idem: Spiegelzauber. Internationale Psychoanalytische Biblio- thek. Nr. 6. 1919. (Kap. I—III also Jago. V. S. 62.)

60. *Idem: ‘Allerseelen im Volksbrauch und Volksglauben.’ Pester Lioyd. 1919. XI. S. 4.

61. *Idem: ‘Skt. Nikolaus im Volksbrauch und Volksglauben.’

Fester Lloyd. 1919. Xl. S. 7. (60 and 61 under the name ‘Helios’,

62. Sartori, Paul: ‘Diebstahl] als Zauber.’ Schweizerisches Archiv fiir Volkskunde. XX. 1916. S. 380.

63. Schilder, Paul: Wahn und Erkenntnis. Monographien aus dem Ge- samtgebiete der Neurologie und Psychiatrie. Heft 15. 1918. S. 57-112. Kap. Ill. Vélkerpsychologie und Psychiatrie.

64. Selberer, H.: Durch Tod zum Leben. Beitrag zur Geschichte der neueren Mystik und Magik. 1015. S. 4.

65. Soederblom, N.: Das Werden des Gottesglaubens. 1916.

66. Werner, Heinz: Die Urspriinge der Metapher. Arbeiten zur Entwick- lungspsychologie. 1919. Heft 3.

67. Zude, Waldemar: ‘Der Kuckuck in der Sexualsymbolik.’ Zeitschrift Jiir Sexualwissenschaft. 1917/18. IV. S. 88.

Ps

The work which laid the foundations of psycho-analytic folk- psychology is beyond question Freud's ‘Totem and Taboo’, in which the phylogenetic parallels of the ontogenetic (or individual) Oedipus complex are brought to light. The results achieved in it were confirmed by Reik’s work, to which we owe the most im- portant advances of the period dealt with in this Review.

Reik (48) takes as his starting-point the observation that a common fundamental feature in rites of initiation is to be found

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY 193

in the idea of slaying the young men, and bringing them back to life. We may assume that the greedy monster which apparently devours the youths represents the totem animal which primitives admittedly reverence as their ancestor. In order to understand these rites we must take as our starting-point the ambivalent part which the fathers play, both as tormentors and as protectors of their sons. It is clear that in the monsters we can see nothing but the pro- jected hostility of the fathers. The same impulses are at work in the rite of circumcision. This is to be understood as a castration- equivalent, and a most effective reinforcement of the incest-taboo. The rite is motivated by the unconscious fear of retaliation ex- perienced by the man who has become a father: he fears that his own wishes for the castration of his father will be realised on himself by his own son (or: his unconscious is aware of the im- pulses latent in the unconscious of his children and revenges itself on them in accordance with the principle of the jus /alionis): he identifies himself thus with his own father who appears in the ceremonies as the monster-grandfather. The slaying and the resurrection are related to each other in the same way as the two elements in the alternating behaviour of obsessional neurotics: in the one phase hate comes to the surface, in the other love and tenderness; the fathers signify to the sons in this way their readiness to accept them with the tribal group, but on condition of their renouncing their infantilism,

The author sees in the rites of puberty a repetition of the primitive situation that we must presume to have existed when the totem system arose. In both there follows on a violent mani- festation of hostility a reaction of tender feeling, which expresses itself as identification with the totem (S. 192).

The rebirth of the youth out of the totem animal, that is, out of the father, signifies his enfranchisement from the incest-fixation, by means of a contradiction and cancellation of the fundamental cause of the incestuous desire, viz. the birth from the mother. In these puberty-rites two age-groups stand confronting each other. In the case of savage races it has already been shown by Schurtz, but it is true universally, that these two age-groups represent the tribe’s conception of itselfi—the mutual sympathy between them reveals the unconscious homosexual impulse. Thus we find a con- firmation of the Freudian conjecture that, after the all-important death of the father, the brothers must at some time have founded

1904 COLLECTIVE REVIEW

some sort of organisation based on the homosexual direction of feeling.

A similar compromise between the Oedipus fixation and the fear of retaliation, between aggressivity and tender feeling, is ex- pressed in the couvade of primitive races (45). The couvade originates when the feelings of tenderness for the son suppress the fear of retaliation in such a way that this is only revealed in acts expressing a compromise, that is, in the performance of a ritual.

Treatment of a related subject will be found in a paper on the mark of Cain (50) which is considered by Biblical critics to be the race tattoo-mark of the Kenites. Here again we have to do with an Oedipus fixation and a fear of retaliation; the mark of Cain, originally a castration-equivalent, is therefore a talion punishment for incest committed. The attempt made by Levy (34) to refute the arguments of Reik seems to me throughout inadequate and to rest on a misconception of the mechanism of the unconscious. In the first part of Reik’s ‘Problems of the Psychology of Religion’ will be found an amalgamation of four separate articles, particularly 45 and 48 in an expanded form, and, in addition, ‘Kolnidre’ and “The Schofar’. |

Among primitive peoples an essential part of the oath consists in a practice symbolizing the evil fate which is thought to over- take a perjurer: e.g. being eaten by a wild beast. An Old Testa- ment analogy to this form of oath is to be found in ‘Brith’, the covenant between Jehovah and Abraham. According to the author, the ‘Brith’ is the raw material of the sacrificial ceremony, an inter- mediate form developed out of the prototype of the totemistic meal, The self-imprecation must be considered as a reaction against a previous act of violence, the nature of which is betrayed in the rite of dismembering the animal, in view of Freud’s explanation of totemism. Originally it constituted a self-inflicted punishment for the murder-impulse. Tearing the animal to pieces is a symbolic repetition of the murder of the father; and with it is linked up the terrifying prospect of the punishment threatened in the event of a repetition. ‘The Brith brings before our eyes the first ceremonial attempt at reconciliation with the dead father-god’ (S. 155). In the Kolnidre formula we have to do, in the author’s opinion, with the discharge of obligations undertaken through the Brith, the fulfilment of which meet with unconscious opposition in the devotee. . )

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY 195

Thus the Kolnidre is nothing less than an open confession and avowal of, and penance for, ‘the wish to murder the father-god’. The act of expiation, the sacrifice of the scape-goat (totem animal) even represents a renewal of the offence, and is thereby analogous to a breaking-through of the tabooed impulses of the Kolnidre. There follows an examination into another ceremony belonging to the Day of Atonement: blowing the Schofar horn. Originally Jehovah himself causes the ram’s horn to be blown on Sinai, or actually himself bellows like a ram. Reik follows out ancient Oriental material relating to bulls and rams as deities: the conclusion that Jehovah was once revered asa bull or a ram is obvious. A specially relevant symbol in connection with paternal deities is the horn, which is everywhere valid as a symbol of power. The priest who blows the Schofar, and so imitates the divine voice, identifies him- self in this way with God, just as those sons of the primitive horde who murdered their father gradually came to imitate the paternal nature and behaviour.

The Schofar-blowing is according to tradition done in remem- brance of the sacrifice of Isaac. The Sinaitic revelation corresponds in the same way to the rites reported by investigators to take place at the celebrations of puberty among savages. In the initiation ceremonies, as in the sacrifice of Isaac, the slaying of the son is signified, and the command for the slaying of the son which goes forth to Abraham from Jehovah appears in the bull-roarer, a monster from which fathers protect their sons prior to their initiation. This late tradition has with reason connected the Schofar-blowing with the account of the sacrifice of Isaac; there is also a survival in it, although disguised, of the idea of the old blood-guiltiness. The author details in a way that carries conviction the common features belonging to the Schofar and to the bull-roarer of the puberty rites. The sound of the Schofar is likened to the bellowing of a bull, and the English name of the whirring piece of wood is equally — significant (‘bull-roarer’). |

Thus the voice of Jehovah, which according to the Biblical account sounds from Sinai and affrights the Jews, is in its nature identical with the sound of the whirring wood which terrifies the youths at the initiation ceremonies. ‘The use made of elaborate scenic effect in the Sinaitic narrative need not confuse us; in both

‘cases the members of a primitive clan, who must learn to know the graven commandments of the religion of their race, are stricken

* .

196 COLLECTIVE REVIEW

with awe at mysterious and supernatural sounds, in which they recognise the voice of their terrible God.’

Striking confirmation of this is supplied from Australian sources, where we find the bull-roarer spirits as sons of the father-god, killed by him as a punishment for their rebellion, while their voice lives on in the whirring wood (S. 247), With the genesis of music that of dancing is interwoven: the Jews who dance round the golden calf are identifying themselves with the godhead. The hymn of Greek tragedy is an imitation of the cry of Dionysius or of the bleating of a goat: the choral dance the imitation of the leaps and gambolling of a goat. In an appendix the author takes the Moses of Michelangelo as a starting-point and continues his interpretation of the events of Sinai. The horns and the whole facial expression point to an identification with Jehovah. ‘The recognition of the psychological identity of Jehovah and the golden image of the bull (calf) provides the key to comprehension of the whole narrative’ -(S. 271). The calf is moreover consumed by the people in the form of dust, and here we have the sacramental meal, the sacrifice of the totem.

In the two last papers (The Kolnidre and The Schofar) certain features of an annual festival (the Day of Atonement) are inter- preted in the light of initiation ceremonies: a short paper of the reviewer's has a similar aim (61). The various masks worn to frighten children at winter festivals in accordance with European _ custom are degenerate remains of the masked figures of savages, which always appear in initiation ceremonies.

Reik’s smaller contributions (51) may be regarded as a continuation of the same line of thought as was begun in The Kolnidre and The Schofar. The first treatise, Jacob’s Battle, examines the narrative of the nocturnal wrestling of Jacob with Jehovah on Penuel which was interpreted by Roscher as a struggle with a nightmare. In these nightmares, however, the consciousness of sexual guilt plays an important part, together with the fear of the threatened punishment (castration). In the Sohar light is thrown on the meaning: the thigh-sinew, which in Jacob’s case is shrivelled by Jehovah’s touch, is properly the phallus. In the article on puberty- rites proof is already adduced that limping is a symbolic castration. ‘If we read the story over once more in the new light it strikes us now that the whole situation, the sudden attack, the wrestling © with a mysterious being, the new name, and finally the mutilation

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of the penis ... closely resemble procedures apparently widely different, i. e. the puberty-rites of primitive peoples’ (51) (S. 33 3).

The second treatise, The Doorkeeper, (51) is an explanation of Jeremiah xxxv. 4. In Zephaniah the leaping over the threshold ‘is mentioned. Treading on the threshold symbolises the destruction of the house, a symptomatic act which betrays the unconscious hostile intentions towards the owner of the house (Jahveh). Section III (51) is an attempt to explain the sin of numbering the people as evidencing the unconscious hostile intent of the representative father- image (divine or royal) against the people (sons). Section IV, The Meaning of the Silence, takes as a starting-point the favourite metaphor of the prophets—the sacrifice in the form of a sentence to punishment. From the sacrificial ritual of the ancient Arabs we know that after the slaughter was effected they stood round the altar in silence for a time. This sudden silence is nothing but a self-inflicted punishment, a symbolic state of death after the death of the father, which must be taken as the prototype of all sacrifices. Reik of course admits that this explains only one of the sources of the ritual of silence.

Taking the modern and mediaeval secret society as his starting- point, Silberer (64) attempts an explanation of the rebirth idea in the initiation ceremonies of savage peoples. Many details of the symbolism of initiation customs, such as ignition by friction and the tree (S. 39, 40) are placed in their right light; but on the whole the article simply amounts to an ‘anagogic’ interpretation of the rebirth as a ‘radical revolution in life’ and as a symbol of the ‘relation to the divine’ (S. 50). Explanations which leave the matter to be explained still obscure must be considered as completely superseded since the appearance of Reik’s articles on the subject.

In the next work we proceed from totemism to the phenomenon of sacrosanct kingship, a form of the same complex but on a higher cultural level. The present reviewer makes an attempt to fit the scattered accounts of the victim-king that we find among the Ural-altaic peoples into the nexus of Frazer’s theory, and to draw the conclusions which follow about the psychology of these rites (55).

The first section deals with the doubling of the kingly office. Among the ancient Hungarians, Chasari, and other Ural-altaic peoples, the institution of a two-fold kingly office is found, i.e. the

supremacy is split into a sacrosanct and a temporal power (Mikado

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and Shogun). The rulers of the Mikado type are projections of unconscious thought about the ageing father, while the Shogun corresponds to the adult son, the leader of the male federation, but as such is equally a splitting-off and doubling of the father. According to tradition in the Tonga Islands, slaying the ruling chief was the occasion for establishing a double kingdom; the son avenges his father and shares his office with his brother. The ‘vengeance’ owes its origin to a secondary elaboration; originally the son was himself the father’s murderer. Among the Meithei a second ruler appears, whose function consists in averting all sins and evil spirits © (i.e. unconscious impulses) from the council and people and in taking them on himself. A similar figure doubling the king is found among the Ewho; he wears the mantle that confers invulnerability on the king, but must beware of women and of the’ act of urination (invulnerability is here an over-compensation for the dread of castration). Obedience, and nothing more, is rendered to the representatives of the Shogun type; the Mikado represents both a deposition and an apotheosis of the father.

In the second section, the rites of slaying the king and of coronation are submitted to analysis. Among the Shilluk the king is slain if he can no longer satisfy his numerous wives. His principal task consists in making rain by enchantment or by entreaty to Nyakang. This Nyakang is a cone-shaped object, carved to resemble a human being, a representation of the first king (the word means equally family, grandfather and snake). The rain-making activity of the king thus seems to be a projection of his sexual potency, while Nyakang and the corresponding deities are again supernatural projections of the father and the phallus. Similarly Etzel’s death on his wedding night is ascribed to sexual impotence and to the slaying of the king following upon it; and by a displacement of the castration complex to the upper part of the body the cause of death becomes nose-bleeding. The sacrosanct king of the Chasari is slain and delivered up to the wrath of the tribe by the Shogun if the rainfall fails, or any evil befall the land, or according to other authorities, after the lapse of forty years. Isstakhri and Ibn Haukal have on record another variant. At the ceremony of the great king’s enthronement a silken scarf is placed round his neck, and he is strangled to the point of suffocation. Then he is asked how long he wishes to rule, and if he dies within the allotted period nothing happens to him, but if he oversteps it he is slain

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Similar customs are recorded of the Tukiu, Mpongwe, etc. The author notes in these an ambivalent behaviour, a return of the repressed, in that the design of slaying the king achieves fulfilment exactly at the moment of subjection. In the act of homage a simple prolongation of his life is inherent so that the responsibility for his death devolves upon himself. These aggressive rites of homage are comparable to and derivative from the attacks of neighbours on a newly-made father (Celebes, Karaib). The manner of a king’s death (by hanging) is determined by the wish to avoid shedding of blood, so that the tender aspect of the feeling towards the father comes again to expression. Accounts of the custom of sons hanging their father ‘out of piety’ are adduced from Fiji, etc.

It is not without historical importance that the great stride which the Magyars made in the eleventh century out of Asiatic nomad life into European mediaeval life was effected by means of a regressive revival of the sacrosanct power of a great king (St. Stephen), just as with the Mikado, under whose rule it became possible to change mediaeval Japan into a modern state.

The third section treats of the relation between rulers and heavenly beings. The projection of the paternal power heavenwards is an intensified repression of the unconscious complexes, which, however, obviously corresponds to no historic series of events. The ruler is the father of his subjects, but the son of heaven. The solar sym- bolism, the spears and swords of heaven, are treated as royal symbols among Eastern Asiatics and Ural-altaics.

The Grave of the Ruler is the title of the fourth section. Like Etzel and Alaric, the king of the Chasari finds his grave in a river and thereby returns to the mother’s womb. (His grave is called Paradise.) The twenty graves dug for him in order to deceive the evil spirits may be supposed to repeat the slaying twenty times (see appendix to review), and at the same time mislead the spirits of remorse. The grave-diggers are sacrificed so as to cancel all traces of the impiety, and also to shift the guilt of the parricide on to their shoulders, and to wreak the talion punishment on them. In the bed of the stream the king ends his earthly course, but in the form of the river he enters on it again. Part II: The Turulsaga. Section 1. Emese’s dream. Emese, the mother of the sacrificed victim Almos, dreams a dream that Mandane was named ‘Almos, i.e. that which is dreamt, by a divine act because to his mother being with child

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a divine vision appeared in a dream, in the form of a bird which seemed to come towards her and impregnate her. And it announced to her that from her womb would proceed a torrent and from his loins great kings would spring, but would not be multiplied in their own land’. The symbolic meaning of the water is to be taken as the uterine water and also as the ejaculation. Ural-altaic legends are adduced in which the ancestors of the race are called ‘river’ or something similar. We have a variant of the dream about Mandane in which a vine takes the place of the river; and the same symbol with the same meaning of the future greatness of the progeny is found in the dream of the founder of the Os- manic dynasty, the Er-Togrul, who is called the male Turul (eagle or falcon); thus coinciding with the fructifying bird (astur) in Emese’s dream. Almos is in fact ‘of the race of Turul’, and the Turul bird was the emblem of the Magyars. There are frequent allusions to eagles and falcons as race-emblems, i.e. totems, within the group of Ural-altaic peoples. The Goldi ascribe birth to magic birds, who bring the souls from the world-tree (compare the significance of trees in the former dreams) and place them in the bodies of women. Among the Jakuti the woman who is destined to bear a future Shaman dreams a dream which is analogous to the dream of Emese. The eagle is the soul of the unborn child, and flies with it into the fairy lands where a fairy sun and moon shine on field and valley, and the eagle lays an egg, hatches it and opens it with his beak. The child that creeps out is brought up by the beast-mother, who is like the nursing beasts of the hero-legend a symbol of the mother. The egg-birth corres- ponds to the infantile birth-theories; the egg is naturally the womb. The phallic significance of the eagle, which seems at the same time a reduplication of the world-tree, throws light for us on the circumstance that the only Shaman who is capable of curing,by a ceremony of beating with fire, a skin affection (of sexual origin) is one who springs from the eagle. The punishment for the infringement of the taboo of the eagle-fetish is the dying-out of the tribe, and the Jakuti name the eagle ‘creator-grandfather’; for this reason the sacrosanct king and national hero, the son of Emese, takes his origin from an eagle as symbol] of the paternal and procreative power. The constant connection existing between the royal race and some kind of animal is investigated in the last section (royal totems), What psychic link thus connects the violent death of Almos

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with his magic birth and animal origin? Outside the Ural-altaic stocks specific royal totems are frequent in Africa. Towards both totem andking the ambivalent attitude of humanity is the same: prohibition of murder and injunction to sacrifice. Among the Haussa the totem animal is slain yearly at harvest by the principal members of the clan; they smear their foreheads with its blood and its dried skull is kept till next year in the hut of the chief. The priest-king of the Lion-tribe is called ‘Lion of the town’ and it is among his duties to kill the lion if its strength is considered to be failing—in other words, if it is going ill with the members of the Lion tribe. After two years they decide to have a new priest-king and accuse the ‘Lion of the town’ to the actual lion, who at first protects his brother, but then, in order not to appear a partner in his guilt, kills the priest-lion. This splitting of the father-image into an animal and a human form contains in itself the key of the develop- ment: the royal totems represent a transition-point from the zoomorphic to the anthropomorphic projection of the father-image.

The function of the totem on which the incarnation of the child-souls depends symbolizes the paternal procreative power, and ever further wider circles came to be introjected, till the priest-kings in their omnipotence-phantasy fructify not only the mother, not only all human mothers, but the whole world: on their magical powers (that is, their potency) depend the rainfall and the fruitfulness of trees and plants.

No. 56 is a supplement to the above article and at the same time a reply to criticisms made on the historical side.

The doubling of the office of king corresponds ontogenetically to the opposed pair father—son, functionally to the psychic types of the introvert (Mikado) and the extrovert (Shogun). The young chiefs in the strictly totemistic phase were not killed, for the totem-beast met that fate in their place and in that of the father, so that we can assign the magical slaying of Almos tothe transition-point in culture-development between totemism and kingly priesthood. Two further examples of the slaying of the priest-king are adduced,

The highly interesting work of Léwenthal (36) reveals an approach to psycho-analysis by a specialist in American ethnology. In the contributions of the present reviewer the transition is traced from totemism to royal sacredness; this work shows: the connecting links between totemism, vegetation cults and hero-worship. The

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ancient mythology of Mexico describes how the maize-god was begotten in a cavern by a god (‘the young prince’) and born of the goddess (‘the tall and stately flower’); and how there sprang in turn from his body different fruits and plants. This young prince is identical with Tezcatlipoca (the ‘shadow stripling’), According to another version Tezcatlipoca steals the goddess from the rain-god Tialoc. Mythologically, however, the ‘maize- god’ and the ‘young prince’ are one and the same person, at once son and spouse of the flower-goddess. The maize-god is at the same time the young sun-god, the lord of the flowers, and the morning star. As morning star he is the bringer of fire, but the fire-bringer is again Tezcatlipoca, corresponding to Loki in Scandinavian mythology. Axel Olrik and others take Loki to be a human being, and the rape of women and the discovery of fire ascribed to Tezcatlipoca also have reference to human be- haviour. The figure of the flower-goddess is also submitted to examination by the method of comparative mythology. She is the Earth-goddess and also Itzpapalotl (‘the red lava butterfly’), i.e. the soul of a woman who has died in child-bed. As the wife of the lord of the flowers, the son of the first man, she is also the first of women to die in that way, and from her body springs .the tobacco plant (Nicotiani). As the red lava butterfly she is also the sea-snail, and thus again an attribute of the moon; ‘as the snail comes forth from its house, so comes man from his mother’s womb’, according to the words of the commentary. The author arrives at the very just conclusion that the love-story of the young prince and the flower-goddess originally had another meaning, and was only subsequently referred to natural phenomena. To establish this meaning, Lowenthal adduces the Mexican legend of the Fall. In Tamoanchan, that is, the abode of the formless and the inchoate ‘whence spring the flowers’, the gods sinned by despoiling the trees of blossoms and twigs. Thereupon the ‘lord of all flesh’ and ‘the mistress of all flesh’ were wroth, and drove the gods from paradise. But among the Mexicans and the Cora Indians the expression ‘plucking flowers’ has quite a definite sense, and means exactly ‘to have sexual intercourse with a woman’. The legend thus appears to mean that the sons of the original pair invade the precincts of the parents, that is, have intercourse with the women, and are thereupon driven out by the parents, These women must be the daughters of the original pair,

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for among the gods who are banded against the first parent is undoubtedly reckoned Itzpapalotl, the Bringer-forth, ‘and wherefore is the story of the fall of the gods so lacking in meaning for the narrator that he has to take refuge in the device of investing it ‘in the form of a flower-garden’ (S. 50). The rape of the women was the cause of the first war in heaven, from which came all war, and only after the Fall is Tezatlipoca represented with a serpent’s tail (i.e. with a phallic symbol). He thus reduces the story of the fall of the gods to the following nucleus. ‘In the olden time the sons who had banded themselves against the father forced their way into his enclosure, overpowered him, took away his wives, and made off with their booty’; and he quotes Freud’s ‘Totem and Taboo’ (S. 51). Among the rebellious gods moreover is Tezcatlipoca the king, the father, and Huitzilopochtli, the stripling, the warrior. ‘Many allusions in the manuscript seem to point to a homosexual relationship between these two, Furthermore Tezcat- lipoca is “he with the foot cut off”. The Spaniards suppressed such representations of the god, as though they saw in it some impropriety’. In point of fact this mutilation means, in the language of dreams and of neurotics, as | have shown frequently and at some length, losing the male organ, becoming like a woman; he who is a passive homosexual becomes in relation to his ‘friend’ a woman, i.e. no longer has the male organ—‘one foot is taken off’ (S. 52, 53). For the homosexuality of the gods who bring sal- vation and the boon of fire Scandinavian parallels are forthcoming (Loki, Fox and Chauk), the fire-bringer is connected in thought with the lower piece of wood used in the making of fire and therefore lies underneath in the sexual act (fire-kindling by friction). The author puts the question whether passive homosexuality must be reckoned among the qualities of the violater of women, or of the fire-bringer, and subjoins a discussion of the custom obtaining at the festival of the ‘raising of the standard’ (December 3). An impersonator of Quetzalcouati shoots an arrow and kills the craven figure of Huitzilopochtli; his body is then divided and eaten, his heart being reserved for the king, his limbs for the elders of the house, while the young men, ‘the guardians of the deity’, devour his body. Quetzalcouati equally with Tezcatlipoca isa morning-star hero, and to him sexual relations with the flower- goddess are ascribed. One of the splittings of his personality appears as brother and comrade of Huitzilopochtli. 14

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The author thus reconstructs the primitive history of the human family as follows: ‘After the overthrow of the first father the leader of the sons makes the attempt to appropriate to him- self the wives and the authority of the murdered man; then his own first favourite encounters him at the head of a band of brothers and does unto him as he to his father. As to what happened afterwards, we may conjecture that the brothers made some arrangement in respect to the women under exogamous conditions, and in perpetuity as the day of the deed came round each year and remorse threatened them, by killing and eating one who stood for their brother or their father—he might be a complete stranger, a beast or a dummy—renewed their confederacy and their guilt (S. 56).’

‘The history of the young hero and his beloved is at the same - time...both the history of the rise of totemism and of exo- gamy’ (S. 58). The well-known Arabian offering of a young boy or a white camel to the morning star is referred to by Robertson-. Smith (Story of the Sacred Nile), and is compared to the fight between Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli (death of the morning star). Germanic customs link up with these, especially the Christmas boar-feast at Oxford and the cake in the shape of a boar in Sweden. The boar is Ingri or Freyr, ancestor of the Angles and of the Swedes. ‘Thus in this survival of pagan times in England and Sweden it is the ancestor of the race who is eaten as a boar’. The totemistic boar later takes on a new meaning in the corn- demon, from his ravaging of the fields. This outstanding work merits a careful study, it is one of those which solve problems and stimulate further enquiries.

Then follow a few slighter works on totemism and kindred questions. First, the purely ethnological, in so far as they need be mentioned here: Bork (9), who professes to derive totemism from the zodiac, may be mentioned only as an example of the absurd. A good collection of African material is presented by Ankermann (3). The legends that trace totemism to a blood- brotherhood, formed in primitive times between the human an- cestors of the tribe and the totem-animal, are of great interest in the light of the theory Reik puts forward as to the origin of the Brith (Cf. 49). Totem legends are forthcoming in which the totem animal is a mother-symbol (Romulus, Remus and the she-wolf). In many legends of the chase there is mention of a beast which

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is sacrificed and burnt at the funeral of the chief, a striking confirmation of the Freudian theory of the origin of the totem- sacrifice, regarding this sacrifice at the grave-side as a symbolic repetition of the parricidal act. (See in this connection, under ‘zweimal toften’ (to kill twice) in funeral rites, ‘Spiegelzauber’, IQIQ, S. 197). The evidence showing that in the majority of cases the totem is passed on in the line of paternal descent and _ that relating to totemism and exogamy is of importance and value to the analyst. The latest contribution of the present reviewer (53) treats of an allied subject, in fact the question dealt with is not actually totemism but the projection of the father-image on to an animal species—a distinction which, as we shall see, has been neglected by the psycho-analyst.

Among the Lapps and Woguls the belief is current that bears can only be mastered by two brothers; on closer consideration, however, they must be not azy two brothers, but twins. Among various primitive peoples the view is held that, since there are two of them, twins must have two fathers, and the non-human father is then always some kind of animal. The supernatural strength of twins is thus an inheritance of their supernatural birth; hence the legends of the Dioscuri, of whom only the stronger brother is of divine origin, the weaker being of mortal descent. The doubling of brothers has, I have now reason to think, universal significance: in agreement with Rank we may see in them the representatives of the brother-clan.

As we have already indicated, there lies in the totem problem a danger of confusion due to over-generalization of the idea. The otherwise striking and informative work of Abraham (1) has not quite succeeded in avoiding these pitfalls. Analysis of the neurotic horror of light shows that the sun has in the first in- stance the significance of a father-symbol, in a less marked way that of a mother-symbol. In connection with the ‘mother’s womb phantasy’ the author succeeds in exhibiting the positive .as well as the negative meaning of darkness: the neurotics who attach a pleasure-value to darkness (sleep-ceremonial, etc.) achieve thereby a regression into the mother’s womb, into the realm of birth and death. Ghosts are substitutive objects for the longed-for parents; the biblical prohibition against making a likeness of God ‘the father constitutes the reverse side of the voyeur attitude (see another interpretation No. 49). Chapter V bears the sub-title ‘The origin

1q*

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in infantile totemism of the fear of the sun and of ghosts’, and it is properly only this section to which our remark on the dan- gers of the imperfect ethnological orientation of the psycho-analyst is relevant. Abraham is not satisfied with the derivation of these phobias in certain neurotics which he has reached in the father- significance of these symbols: he thinks it possible to proceed from this point to the totemism of primitive races. Now this is in the first place a logical fallacy. A totem is, of course, as we know from Freud, a father-symbol; but is therefore every father-symbol a totem? By no means; on the contrary, certain special character- istics must be added before the specific ‘totem’ can be arrived at from the generic ‘father-symbol’. Especially there must be a magico-mystic relation between a human group on one side and a species (generally an animal one) on the other. One may of course be content with a concept of the idea of totemism which has been extended for the purpose of psycho-analysis, and may include in it all cases in which an animal species stands as a father (or mother, brother, sister) symbol to a child or a neurotic. This, however, is not strictly justifiable, since the cases of non- totemistic animal-worship among primitives are related to the father complex just as much as totemism proper (i.e. as defined sociologically) and these are actually nearer to the instances among European individuals. To explain the phobias of the sun and ghosts from the quite different phenomena of totemism, even though the two correspond in their point of origin, seems to me superfluous and unsuitable; these are father-symbols, which can be adduced in explanation of the primitive belief in ghosts and the cult of the sun (not ethnologically more recent than totemism), but which cannot be brought into nearer relations with totemism proper, particularly with clan-totemism. In a short article (2) the same author makes the just observation that neurotic exogamy, that is to say the fixation of the capacity for love in a neurotic on a type of womanhood completely opposed to that of the mother (as on one of a foreign race, etc.)—this flight from incest on the part of the neurotic—has its counterpart in the exogamy of primitive peoples.

Gasquoine Hartley’s book (23) is of interest to the psycho- analyst, since it belongs to the group of works that use Atkinson’s primal horde theory as a basis for an explanation of the sociological conditions of primitive peoples. By a view peculiar to herself, but

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fully intelligible from her personal complexes (as an upholder ot woman’s rights) she attributes to the daughters the rebellion against the paternal tyrant, his aggressiveness having aroused their oppo- sition. Quite the most successful part of the book is in the tracing of the matrilinear organization to the circumstance that in the primal horde the father lived apart by himself, while the immature of both sexes remained with the mother.

Continuing the subject of endo- and exogamy the article on incest by Marcuse (37) calls for mention. The author follows Freud in upholding the primitiveness of incest in phylogenesis, and regards the reaction against it as a product of civilisation, but in this connection he only cites the unfortunate experiences that are said to have resulted from incestuous relations, and does not apply the Atkinson-Freud view. The jus primae noctis is rightly explained as a survival of the rights of the father. On the ontogenetic side of the question he keeps wavering between re- cognizing and rejecting the Freudian theory; on the whole the views of ordinary psychology predominate.

The common origin of religion and ethics has long been known to the psycho-analyst; in ethnology, however, it is still often contested. This gives especial value to the work of Parsons (39) in compiling and sifting the relevant material. In her second work she passes to the special sphere of sexual psychology, and arrives at psychological though, it is true, only functional inter- pretations (40). The explanation of the different signs of shame and refusal in marriage as survivals of the robber-marriage may be considered as quite antiquated, for we find similar signs not only in the bride but also in the bridegroom. According to the author these rites are the result of reaction to the change anti- cipated in the social status of the lovers, every innovation being exceedingly repugnant to primitive peoples. The authoress follows Crawley, and here to a certain degree approaches the psycho- analytical theory. We should say that at marriage there originates a conflict between narcissism and object-libido, so that a part of the narcissistic libido is transformed into anxiety and is abreacted in these rites, Plutarch’s statement that the bride is first introduced to her betrothed in male clothing and with her hair cut short is significant of the narcissistic mechanism of identification expressed in such rites,

l‘reud’s work (18) belongs to the same field of interest and

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throws a good deal of light on a previously unanalysed part of ethnology.

The very fact that defloration is considered as a solemn act certainly disproves the view that primitive peoples put little value on virginity. That the act of defloration is regarded as an im- portant procedure, but one from which the future husband of the girl shrinks, needs explaining. The various possible explanations, which on account of over-determination exist partly side by side and partly overlapping each other, are here given by Freud in turn (fear of blood, neophobia, taboo of women, etc.). All these views certainly contain some part of the truth, but we still lack the answer to the question why it is just the future husband who should avoid the act of defloration and entrust it to another. The first coitus often leaves a woman ungratified; it needs a certain length of time and frequent repetition of the sexual act before the woman obtains gratification. An analysis of a woman who struck her husband after every coitus gave Freud the opportunity of gaining a deeper insight into the nature of this condition. In frigidity it is this hostile reaction which prevents affection from coming to expression. The danger lies in invoking this hostility by the defloration of the woman, and indeed the future husband has every ground for avoiding such hatred. The pain that the virgin experiences at defloration finds its unconscious continuation in the narcissistic feeling of humiliation which arises on the destruction of an organ. This would perhaps give reason for a manual defloration, but still leaves unexplained the consummating of the first coitus after defloration by someone other than the husband. If we consider the fact that the first coitus is consummated with a father-substitute (priests, elders, divinities), the solution of the rite would appear to lie in the incest-attitude of the libido. The son obtains a wife whom the father formerly possessed, and who is therefore a suitable substitute for the mother: the woman is de- florated by someone who can appear to her as a father-substitute. In a similar way also the jus primae noctis and the Tobian marriage signified the recognition of the older rights of the patriarchs. The woman’s envy of the penis is also aroused by the first coitus; she would like to pay back in the same coin the castration that has been committed upon her. As Ferenczi suggests, this hostility in women may have its origin in the era previous to the differentiation of the sexes.

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‘It is, therefore, the still incomplete sexuality of the woman that discharges itself in her paradoxical reaction to the man who introduces her to the sexual act. The taboo of virginity is thus seen to be full of meaning, and we understand the injunction that bids the very man who has to live with this woman henceforth beware of such dangers’. (S. 247).

A relatively small number of works concerns the subject of animism, which bulks so largely both in books on ethnology and also in the life of primitive peoples. The most important work on this subject has been done by Rank (43). .

Beginning with a film drama by H. H. Ewers, ‘The Student of Prague’, Otto Rank undertakes a searching analysis of the figure of the ‘double’ (ater ego) in literature, and also in mythology and folk-beliefs. Everywhere the double may be clearly perceived to be a narcissistic projection of the subject’s personality, of his unconscious, or strictly speaking, a splitting-off of the narcissistic complexes in the unconscious. In particular, the part played by portraits, shadows, mirrors, etc. is explained by the revival and rehabitation of the analogous folk-psychology elements. Like all tabooed things, the shadow also exhibits the characteristic of ambivalence; beside the idea of death, that of the shadow as a guardian spirit arises—or of a fertilising shadow. But in any case, as has long been ethnologically established, amongst most primi- tive peoples the shadow quite consciously signifies the soul, and indeed the soul as an image or a feeble double of the body. The superstitious views relating to reflected images arise as in the case of shadows from their disaster and death significance. As with shadows, the creative-erotic meaning of reflected images can be shown to exist.

If an explanation is sought on the basis of Frazer’s theory why in the Narcissus myth the death-idea which belongs to the appearance of the ‘double’ is masked by the motive of self-love, one must think of the universal tendency of the unconscious mechanism to repress all painful ideas. The idea of death is par- ticularly often over-compensated by the idea of love (the Fates, etc.); the appearance of the beloved in a girl's mirror is to be traced to this over-compensation. The author proceeds to analyse the neurotic fear of death that manifests itself in the shadow-, soul-, and reflection-beliefs, and finds an explanation of them in the narcissism of the individual, which feels itself threatened by the

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idea of death. Thus, in general, the idea of the soul has originated as a defensive wish against the dreaded eternal destruction.

The love of the other sex menaces narcissism, and so too in the menace of death the death-idea, originally averted by the alter ego, recurs in this figure, who according to universal super- stition is a presage of death, or to injure whom is to injure one- self (S. 163). The equation, animism = narcissism, is consequently the result of this treatise.

The reviewer’s own work on the subject of the magic meaning of mirrors (59) is to a certain extent a continuation of that of Rank. Most of the prohibitions of looking into mirrors take place in childhood, the narcissistic age; we perceive them to be reaction- formations against narcissistic self-love.

The substitution of the finger-nails for a mirror can be seen to indicate the over-valuation of the person’s own body; whilst the pre-requisite of chastity for narcissistic visions is to be explained in the sense that the narcissistic object-choice is not attained. Besides this chastity we also often find amongst prophets and prophetesses supernatural consorts in marriage, namely, their own heterosexual split personalities. The mirror occurs often in customs directed to the reincarnation of the father in the child; it then hints at the narcissistic rediscovery of the beloved ego in the child. The breaking of mirrors is due to the unconscious determination which underlies slips in behaviour. If a girl breaks a mirror they say in folk-belief that she will not get a husband, that is to say, she does not want one, she destroys as it were the future (narcissistic) object of the libido. The breaking of mirrors is frequently also a presage of death, because it is an action equi- valent to killing the person. One kills the dead person a second time, so to speak, if after death one breaks one of his belongings. In such cases primitive peoples destroy all the property of the dead person, lay waste his gardens, pull down his houses, etc. Fear of the dead, according to Freud, arises from a projection of the personal unconscious hostility. We meet here with another trick on the part of the unconscious for disguising personal hostility against the dead: the object evoking the outbreak of hostility is ‘displaced’ from the dead person on to the sorcerer who is said to have caused the death. The repressed impulse, however, discharges itself by motor paths, since the unknown sorcerer is reviled, but it is the house of the dead that is destroyed.

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Chapter VII deals with the veiling of the mirror at death; chapter VIII with celestial bodies and mirrors. Many primitive peoples believe that the soul follows the sun. The soul follows the path of him who was the first to die, of the primal father of mankind, whose death has served as a prototype and reason for every subsequent death. Many races maintain that the sun is a father-symbol. Bulgarians and Australians (Victoria) believe that the sight of one’s own likeness in the sun foretells death; the double becomes identified with the dead father. ‘The reflected image is the person’s soul, the sun is the reflection of the father in the firmament.’ It is forbidden to look straight at the sun during an eclipse, as this is regarded either as death (death-struggle) or as coitus with the heavenly body. The original prohibition concerns the child’s scoptophilia; the prohibition of the observing of parental coitus is projected on to the heavens, and hence it is said that the eclipse (i.e. death of the parents) is the result of the sins of the human race. The breaking of this prohibition is the prototype of revolt; he who has the power to break it is indeed a sorcerer.

We understand the meaning of this revolt if we remember that in V6résvar during an eclipse the moon is looked upon as being eaten by a child. In the rites of feast-days a breaking-through of the repressed can be observed, just as in the psychology of the sorcerer; to this connection belongs the observance of the dancing sun in the water mirror on Easter Sunday. In this rite the genial warmth of the sun is supposed to be drawn down over the earth by enchantment.

A new, though not yet fully established theory, is brought forward in Ernest Jones’ work (22) which interprets the idea of the soul as breath on the basis of the flatus-complex (No. 5 is an unjustified criticism of this book), Ankermann gives a good ethno- logical collection of material (4). The reviewer tries to explain in a small essay (60) funeral rites as having arisen out of a mechanical repetition of the actions of the living community, and All Souls Festival as a cyclical celebration of funeral rites.

Still less has been written regarding primitive magic. The distinction made by the reviewer between active and passive magic is new. Beginning with the mirror in love-magic (59), he arrives at a general theory of love-magic and the love oracle. The rites of love-magic are imitations of coitus, symbolic copies of coitus that arise from the conflict between libido and repression, evoking

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a preliminary situation analogous to that of coitus and thereby acting as wish-fulfilments. 6, 14 and 62 are a collection of material very enlightening for the analyst in regard to certain magic obsessive acts. The reviewer treats the curse-spell as a kind of trial action, the belief in the efficacy of the magic is the endopsychic perception of a series of actions growing in potency as the spell passes on to the rite and from there to the real action (58). The psychology of the sorcerer has already been touched upon; as regards the prophet it seems to be a case of the narcissistic constitution (59). Schilder’s work (63) bears on this point, for the psychotic patient includes the different types of sorcerer among primitive peoples. The greater part of Schilder’s work is devoted to a fairly exhaustive discussion of the question of the exact relation between folk-psychology (i.e. the psychological interpretations of the ethnological findings) and psychiatry, widely separated as they would seem to be. He compares the patient’s idea of magic to that held by primitive peoples. The Mada and Orenda are quite analogous to ideas found in paranoiacs. Schilder also calls attention to important differences between the belief in magic in primitive races and in the insane. In the insane the magic action is suffered and not practised. In terms that here and there remind one of Jung, the author describes the importance of sexual matters in the idea of magic. He thinks it probable that animistic ideas first arose only through a secondary attribution of magic power to definite personalities.

Symbolism is naturally the main theme of many authors. In this connection three articles by Rank should be mentioned (44, chap. II, VI, VII) which are extensions of previously published works now collected in book form. With great skill and circum- spection Jones deals in detail (22) with the symbolic ramifications of the flatus-complex.

Kings are the representatives of thundering Zeus; they are also typical father-representatives of the community. On the other hand, the connection between thunder and flatus is a permanent association in obscene wit. Hence the power to influence the spirits by means of a thunder-like din; one drives away spirits by means of uproar, the devil by means of flatus (Luther); hymn- singing, musical instruments, and the bull-roarer also belong, according to the author, to this connection. Dumbness as a motive in mythology signifies death and impotence, talking and laughing signifies love and life, hence conception by means of speech.

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In a Hungarian work (57) the reviewer attempts to expound in detail the ethnological foundation and confirmation of the main theses of psycho-analysis. Up to the present only the first part and half of the second have appeared. In the first part some ‘light is thrown on the relation between the conscious and unconscious mental levels, as well as on functional phenomena; the second part is devoted to the confirmation by folk-psychology of the psycho- analytical conception of symbolism, and to a history of the evolution of the libido, while a section dealing with endogamy (Oedipus complex) is to form the conclusion.

The first section, Ambivalence and the Law of Inversion, starts from those rites in which one of two opposing psychic currents finds expression in reality, the other merely in a symbolic manner, (For instance, the story of the ‘Master-maid’: ‘I have come and also not come’; and the drink-offerings that are brought to spirits as the owners of waters.) The renunciation, the offering of the first sip of water, is a partial (that is, symbolic) form of discharge, and the gods to whom these offerings are brought are projections of the negative components of the ambivalent psychic attitude. The original form of those primitive offerings is demonstrable in the Intichiuma rites of the Central Australians. The Australians renounce the first morsel in favour of the totem-elders, in the same way as other primitive peoples offer the first sip or morsel to the spirits of the dead or the gods. One cannot reject the assumption that behind the functional one there is also necessary an ontogenetic significance for the custom, according to which the children play the part of sacrificers, i:e, the totem-members, the parents the part of the gods, the totem-elders. The mother tastes the food and only then gives it to the child: this could lead to establishing the action and to the formation of such fictitious ‘foretasters’ among mythical beings. The primitive person acts in just this manner if he has to give up any object; the clinging to what is habitual, the unconscious ‘I will not give up’ shows itself too in keeping back a small part (representation by a detail). The rite serves to appease the unconscious resistances; they ‘pretend’ to have taken back the whole animal by means of the small bunch of hair, and so to have undone the previous action. In the Behring Straits the Eskimos cut a tiny piece from all objects that they give away in order to retain, as they think, the essence, the soul of the object. In the cases dealt with so far we find both currents of the ambivalent attitude,

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the stronger of which breaks through into reality, whilst the weaker has to be satisfied with a symbol. In other cases the equilibrium of the two currents is expressed by the antithesis of two equi- valent actions. The knight kills the giant with the first blow, but he must refrain from a second lest his opponent comes to life again. By the discharge of one component of the ambivalent currents it becomes possible for the opposing feelings, which have previously been repressed, to come into consciousness. The Ostjaks first kill a bear, then mourn it and prepare a feast in its honour. In other cases the sequence is an inverted one, first apotheosis and then death of the victim, e.g. among the Giljaks of Mexico, etc. The psychic attitude which we find in taboo and in similar expressions must be explained by the stratification of the opposed currents. The second section deals with inversion and functional symbolism. Inversion is a frequent method of symbol-formation, the significance of which was known already to Frobenius (Law of Inversion) though not, it is true, with psychological accuracy. In the Mexican sacrificial worship the goddess was rejuvenated by having her head cut off and by another actor taking up the réle of goddess. The ambivalent psychic attitude makes it intelligible that the opposite current at once gains the ascendancy after the ‘killing’, so that the previous action is made retrograde by means of a re-birth. For that reason fairy-tales may represent the opposite of their apparent meaning because all our thoughts and aspirations contain more or less of negative elements, which are made use of by the censor in order to let the unconscious complexes become conscious only in an inverted form. After the murder of an enemy the Dacoits hold a joy-feast and put on mourning clothes. On the basis of Frazer’s material Freud was easily able to show that the primitive person has an ambivalent attitude towards a stranger to the tribe | or an enemy. The ambivalent attitude of the prophet Balaam towards Israel explains the reversal of the curse into a blessing. According to Deuteronomy xxiii. 6, it was Jahveh (i. e. the unconscious) who changed the words into their opposite meaning. The words for curse and blessing in Hebrew are derived from the same root. In Egbaland (West Africa) the god Obalufen is worshipped, who fulfils all the wishes of his adherents in a reversed manner. The truce meaning of these ideas will be still clearer to us if we take into consideration that group of inversions that is to be under- stood auto-symbolically while at the same time representing the

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functional category. Thus in Schreber’s ‘primal language’ everything means the opposite; in the next world (that is, the unconscious) of the Dajas, bitter means sweet, to lie means to stand, and the other way round; and the language of the spirits is a ‘reversed language’. There is evidence of a similar idea in many of the feasts in North America and Europe which belong to the Saturnalia type; frenzied people go from house to house intimating the content of their dreams by gestures, and do not cease from their ravings until some one gives them what they wish. He whose dreams were not guessed died before the next feast; he whose dream-wish was fulfilled rejoiced in a long life and remained healthy. This account contains by implication a number of Freud's views, First that our dreams serve as an hallucinatory wish-fulfilment, secondly, that we must distinguish between the dream-thoughts and the manifest content, thirdly, that the divining of the dream-thoughts (psycho-analysis!) causes the pathogenic complexes to disappear, and finally, that we have to consider the inverted actions as censored wish-fulfilments. In accordance with the auto-symbolic evidences of inversion the author attempts to analyse examples of the auto-symbolic or functional categories appearing in the form of inversion, i.e. cases in which the myth itself indicates the psychic tendencies from which it has arisen, only that they represent the relation between cause and effect in an inverted manner. (Compare Kaplan: Psychoanalytische Probleme, 1916, S.55). The Kayas tell of primordial people who did not know how to use their hands and feet, and say ‘The way children crawl about is a survival of this awkwardness’, the reverse of which is of. course correct; the state of the primordial being is a projection of the ‘prehistoric’ ontogenetic situation. The law of auto-symbolic inversion in myth asserts that the myth can only retain its apparent reality, its apparent independence from the inner life, if it discloses its proper origin only in inverted form. Here belong the transitory and special gods (Usener), the gods of activity (Preuss), but also all the component parts of myth and religion which deal with the influence of the gods on mankind; we have to deal here with a psychological confirmation of the known truth that man creates his god in his own image. Auto-symbolic inversion gives the fata mor- gana of the myth the appearance of a supernatural condition. The second section of the work deals with the content of symbols and the history of the development of the libido; up to now, however, only the first part (content of symbols) has appeared.

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Among the Huichal a kind of sexualization of the universe is found; in their idea the penis is a serpent, and consequently they see serpents in most natural phenomena and important objects, and their gods appear in the form of serpents. The serpent causes pregnancy, and the lover in serpent form in the story of Amor and Psyche is the penis, the libido. The libidinal meaning leads on to the primal forms of the libido, since many legends reveal the two forms of female object-love (father and son) more or less clearly in the serpent-bridegroom. Faunus took diverse shapes until in serpent shape he succeeded in cohabiting with his daughter Bona Dea, and Zeus as a serpent had sexual intercourse with his mother Rhea and his daughter Persephone. The fear of serpents inherited from his anthropoid ancestors is repressed in man by the process of libidinization; he introjects the serpent by identifying it with his own penis. This symbol takes its rise in another way in a woman. She fuses together her two dangerous enemies, the serpent which (in accordance with the reality-principle) she fears and the penis which in an ambivalent way she both fears and desires. The second example of sexual symbolism is the ritualistic significance of jumping over and stepping over (see Internationale Zettschrift fir Psychoanalyse, 1920, Bd. VI). The breaking of a glass as a marriage-custom augurs a happy marriage and many children. Defloration-symbolism is particularly clear in Morocco, where the men tear up a flag which the bride holds in her hand in order that the bridegroom may be successful in rupturing the hymen. The rites relating to broken eggs lead straight to the myths of birth from eggs. It is not a far step to explain the Easter egg that girls present to their lovers as a reward for a whipping as meaning the womb. After the symbolism of coitus, defloration, and the female genitals, the author deals with the symbolic significance of emission in rites. Amongst the Ruanda a man spits milk on to a girl’s breast and says ‘Give me the summons to joy; 1 am married’. A parallel marriage-custom (already rightly explained by Winternitz) is the pelting with rice, corn or small balls, which consciously means fructifying-magic; it must be regarded

as an emission (by displacement from below). The last portion’

deals with the symbolism of the excrements.

In a general work on symbolism Levy (29) gives a collection of material (food, apple, egg, bread, cup, fish, garden, spring, water, source, rain, door, house), Compare also I. Nacht: Euphemismes

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sur la Femme dans la Littérature Rabbinique: Revue des Etudes Fuives, 1910, LIX, p. 36. (Mill, bread, fish). The searching and detailed analysis of the biblical history of Paradise carried out by the same author is an instructive example of what can be achieved by psycho-analytic methods.

Of the works on separate symbols (cf. 30, 31, 17) Eisler’s (12) stands out prominently (fish as penis, as vagina, in marriage- customs, etc.). Regarding shoe-symbolism, 21 and 33 should be compared; 67 does not in any way reach the level of scientific investigation. Felszeghy’s fine essay has, in the meantime, appeared in German (15). Kreichgauer’s works (27, 28), written from the standpoint of lunar-myths, contain important material relating to the psycho-analytic significance of symbolism.

The second work is a contribution to the motif of the Symplegades and the sudden banging of doors and windows in fairy-tales. In Mexico it is said that the dead must pass between two mountains which touch. In the Symplegades as a revenge of the underworld we already find a hint that the origin of the whole set of ideas must be looked for in the human body; and the proper origin of this myth appears when we hear that the new-born was hailed as one who had come down from the home ‘of the old gods’, from the highest heavens. These ‘old gods’ are the particular tutelary gods of the Symplegades. The Symplegades are the opening through which the new-born sees the light of day, through which the dead again returns. The author sees everywhere in the whole Mexican mythology ‘Symplegades-symbols’, much of which may be correct, in view of the unconscious meaning of the Symplegades (for instance, the alternative of Symplegades and eyes in ornament); most of it, however, is very much exaggerated.

Mogk (38) tries to explain the magic power of an egg from the fact that it is the source of life, that out of it a new being is born, The eggs that are found in graves are said to supply new power of life to the dead. From this set of ideas comes the explanation of the idea of small souls in the form of eggs existing in the heads of big souls, and changing at the death of the human being into great souls (Giljak). The small soul in the egg is the embryo which breaks the egg only after death, and awakes to full life. ‘Now one understands also the widespread stories of the Life-egg, according to which the life of a human being or a mythical being is hidden in an egg, so that one robs the being

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concerned of his life if one takes possession of this egg’. The reviewer explains the idea of ‘the thread of life’ in an Hungarian work (54). In the Celebes it is said that when one cuts the thread the child is born, from which it is quite clear that the cutting of the life-thread in death is merely an inversion of the cutting of the umbilical cord at birth. The magico-mystical connection between the human being and his umbilical cord (or placenta), the sympathetic unity with the tree under which the after-birth is buried, the ‘outer soul’ in this after-birth, are merely forms of expressing the attachment in feeling to the mother. Parsons (41) has an article on functional symbolism, in which the demons of menstruation, marriage, birth, death, etc. are interpreted as an expression of the feelings of pain disengaged by the pressure of new social adaptation. There is much folk-psychology in Kaplan’s interesting contribution. Expressive actions serve originally merely as the abreaction of pent-up affects, and are only later used to communicate something to others. The judgements of God are primitive reaction experiments: the sinner’s consciousness of guilt betrays itself in blunders (24). In its application to folk- psychology the analytic method undergoes a necessary modification; the variants of a theme are collected like the separate associations of a patient and serve to illuminate each other. The spook in the Rtigener Saga who keeps pace with the Wanderer is explained by the splitting and projection of the personality of the Wanderer; the story of the changeling is just as aptly explained as an ex- pression of repressed hostility against the child (S. 75, 96). Time is the expression of the resistance to reality; the unconscious, the child, and primitive man do not take the time factor into account. The Oedipus attitude in the female is revealed in several examples (Lot’s daughters, Adonis); the pursuit by the father is a fulfilment of the daughter’s sexual wish. Here we are concerned with the delusion of persecution with an hysterical substratum, whilst the witch (stepmother) as a pursuer must be counted as belonging to the paranoiac picture. Giants are usually imagined as an early species of earth-dweller; they are quite clearly the mythical images of the parents, towering over human beings as grown-ups tower above children, and thus they naturally preceded human beings on the earth. The stupidity of giants arises from the tendency of infantile heroes to impose on their parents. Boll’s work (8) is a contribution to dream-mythology in the proper sense of the term.

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY 219 Whilst showing no knowledge of psycho-analysis Boll arrives at conclusions that are psycho-analytically correct, even if not complete. Besides the mythical figures of Sisyphus, Tantalus, the Danaides, and other great penitents in the underworld, we find Oknos (the loiterer), an old man who either sits helpless on the ground in front of some wood while his donkey, whose tail is grasped by a youth, falls on its knees, or according to another variant he plaits a rope while the she-ass standing near him eats up the other end of the rope. From his own subjective impression and by comparison with a passage by Gotthelf, the author comes to the conclusion that we are here concerned with a dream- phantasy which in concurrence with Scherner he characterises as a typical dream of being hindered. A striking confirmation of the idea is that the same rope-plaiter appears in the Yatakas as the seventh dream of King Kocala, except that in this case instead of the she-ass a hungry female jackal eats the rope. The Ionic inter- pretation of Oknos as the vainly industrious husband of a slovenly wife, according to our theories, approaches the correct meaning. Ass and jackal are to be translated as the woman, the rope-plaiting as the sexual act, the labour in vain—as is well-known—as onanism (compare the relationship of onanism to indecision).

Pfeifer gives the first application of the psycho-analytic method to games (42. Cf. also 20). After the analysis of some particular games the author passes on to folklore material, starting with the well-known game of ‘Fox in the den’,

The den is a symbol of the womb, the Mére Garuche, the mother with a whip, that is, a penis. (47am Holle with the iron tooth, i.e. a castrated fox, male symbol.) The meaning of the game thus is that the father’s penis is in the mother’s vagina, but also at the same time that the mother has a penis like the boy, also that she once had one, but lost it through castration. The limping hero. in the game is analysed by reference to the lame figures in mythology. Mythological heroes often suffer the loss of their member through penetrating into a mother-symbol. The change in the person of the fox belongs to the category of contrary determination. The child in the group of players (brothers), to whom the father by a stroke with his whip magically transfers the power to punish his evilly-disposed children (brothers) and to commit incest, takes this part not only from an external compulsion, but also in consequence of an affective identification with the

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father. Whilst the part of the fox in the game appears as a kind of punishment it thus represents in reality a wish-fulfilment. The change in the part of the fox corresponds to the continuous change of generations. Here we touch upon the phenomenon so striking in play—the formation of series and reduplications which extend to the symbol as well as to the persons and themes. Starting from this, the writer evolves an interesting theory regarding the significance of the formation of series in mental life; the in- completeness of the gratification by the substitutive object and the mental tension thereby created form the motive for the multi- plication of the object. Another class of mental series reflects the redistribution of forces between the ego and the libido; it particularly concerns symbols, the anxiety character of which proves the part played in their origin by repression. Instead of against the hostile father-image the hero of a fairy-tale has to fight against innumerable children, servants, animals etc ; the severed heads of the dragon grow again, and so on.

The mechanism of series-formation belongs, like condensation, displacement, etc. to the most important of the methods of repression, and has a special meaning in games, where it makes possible a transference to the fellow-players, later on to the outer world. Other examples are cited in confirmation of the part played by the incest complex in games. ‘Games representing a repressed content begin to appear at a period which coincides with the period at which repression begins to operate in childhood; in particular, typical games with a ‘mythological’ content fill up the time approximately from the third year until puberty, when a marked decline in play-activity sets in. The inference is very near that in this period, which Freud has called the latency period and which at first glance appears to form a hiatus in the sexual life of mankind, the infantile sexuality, which was previously so strong and fraught with such pleasure, does not cease to exist but simply overflows into play’ (S, 281).

The collection of material for the present review has brought us in touch with the application of psycho-analysis to sociology (apart from the sociology of primitive peoples). Bltther (7) upholds two principial theses: (a) proof can be brought of the part played by homo-erotic currents of feeling in building up human society and states (the writer thinks that these currents form the distinctively social element, in contradistinction to attempts to explain society

ETHNOLOGY AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGY 221

on the basis of economics or of the family). (b) These currents themselves can be explained by a ‘ non-pathographic, natural’ theory of inversion. He tries to disprove the psycho-analytic theory of the origin of homosexuality in the flight from incest, by the assertion that the analyst only comes across neurotic representatives of the inverse type. It is precisely in the domain of ethnology, however, that the secondary character of inversion appears clearly in relation to the Oedipus complex. Before admittance to the male society can be obtained the puberty ceremony must first be gone through ; this ceremony, however, is actually a symbolic repetition of the struggle between the father and sons of the primal horde. Homo-erotism, which according to Freud first appears as the uniting bond in the brother-clan, was merely a ‘substitute-feeling’ for mother-incest; ‘obeying necessity and not the inward instinct’ (i.e. the necessity which originally existed in the shape of the jealous father), the members of the male society prevent the entrance of females into the men’s house, and when they after all permit it, it is not, as Bliiher supposes, an evidence of de- generation but a return of the repressed.

From the study of society Federn’s fine work leads on to the psychology of political movements (13). Brill’s work (10) touches on the sphere of group psychology, and brings forward muscle- erotism as the explanation of the modern craze for dancing.

The remaining sphere of ethnology to which analysis has been applied is that of the material side of civilisation. Much has already been mentioned in the writings on symbolism (compare 21, 33); only two works are devoted to this subject exclusively. Giese’s article (19) starts from correct premises but unfortunately proceeds quite speculatively. Giese distinguishes male and female sexual prototypes, representations of both organs in coitus, and further, imitations of emission, erection, the secondary sexual characteristics, etc. There is no difficulty in making these com- parisons, everything depends on the completeness of the evidence. Ferenczi (16) distinguishes between projection and introjection in machinery and so creates a serviceable basis for a searching ethnological investigation, since the only possibility of clearing up the question of the psychogenesis of mechanical invention will be by means of ethnological material. In the reviewer’s ‘Mirror- Magic’ (59) an attempt is made to explain an important part of material civilisation, namely, the domestication of animals, through

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the libidinal forces (being allowed to suck), and to interpret the ceremonies at the introduction of new household animals into the community of the household as invariably constituting a regression to this primal situation.

If we now attempt to sum up the progress made in the appli- cation of psycho-analysis to the spheres of ethnology and folk- psychology during the last five years, we must distinguish within our limits three chief spheres of application. These are (a) the mental culture and sociology of primitive peoples, together with the survivals of them in higher levels of civilisation; (b) the be- ginnings of material and domestic civilisation; (c) a differential psychology of various peoples. The first group predominates, both in the number of works and in the importance of the results. In the sphere of mental culture two chief themes can be distinguished; on the one hand, the Oedipus complex and that which is directly bound up with it, and on the other hand, the libido-theory as laid down in the ‘Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory’. Totemism as a phylogenetic parallel of the Oedipus-complex has already been elucidated by Freud in his pioneer work; Reik now takes the second step along this path, for he points out the way in which the struggle between father and son in the primal horde (Atkinson) is repeated in male initiation rites. The significance of this conclusion cannot yet be properly estimated; it would appear that we are here in close touch with one of the most important roots of festival customs.

As regards the application of the libido-theory, special attention is called principally to the close connections between narcissism and the idea of the soul. In this direction the work of Rank has been continued and will be still further elaborated by the reviewer. An elucidation of the course followed by the love-impulses in the female has been begun by Freud in a brilliant work on a folk- psychological basis. Almost all the works naturally contain more or less important contributions to symbolism. The reviewer attempts to deal with the evidence of functional phenomena in myth- formation; in this sphere little has been accomplished up to the present and a detailed presentation of the relationship between function and content of symbols is much to be desired. Pfeifer’s theory of series-formation is a step in this direction. The applica- tion of psycho-analysis to play and to the formation of states and of society is new.

BOOK REVIEWS

DELUSION AND DREAM. By Professor Sigmund Freud. Translated by Helen M. Downey M.A. Introduction by Dr. G. Stanley Hall. (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1921. Pp. 213. Price 12s. 6d.)

Most of our readers will already be familiar with this volume, of which the sale in England has just been taken over by Messrs. Allen & Unwin. It contains a translation not only of Freud’s essay on Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’, but also of Jensen’s book itself. It was a good idea to combine the two volumes in one in this way.

The translation is mediocre though painstaking. We note that Hamlet’s reflection ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (which in Freud's original is, of course, given in the Schlegel rendering) is re-translated into the English in the following original way: ‘They usually know many things between heaven and earth that our academic wisdom does not even dream of’.

It is perhaps not superfluous to mention that Freud’s volume appeared in 1907; a recent reviewer strangely hailed it as a new work which indicated that Freud had renounced his previous errors, adjuring, of course, all psycho-analysts to follow this latest example. E. J.

ok

LEONARDO DA VINCI. A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile Reminiscence. By Sigmund Freud, M.D., LL.D. Translated by A.A. Brill. Reprint of the American Edition with a Preface by Ernest Jones. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd. London, 1922. Pp. 130. Price 12s. 6d.)

The rights for the sale in England of the American translation of this well known book have been acquired by a London publisher. The book appeared many years ago, so that it is not necessary to review it here, but the attention of those not already familiar with the study it contains may be directed to it, for it is a remarkably interesting and valuable analysis by Professor Freud. alee

¥

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THE TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. By David Forsyth, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.P., Physician (with care of Out-Patients), Charing Cross Hospital, London, etc. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London, 1922. Pp. 133. Price 5s.)

Of the flood of books at present appearing on the subject of psycho- analysis very few are of any serious value; indeed, apart from Freud's works, the useful books in English can easily be counted on the fingers of two hands. To take a single example; on the wrapper of the present book thirty-three volumes are advertised as being ‘Notable Books on Psycho-Analysis’; of these eight are hardly or not at all con- cerned with psycho-analysis, eighteen are ill-informed or misleading, three are of indifferent value, and only four, i.e. twelve per cent of the whole, can be regarded as serious contributions to the literature of the subject.It is, therefore, all the greater pleasure to come across a new book which like the present one belongs to the valuable class.

Dr. Forsyth has rightly perceived that there is a palpable lack of a book on this topic, and he has here attempted to fill it on the basis of his own personal experience and his knowledge of the literature of the subject. It can be said at once that up to a certain point he has ad- mirably succeeded in this aim and has produced a book which must prove of great practical value to workers in psycho-analysis; the slight reservation indicated in this statement will be explained presently.

The book begins with a chapter on the analyst, followed by one on the prerequisites of the treatment, and then has four on the treat- ment itself. In the first chapter Dr. Forsyth rightly insists on the importance of the analyst’s own analysis and selects narcissism as being the greatest obstacle to becoming a good analyst. In the second chapter he deals not only with the selection of cases, but with a number of matters to do with the arrangements of the details of treatment which beginners are apt to regard as trivial; they would be well advised, however, to follow strictly the lines here laid down, for all of which experience shews there is good reason. The part of the book dealing with the treatment proper is also full of wisdom and sound advice. Dr. Forsyth makes it plain that the direct aim of the analyst should always be the discovery and overcoming of resistances rather than the search for buried memories. The difficult subject of transference is dealt with at length. He draws a vivid picture of the numerous manifestations of transference and resistance and indicates the principles on which the difficulties arising in connection with these essential processes should be dealt with. The book ends with a pithy summary of the main points.

Our review will gain in value if we also indicate a few points on which we do not quite see eye to eye with Dr. Forsyth, and we do this the more freely as we are confident that a second edition of his book

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will soon be called for. The book is as a whole clearly and most interestingly written, but here and there the author’s usual sureness of touch seems to fail him somewhat, with the result that the matter is not so well arranged and the essential points not brought out with the penetrating incisiveness otherwise shewn, An example of this is the question of the exact relationship between the transference and the resistance. Only incidentally and imperfectly does the reader discover in what way precisely transference, which usually furthers the analysis, often comes to be the greatest hindrance to it. Further we have the impression that Dr. Forsyth does not come close to the greatest difficulties and passes them by too optimistically. For instance, ‘Such emotions have remained attached to bygone memories, but once they appear in the transference they are thereby permanently severed from their out-of-date attach- ments’ (p. 70). To put it mildly, this is an over-simplistic description of the truth, for very much more has to be done than merely to allow such emotions to appear. Similarly his account of the difficulties set up by undue positive transference is very elementary. The patient is said to find it hard to make admissions which might lower her in the physician's esteem (p. 106). Really this is a superficial pretext which covers the real reasons for the difficult situation. Dr. Forsyth advises the analyst to meet it by reminding the patient that his feelings about her are ‘of small account compared with the purpose of the treatment’, but this begs the whole question. It is true that in the physician’s opinion this ought to be so, but it by no means follows that the argument is as obvious to the patient, particularly to her unconscious (and sometimes to her conscious mind also). Again the remark that the patient ‘presumably did not undertake it (the analysis) in order to make a favourable im- pression on the physician’ would seem to indicate an imperfect realisation of neurotic motivation, for this is just the reason why many patients undertake the analysis. Indeed, in one sense perhaps all do, inasmuch as they are driven by the need for love, which, as they correctly divine, is the only motive force that can cure a neurosis.

The handling of the transference is the touchstone of an analyst's knowledge of technique, and it would seem to us that Dr. Forsyth’s mastery of it is not yet complete. Another instance is his half-hearted attitude towards the matter of concealing his private life from the patient. He several times (e.g., p. 17) says that it is desirable to do so, giving, however, only rather superficial, though correct, reasons for this opinion. In another passage, on the other hand, he goes far to nullify this by writing ‘It is in many cases helpful rather than the reverse for the analyst to communicate to his patient something of his own life’ (p. 80), and quotes in support of this a sentence of Freud’s which the original context shows to have exactly the opposite meaning from that here ascribed to it. He nowhere brings out the real reason for the great

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desirability of such privacy, namely, to ensure that the patient’s phantasies about the physician, which play such a central part in the treatment, shall be as purely subjective as possible. We doubt, further, the wisdom of the view that the physician’s attitude should vary according as the patient is in a state of positive or of negative transference, ‘explicit assurances of sympathy and continued esteem’ being given in the former case, while the physician withdraws and becomes more distant in the other (pp. 80, 85). It is true that the physician’s attitude does commonly so change and that it is very hard to hinder its doing so, but it would seem to us better technique to strive unceasingly to maintain an even and unalterable note in all situations, both because the opposite would be yielding to the patient’s efforts to influence the physician’s emotions and be- cause of the reason given above in reference to the patient’s phantasies,

Another matter on which Dr. Forsyth seems to us to be over- optimistic is in his estimates about the length of treatment necessary (p. 21), though we are glad to note his excellent advice to beginners to work as fully and deeply as possible with one or two cases rather than try to learn from a more extensive material (p. 45); one thorough analysis teaches more than twenty half carried through, though many analysts have never made the one. Dr. Forsyth deals frankly with the matter of fees, and points out that analytic work ‘makes heavier demands and at a smaller rate of remuneration than any other kind of special medical work’ (p. 26). We would dissent from his opinion that ‘the two chief points to be taken into consideration when estimating the probable results of treatment are age and intelligence’ (p. 23); for, important as these undoubtedly are, the amount and tenacity of the narcissism and the strength of the motives making for cure are still more important. We do not think that many analysts find it desirable to get their patients to close their eyes during treatment as Dr. Forsyth does (p.34). Nor do we think it necessary to give the patient at the beginning of the treatment “some account of free association, of dreams and fantasies, and of the decisive importance of childhood as the key to adult character’ (p.47), for he will learn all these things far better through experience; what has to be said at the introduction can be said ina couple of sentences. Taking notes during the treatment is in general advised against (pp. 37, 38), but we think Dr. Forsyth could have been more thorough-going in his advice to the beginner on the subject, for the latitude he allows may encourage the latter to follow his natural impulses unduly. In the paragraph on active therapy, which is introduced apropos of ‘force’, ‘violence’, and the use of ‘the steel fist’, nothing is said of what active therapy consists in and the reader is bound to come away with the idea that activity in this sense has something to do with aggressivity ; we cannot understand why Dr. Forsyth is content to leave such a curiously misleading impression.

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It is perhaps a pity that the book was not entitled ‘The Practice of Psycho-Analysis’, for it is really concerned much more with the general aspects surrounding the practice of analysis than with the more purely technical difficulties and problems met with. It is for this reason all the better suited for the pure beginner in the subject, but this might have been indicated in the title itself. With this reservation, and those implied in the criticisms made above, we can warmly commend the book as one of the best and most practical introductions to actual psycho-analytic work that have been written, and we hope that the lessons it teaches will be carefully taken to heart and widely applied. E. J.

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PSYCHO-ANALYSIS, By R. H. Hingley, B.A. Research Student in Psych- ology at Edinburgh University. (Methuen, London. 10921. Pp. Igo. Price 6s.)

The main purpose of this book is stated to be ‘to enable the general reader to obtain such insight into the hidden processes of the mind that he may be able to exercise more effective control over his life’ (p. 107) and it may be said at once that the author has succeeded in his aim. Nearly all the book is, as the title indicates, taken up with an ex- position of psycho-analysis, on the whole a reliable one; but it differs from expositions such as those of Hitschmann or Barbara Low in two respects. On the one hand it shews the deficiencies inseparable from a presentation by a writer who is familiar with the phenomena of the unconscious only up to a certain point; he relates, for instance, some ‘everyday’ blunders of his own of the full implications of which he is evidently unaware. On the other hand, the presentation is much more subjective than that of the other authors mentioned. It may be described rather as a sympathetic criticism, of the kind of which psycho-analysis is certainly in need. Being himself an ‘ orthodox psychologist ’, Mr. Hingley finds that some of the formulation devised by Freud is open to criticism, though he never questions the accuracy of either his findings or his conclusions. Towards the end of the book he becomes still more individual in his tendencies, though he quite fairly says in his preface: ‘The last two chapters, and especially the last, should be regarded rather as speculative essays in application. They should not be regarded as practical programmes to which psycho-analysis is in any wav committed’.

He starts by contrasting with the older psychology what he considers to be the three new movements, of the last forty years. The first of these is the work of what is here termed the ‘subconscious’ school. The author does not seem to’be too well informed on this topic, else

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he would not have ascribed its development solely to the work of French and American investigators, omitting all reference to that of such men as Gurney and Myers in England. Nor would one select Charcot, Bernheim and Janet as the ‘leading exponents’ in France, for Charcot in particular would have been extremely puzzled if he had ever heard of the conception, which he probably never did; the names given should have been those of Binet and Janet. The second movement, for which he gives far too much credit to McDougall, is that of biological psych- ology, the study of the instincts. The third is psycho-analysis. In comparing the three he underestimates, in our opinion, the extent of the differences - between the first school and the analytical one, and overestimates those between the latter one and the biological movement. We doubt very much, for instance, the truth of his statement that ‘the instinct’ school is more phylogenetic, while the ‘unconscious’ school is more exclusively ontogenetic (p. 15). After this introduction comes a chapter on the “Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis’, followed by chapters on ‘Dreams’, ‘The Nature of the Unconscious’, ‘The Control of the Unconscious’, ‘The Psychopathology of Everydaylife’, ‘Psycho-Analysis and Education’, ‘Society and Religion’.

Mr. Hingley is not very satisfied with Freud's definition of the terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘the unconscious’ and we think he would clarify his own mind a little better in the first respect by reflecting on the meaning of the terms ‘bewuftseinsfahig’ and ‘ichgerecht’, and in the second respect by studying Freud’s metapsychological essays on the precise psychological distinctions between a conscious and an unconscious idea. He holds that such expressions as ‘unconscious ideas’ are both objectionable and unnecessary, believing that what is unconscious is nothing but a ‘tendency’, which only becomes an idea or wish when it emerges into consciousness, But what really rouses his ire is Freud's ‘unwarrantable’ use of the word ‘wish’, to which he curiously ascribes much of the whole opposition to Freud’s theories (pp. 26, 27); we feel sure that this is a case of displacement, which Mr. Hingley might fruit- fully analyse in himself. He asserts that a wish is nothing but a recognised tendency—which of course begs the whole question of whether processes hitherto known only in a conscious form cannot also be unconscious; and he would replace it throughout by the term ‘tendency’, though he admits (p. 63) that in so doing he is committing the very fault with which he charges Freud, namely, of widening the accepted use of certain words. The definition of ‘tendency’ as ‘a psychic “structure” deter- mining a mode of reaction’ (p. 70) is insufficiently dynamic to meet the needs of the case, and we feel the lack of an adequate physiological training in his omission of such conceptions as ‘tension’ and ‘reflex discharge’ when he tries to expound his view of the matter. Possibly he is not so thoroughly deterministic in regard to the deeper layers as

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he is in the more superficial ones, and there may be a lingering relic - of the theological distinction between the blind instinctive Cravings and conscious, self-willed, controlling goal-ideas.

Not that Mr. Hingley is at all afraid of psycho-analysis, that is, of the unconscious life of the mind. He very wisely says ‘If these ten- dencies do exist in human nature, it is better that we should know it that we may have at least a clear conception of the problem- that we have to solve;-if they do not exist, then not all the psycho-analysts in the world can create them’ (p. 62). This illuminating remark js so obviously true that it should give our more terrified and wrathful opponents pause before they ascribe to analysts the superhuman powers that would be implied if their panic were well founded.

Nor is the author perturbed by Freud’s theory of sexuality. He properly regards it not as something ‘final and incontrovertible, but as a body of doctrine for which there is a tremendous and ever-increasing amount of evidence’ (p. 84). Or, as he puts it elsewhere (p. 80), ‘we are bound to admit that the evidence seems to us overwhelming as to the importance of this tendency, and we are prepared to find, because of its biological importance, because of ordinary observation of ordinary life, and finally and chiefly, because of the very constitution of the mind, that it is a factor of greater or less significance in every mental reaction’. Like Hart, he groups the instincts into three, nutrition, sex and herd, though had he read the Masseupsychologie he could hardly have said that Freud failed to take into account the last-named of these (p. 54).

His criticism of the objections to psycho-analytical theory are often very acute, such as the following one in reference to the wish-fulfilment in anxiety dreams. ‘If we consider that the terror dream invalidates this dream theory, then, in the name of consistency, we must deny that in waking life the fear-flight instinct is a mechanism of .self-preservation, because in the extreme case of terrified collapse it fails to fulfil its function’ (p. 40). He discusses very wisely and sanely the possibilities, advantages and limitations of self-analysis (see p. 110). We would question his judgement in omitting the subject of symbolism ;:he writes: “We have refrained from giving examples of the common symbols that occur in dreams because we believe the reader will be more satisfied if he discovers these for himself’ (p. 69). He should know that in the major- ity of cases the meaning of symbols is not to be discovered by means of free association, so that this is just where the beginner needs external help.

Our outstanding criticism of the book is the extraordinary extent to which ethical and other tendencious attitudes are mingled with the main scientific one. It is true that Mr. Hingley has much that is interesting and acceptable to say in these directions, but we feel that he would have been better advised to have made a separate book of them. But perhaps he is unable to dissociate the various aspects of his

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problems. For him ‘the religious ideal stands for the final synthesis of all mental activity’ (p. 143), though it is only right to add that he uses the word ‘religious’ in a very sociological sense. He attempts to answer the question ‘What is the nature of the society, and what is the nature of the religion which will do justice to the ascertained facts of man’s unconscious nature?’ (p. 159). What he has to say on this tremendous theme calls for no special comment, for he evades all the concrete difficulties and confines himself to truisms.

As has been hinted, Mr. Hingley’s ethical interests do not appear to have seriously impeded his scientific insight, but there is a notable exception, which illustrates the dangers that beset one who sets out on such a thorny path. ‘Let us look at the problem in the. light of another concrete incident. A man comes to a psycho-analyst for the treatment of psycho-sexual impotence, that is sexual impotence due to mental causes. The man is freed from his disability by the treatment. Here, according to the Vienna school the treatment ends. It is no concern of the physician what the man does with his newly found freedom. He may wreck the life of some trusting girl, or help to swell the trade of the prostitute. But we ask, Can such a man be regarded as truly free when he is actuated by such impulses? Answer the question in which way we will we are face to face with moral issues. To ignore them is _ not to evade them. They cannot be evaded. To consider them is to grant the fundamental contentions which lie at the heart of Jung’s position. For ourselves we cannot see how the question of mental health can be isolated from the question of moral well-being. We are quite aware that it may bea doctor’s duty in what we may call the realm of physical medicine, to restore to health and continued depredation some sick scoundrel, but we cannot consider that in the realm of mental medicine a doctor has completed his cure, if he has left his patient with anti-social tendencies. What are really anti-social tendencies may perhaps be a question of debate, but it cannot be a question to be ignored.’ (pp. 55, 56).. With this pronouncement we must take imme- diate issue, and, indeed, on ethical grounds. As Mr. Hingley admits, it would be a monstrous piece of presumptuousness for any medical man to refuse to set a patient’s broken arm until he had first inquired into the question of what use this limb was going to be put to in the future, until a guarantee was first given that it would never be used to strike a neighbour orto sign a forged cheque. To adopt such an attitude, to constitute oneself the arbiter of what another human being should do with his own life, would be an unwarrantable intrusion into individual freedom, a usurpation of the rights pertaining only to the Law and State, and to make such a claim is completely to misapprehend the function of the medical profession. We maintain that this principle is equally valid for both mental and physical disease. When a suffering

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person seeks our help our sole purpose is to make him whole. Whether we personally happen to approve of what that whole comprises is quite irrelevant; sometimes, no doubt, we do, and sometimes we do not, but we should strive to prevent such considerations from prejudicing us in the endeavour to help the patient. For the physician to seek to impose his particular moral, ethical or religious (why not political?) views on a patient as a condition of rendering him medical assistance would be. to establish a new and specially hateful kind of sacerdotalism in the body politic. It is because there are already signs of it that we make this strong protest against what can only be described as a prostitution of the medical profession. There need at least be no doubt about the psycho-analyst’s attitude towards such proposals.

We have still a few minor criticisms to make. Mr. Hingley ventures to define for psycho-analysts the conception of normality. In one place he states: ‘For psychology and medicine the normal is the usual’ (p 16). We do not think that this can be seriously maintained. It is usual for men to be. infected with the gonococcus and the tubercle bacillus, for most men are, but we have never heard it maintained that such a state of affairs is normal. And it would be as easy to point to pathol- ogical mental complexes of equally frequent occurrence. Similarly, in considering the nature of an ideal society, Mr. Hingley says: ‘The answer of psycho-analysis is: a society that is free from neuroticism, etc.’ (p. 160). That is not an answer given by any psycho-analyst. Freud, for instance, has more than once protested against the idea that every neurosis should at all costs be cured, pointing out that not infrequently a neurosis is the most advantageous solution of an existing situation, and he warns against fanaticism in hygiene as. against all other fanaticism. :

It is not true that Freud holds all curiosity to be ‘primarily and fundamentally sexual’ (p. 79). He has never expressed any opinion on the matter in his writings, but there is reason to think that his actual view is to the contrary. It is not ‘a wise precaution to instruct the subject to keep the eyes closed’ (p. 31) during any stage of the psycho- analytic treatment. An analysis of an instance of lapsus linguae is attributed to Freud instead of to Brill (p. 125). Finally, we regret to see the author of a book on psycho-analysis imposed on by M. Coué to the extent Mr. Hingley is (pp. 116-18).

On the whole, we would say that this is one of the best books on psycho-analysis we have seen written by someone without personal training in the subject, and we shall look forward with interest to future

works by the same author.. E. J.

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Outwirtinc our Nerves. By Josephine A. Jackson, M.D., and Helen M. Salisbury. (The Century Co., New York. 1921. Pp. 403.)

This is a breezy volume, written in a free and easy American style, which is addressed purely to a lay audience, indeed, specifically to those suffering from neuroses. It is essentially written on psycho- analytical lines and aims at ‘meeting the need for a simple, com- prehensive presentation of the Freudian principles.’ We must say that the authors have succeeded in their aim. Though the presentation is only very elementary, it is quite accurate so far as it goes. In the glossary appended, we note that repression is defined as ‘Expulsion from consciousness of a pain-provoking mental process’. It should be pointed out that this act constitutes only a small part of repression, the greater part of which is occupied with preventing such processes from ever entering consciousness, so that no question of expulsion can arise.

In general, the book can be cordially recommended as being suitable for its purpose. There are few books which it would be better for a nervous invalid to read than this. E.. J.

How TO PSYCHO-ANALYZE YOURSELF. By Joseph Ralph. (Joseph Ralph, California, 1921. Pp. 318.)

This volume, though interestingly and on the whole sanely written, need not be criticised by any strict standard, for it is obviously in- tended for an exceedingly ‘popular’ audience. ‘The list of contents of the chapter entitled ‘Grubbing for Mind Worms’ contains the following: ‘Their Breeding Places’, ‘Grime from the Trail’, “How Mind Worms spawn’, ‘Draining morbid Agents’, ‘Killing off the Mind Worms’, Some of the headings frankly puzzle us, no doubt owing to our linguistic deficiencies: ‘An unconscious Jamboree’, ‘Trouble Bluffs’, ‘Throwing away mental junk’, ‘Carrying unbaled hay in a hand satchel’, ‘Listening in on the Unconscious’, ‘A mental Roughhouse’, ‘The go and get it feeling’, “Bumps and Holes in the personality’, ‘Making mental con- centration one continuous joy ride’, ‘Cleaning off mental barnacles’.

The author thinks highly of the study of philosophy: ‘Philosophy is a fine thing when you can take it with your food, go to sleep with it, and blend its influences with the general daily actions. I know it, for | have tried it; in fact, 1 have so mixed it up in my general perspective that all of my mental attitudes have become more or less seasoned with it. Mr. Reader, Mrs. Reader, Miss Reader, all of you, collectively und individually, try it yourselves. It’s fine dope. The more you try it the better you will like it; and the more you have of it the more you

i?

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will want. Furthermore, the habit of using it will grow on you the more you have recourse to it. Personally I find a great fascination in tracing the transformation of an idea into a kinetic force, and in following the effect of introducing that force into the molecular gyration of the cellular functions of the human body; but that is no reason why everyone else should feel similarly attracted to the scientific aspects of these exceedingly intricate actions and reactions.’

The book, therefore, cannot be called a dull one and we have no doubt that it will fulfil the function for which it was intended.

EJ;

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PSYCHOANALYSIS OF THE ‘REFORMER’, By Joel Rinaldo. (Lee Publishing Co., New York, 1921. Pp. 137.)

The contents of this book may be guessed from the title. The author develops in eight chapters the following eight theses: (1) That reformism is a reaction to life determined by the psychological condition of the reformer, and is not primarily determined by any peculiar social order or condition. (2) That the reformer is an hysteriac (séc) and that his social activities are the result of his abnormal condition. (3) That libertinism and reformism can not be understood as cause and effect or in any proper sense as reactions to each other; that both have the same genesis and a simultaneous development. (4) That the reformer’s hysteria results from an inhibition of normal sexual life and is a form of sexual perversion. (5) That prohibition is not essentially different from other reformist activities: that it is the result of sexual perversion and is a sadistic gratification of the sexual desire. (6) That the drinking of alcoholic beverages has a peculiar sexual significance and a necessary and important part in the healthy sex life of humanity. (7) That reform- ism leads to race suicide through inversion of the sexes and a de- velopment of the female sex element at the expense of the male and by a weakening and ultimate suppression of the male element in the social dynamic. (8) That the cure for reform hysteria is the psycho- analysis of reformers and the application of psycho-analytic principles in social hygiene.

As may be guessed, the book is a general polemic rather than a dispassionate scientific study and is written with an affect-tone. At the same time a great part of what the author has to say is doubtless true and will perhaps be taken into account by statesmen of a future

generation. Eel.

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REPRESSED EMOTIONS. By Isador H. Coriat, M.D. (Brentano’s, New York, 1920. Pp. 213.)

The writer of a book which is written to express in popular form some of the theories of a particular science as well as their effects should above all be exceedingly careful that his use of the terms of the science is quite in accord with their special meaning, and that his explanations are accurately based on the science. Unfortunately these two points cannot be said to be fulfilled in this book on ‘Repressed Emotions’. The author has taken the science of psycho-analysis as the foundation of his book and of the views expressed in it, but in many instances throughout the book these latter do not agree with psycho- analytical theory, and his description of certain terms and processes are not the psycho-analytical ones. This defect is a serious one, for readers, especially those unacquainted with the psycho-analytical principles, will obtain quite erroneous views and ideas on the subject. Considering the author’s supposed knowledge of psycho-analysis one would have thought he would have taken particular care when writing this book, but instead of doing so he exhibits a carelessness that is greatly to be regretted.

For instance, the title he has chosen for the book does not coincide with psycho-analytical views, for the psycho-analytical theory does not admit the ‘repression of emotions’. The author seems to consider that ideas and emotions are one and the same thing, for on p. 8 he says, ‘Repression is not suspension of forbidden ideas o7* emotions’. In the same paragraph he says, ‘In the course of development of the individual, certain powerful components of the mental life, particularly referring to the sexual impulse, may undergo a repression’. Why ‘may’? The author must know that certain components are repressed. When speaking of the forgetting of familiar words (pp. 12 and 13) he states that “This emotional factor was repression’. It is to be supposed that he means the censorship. And further on he says ‘the removal of a few repressions’, again it is to be supposed that he means resistances. Such mistakes as these, and many more could be mentioned, give one the impression that the author does not know the meaning and use of the fundamental psycho-analytical terms.

Does the author really mean that the first repressions (p. 16) refer principally to the primitive impulses of hunger and love? If so he must have come across a great number of marasmic infants and interpreted the condition as the result of ‘repression of the impulse of hunger’.

On p. 19 the author states, ‘It is impossible to agree entirely with the idea that the unconscious embodies entirely the lower and more brutal qualities of man, that it is irrational, primitive, savage, cruel and lacks individuality and self-control’, whereas on p. 142 he says that

—-- Se

1 The italics throughout are the reviewer's.

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the motives or wishes of the unconscious are barbaric and unethical. What is one to make of such a contradiction?

On the same page he further says, ‘Out of war or revolutions there have crystallized acts of sublime heroism, sort of sublimations of the unconscious, and this in itself invalidates the idea that the unconscious is the repository of primitive and basal instincts alone’; this shows that the author does not know what is meant by sublimation.

One can quite appreciate the author’s use of the word ‘startling’ (p. 36) when he discovered the syadéol of a ‘repressed emotion’.

It might be pointed out that Alfred Adler of Vienna is not usually denoted as one of the greatest thinkers of the Freudian school (p. 43). If Dr. Coriat thinks this he should state it as an individual opinion and not a generally accepted fact, as also his statement (p. 177) that Adler's approach to psycho-analysis from the organic side is of great value for the future development of psycho-analysis.

It is a gross travesty of fact when the author says (p. 154) on the discussion of Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses at the Fifth Inter- national Psycho-Analytical Congress in 1918, ‘It was generally con- curred that the war neuroses were were/y manifestations of the mechan- isms of the reactions to fright, etc.’, and that ‘The neuroses were classified as anxiety and repressed hysteria’.

Further comment on this book is useless, for any good points that

might exist in it are entirely vitiated by the number of inaccuracies it

contains. D. B.

INSTINCT AND THE UNConscious. A Contribution to a Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses. By W. H.R. Rivers, M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.RS. (Cambridge University Press, Second edition, 1922. Pp. 277).

Few changes have been made in this edition, the most important being connected with the topic of dissociation. Two new chapters are added, a general essay on ‘Psychology and the War’, and a paper on ‘The instinct of acquisition’ which will be separately noticed in this JOURNAL. ,

The criticisms made in this JourNaL (Vol. I, p. 470) have been practically ignored, so that they apply equally to the present edition.

E. J.

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A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD. By Dr. H. von Hug- Hellmuth. Translated from the German by James J. Putnam, M.D., and Mabel Stevens, B.S, (Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., ' Washington. 1919. Pp. 154. Price $ 2).

In Dr. Hug-Hellmuth’s work we have expert knowledge and under- standing brought to bear, from the psycho-analytical standpoint, in masterly fashion on the problems she handles, and every page gives evidence of her,deep comprehension of, and sympathy with, the child in all his varying desires and activities.

Dr. Hug-Hellmuth has divided her book into two parts—The Period of Infancy (Part I); Play-time (Play, speech, reasoning, the emotional life, etc.) (Part Il); and these two parts together cover, as she tells us in her introduction (pp. xi and xii) the two first periods of childhood: the xursing period, ‘principally occupied, so far as the mental pro- cesses are concerned, with reactions—pleasurable and painful—to the operations of feeding and the care of the body, and to the regularly recurring alternatives of sleep and waking, passes gradually over, during the later months of the first year, into the second great period’, namely, the period of play. Of this the author writes: ‘This period takes in the years during which play is for the child his chief interest and main “purpose, and every object is made use of—a plaything. It includes the time from the end of the first year until the beginning of school life, that most important of landmarks in the child’s existence’.

A third period, ‘he period of serious study, is promised for treatment later on, in a special monograph, and with this we shall get the com- pletion of the study of mental life in childhood, ranging from the very first stage, to what may be called the end of childhood and adolescence.

Perhaps for a thajority of readers the greatest interest will centre upon the first period—the nursing period—(dealt with in pp. 1-37) since this stage of the child’s development is so little known, so difficult and obscure to interpret, and so illuminatingly revealed by Dr. Hug- Hellmuth. All the chapters here are full of significance, but if any may be singled out, it would be perhaps chap. I, ‘The functions of the senses in the service of the affective life of the infant’, chap. Ill, ‘The first signs of development of the intellect’, and chap. V, ‘The development of ethical feeling’. The tremendous significance of the bodily functions and the way in which the later character-developments depend upon the emot- ional attitude towards: these functions, is brought out strikingly in the first chapter, and yet the paradoxical fact remains, as Dr. Hug-Hell- muth observes in her Introduction, (p. ix): ‘One would seek in vain, among scientific treatises, for any adequate description of the interest felt by children in the important functions of their own bodies, and of the organs that subserve these functions’. Similarly, we are shown how large the problem of nakedness bulks in the mind of the very young

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child—the pleasure, fear, shame and sexual excitement all collected about the matter.

The extraordinarily close and detailed observation of the infant and young child, the delicate tracing of cause and effect, the accurate descriptions of manifold phases in the child's existence, shown throughout Section I, accompanied always by first-hand illustration, make the reading of these pages (1-39) most attractive and convincing, Thumb- sucking, the connection between the sense of smell and early (as well as mature) sexuality, the beginnings of speech, of narcissism, anger and fear—all are dealt with in this section, and no one interested in child-psychology can afford to ignore what is here revealed. The second, and much larger, section which is Part II (Play-time) takes up, after the general survey of ‘The body and its functions in the service of play’, specific subjects such as “the development of the understanding’ (chap. II); ‘Memory’ (chap. Ill); ‘Imagination’ and ‘Reasoning’ (chaps. IV and V); ‘Speech’ (chap. VI); ‘The emotional life’ (chap. VII).: All of these chapters give most valuable material, as before demon- strating the author’s insight and sympathy. (This is to be noted, for example, in dealing with matters such as infantile masturbation and anal-erotism). The last two chapters of the book, treating of ‘Art in the life of the child’, and ‘Dreams’, prove how much richer and more complex emotionally and mentally are the very first years of life than has hitherto been imagined. |

In his preface, Dr. Putnam has written: ‘Impartial science has the right to ask only, What is true?’ Dr. Hug-Hellmuth may indeed lay claim to having followed the call of impartial science from the first to

the last page of her book. BARBARA Low.

PSYCHANALYSIS IN THE Ciass Room. By George H. Green, B.Sc., B.Litt. (University of London Press Ltd., London. 1921. pp. 276. Price 7s. 6d).

The main purpose of Mr. Green’s book is summed up by himself as follows: ‘to present as clearly and as simply as possible, such parts of the psychanalytic theory as were likely to be of use to parents and teachers, and to other people who were connected with and interested in children’. This aim he has certainly achieved in large measure, and has produced in addition a very readable and well-constructed book. One of its best features is the wealth of illustrations which accompany each different theme under discussion—illustrations always drawn from the author’s own experience in his school and class room work or from contact with children outside the school—which give the reader

16*

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a sense of conviction from their genuineness. For example, in the chapters on ‘Day-dreams’, (chaps. II and I) ten different cases are examined: these cases (whose ages range from three to twenty-three, of both sexes) are laid out very fully, discussed and analysed. In chapter VII, ‘Interest’, the same method is again followed, and here we have some useful illustrations to demonstrate the part played by unconscious motivation, and the futility of appeals to consciousness alone.

For the practical teacher, chap. XI is one of the most valuable: ‘Slips, Accidents and Omissions’. It will do something’ to suggest a new attitude towards the pupil’s ‘forgetfulness’, ‘stupidity’, ‘carelessness’, over which so much energy is fruitlessly expended, on the side of both teacher and taught, in the daily routine. The chapter on ‘Dependence and Sex’ treats somewhat lightly and slightly the specific sex side, but this may be a virtue in a book intended for the fairly average person studying the subject for the first time—he will not be alarmed by what Mr. Green has to tell him. .

In the sphere of psycho-analytical theory, Mr. Green is not always so sure of his ground, and his deductions are sometimes misleading. For example, in his chapters on ‘Introversion’ and ‘Extraversion’ (chaps. VIII and IX) he appears to distinguish the two types according to their wanifest behaviour only, which will certainly lead to error. We are told (p..198) that ‘the children who depend upon their teachers too much, who seek to win goodwill by submission, by abnormally good or hard work, or by offerings of flowers, are introverts’, and (p. 201) ‘The extravert is not less in evidence in the class room than in the world of grown-up men. He is the child who fidgets, who makes a great deal of noise, talks a great deal, and is often in “‘mischief”.’ These conclusions are neither of them wholly true, and often will be found quite incorrect.

Again, some of the dream-interpretation certainly does not tally with psycho-analytic findings, e.g. the suffocation dream discussed in chap. VIII, the dream of Case XIII in chap. V, the case of cat-phobia in chap. VII, in all of which conscious or sub-conscious motivation only is considered, never the unconscious.

In a subsequent edition (which there is every reason to expect speedily, since the book has many excellent and helpful features) it is much to be hoped that Mr. Green will give a new bibliography. In the present one there is confusion between books dealing with psycho- analysis proper (i.e. the Freudian method and its applications), other kinds of psychology (e.g. the work of Jung and his followers) and books which do not deal with the psycho-analytic view-point at all (e.g. ‘Mental Tests’ by Dr. P. B. Ballard; ‘Psychology and Parent- hood’ by H. Addington Bruce, etc.) Still worse, writers who merely

Sy

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discredit psycho-analysis by distortion and ignorance even of its A B C (e.g. Tridon) are admitted to the list. May we suggest their exclusion at the earliest opportunity?

BARBARA Low.

THE EDUCATION OF BEHAviour. By I. B. Saxby, D.Sc. (University of London Press Ltd., London. 1921. Pp. 248. Price 6s.).

This book cannot but impress the reader with its sincerity and serious intention, and obviously thought and care have been expended upon the writing of it: nevertheless, one is tempted to ask what is its raison d’étre. Xt follows the lines, more or less, of ‘orthodox’ child- psychology (such, for instance, as may be found in Munsterberg’s ‘Psychology and the Teacher’), and in general is based upon McDougall’s work, especially in the treatment of the Impulses. There is a good deal of insistence on matters which most intelligent educators nowadays are agreed upon—notably in the sections on ‘The growth and control of habits’, ‘Self-Assertion’, ‘Work and Play’. On the other hand, one does not find the wider understanding and deeper insight which might be expected from a writer who has studied the modern work on analytical psychology. In some chapters dealing with educational applications—The Psychology of Character (chap. VIII), The Training of Character (chap. IX), The Growth and Control of Habits (chap. VI) —there is an attempt to incorporate «findings of psycho-analysis. Some quite useful lines of enquiry ar€ developed in these sections concerning the use and abuse of ‘symp’ in education; the value of suggestion, direct and indirect; pl€asure and pain as incentives to behaviour, and so forth; but, unfor ly, it is here that there is confusion of thought and too many hasty generalisations. Throughout the book Repression is confused with Suppresszon, as a result of which we meet with such statements as: ‘If we repress i.e. refuse to think about an experience we have had, it is either because it was exception- ally painful, or because it has in some way hurt our self-respect’ (p. $2). (Clearly Repression is here taken as a conscious process). Again: ‘We may conclude that the extreme forms of shyness and self- absorption are usually if not always, due to the repression of some painful incident which should have been tackled at the time of its occurrence’. (As in the former instance, Repression is considered as a matter of conscious effort), The discussion on Gregariousness,, Imitation, Suggestion, and the individual’s relation to his “superiors, equals, and inferiors’ (pp. 87-97) leaves out of account some of the most important considerations—indeed the real nature of ‘Suggestion’ hardly seems ‘grasped (cp. the section on ‘Passive Play’ p. 223 et seq.). It is curious

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that the author should write (p. 231) discerningly about the need for a scientific attitude towards problems of behaviour, and yet allow her- self very often superficial generalization and a too facile optimism. We read, for instance, on p. 239: ‘Childhood is the time for pure play, because the young child lives entirely in the present’. (Italics are the reviewer's). This seems to mean just nothing at all; consciously, the young child lives a good deal in the past, even though it be a recent past; unconsciously, he cannot choose but live in the past, since all his experience is built up out of his past, real or fantasied. Again and again we are assured that results will be ‘quite easy’ to achieve, that desired improvements will certainly come about if only we are sen- sible, and in general an impression is conveyed that education is a simple matter if teachers are wise, and the young human being is a very malleable creature. The section in ‘The Impulse to seek a Mate’ (p. 36 et seq.) shows this clearly: apparently the author thinks, in spite of having told us how powerful the sex-impulse is, that the problem can be nicely solved by establishing co-education schools, staffing such schools with men and women ‘who are alive to the im- portance of their task and able to give the right kind of guidance at the right moment’ (p. 39). Such airy solutions hardly seem adequate, at least not in a work which professes to be thinking scientifically. By the chapter on ‘Work and Play’ (chap, X) which deals with the activities of the infant, yo child and adolescent, one is forcibly reminded of the work of Dr Hug-Hellmuth, already referred to, and one is able to realize the W of difference created by the applic- ation of psycho-analytic in®ights Miss Saxby seems.to be treating the . subject here from the outside™Mly, with all sorts of adult preconceptions in her mind. Perhaps in a sécond volume she will follow up more completely some special inv@igation into Behaviour with the additional illumination gained from the study of the Unconscious.

BARBARA Low.

THE ADOLESCENT Girt. By Phyllis Blanchard, Ph.D., with an Introduction by Dr. G. Stanley Hall. (Moffat, Yard and Company, New York. 1920. Pp. 242.)

The theme of this book is of obvious interest, and the complexity of the problem of adolescence still further heightens that interest. Adolescence, in both sexes, is so creative a period, often so full of attraction for the adolescent himself (in spite of suffering) and for the more adult, and still so full of obscurity, that its study is one of the most needed pieces of work for the psychologist. The present book -

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contains many lines of enquiry, many suggestions, which could be made fruitful, but its value is to a large extent stultified by its curious mix- ture of psychology, religion (of a mystical kind) and moralizing. The chapter-headings show something of the book's attempted scope. After starting with some theories from Schopenhauer, Bergson, Freud, Jung, Adler, among others, and the ‘conception of woman as a mysterious being’ (chap. I), we pass on to ‘The Sexual and Maternal Instincts of the Adolescent Girl’ (chap. II), ‘The Adolescent Conflict’ (chap. IM). ‘The Sublimation of the Libido’ (chap. IV), ‘The Adolescent Girl and Love’ (chap. VI), ‘The Adolescent Girl and her Future’ (chaps. VII). Far too much matter is touched upon with too many slight allusions to this and that writer, but there is value in the number of cases giving the adolescent girl’s fantasies and desires: this part constitutes the useful material in the book, especially where we are furnished with examples from history (St. Theresa, Margarita Ebner) and literature (Hauptmann’s Hannele, Charlotte Bronté’s heroines). Chapters V and VI, ‘Pathological Manifestations of Libido in Adolescent Girls’, and ‘The Adolescent Girl and Love’, contain some true and useful reflections, especially chapter V in the part dealing with sexual enlightenment. Dr. Blanchard realizes that such enlightenment cannot be easily, nor always satisfactorily, obtained even in the best possible environment. She desires ‘the impersonal teaching of biological facts to the child in the course of its school curriculum, so that the secret of reproduction would be understood by the girl at an age when the passionate element would not confuse her judgement’ (whether there is such a thing as ‘the impersonal teaching of biological facts’ at any age may be” questioned, but at least it is an objective), but very honestly adds: ‘Evém then, the problem would only be lessened to the extent that this natural and healthful imparting of knowledge would decrease the adolescent conflict by removing the complicating factors of morbid curiosity, and rebellion against facts hitherto unsuspected and unknown’ (pp. 178, 180).

In this chapter and the next—The Adolescent Girl and Love— there is much that is sane and useful, somewhat vitiated by a scattering of windy utterances and by a very marked ‘feminist’ bias.

The bibliographies appended to the chapters would be more useful if discrimination had been shown in drawing them up: in many cases, half the writers named could be omitted with advantage.

BARBARA Low. K

THE ANALYSIS OF MIND, By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. (George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1921. Pp. 310. Price 16s.) ©

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This book, which contains the substance of lectures recently delivered in London and Peking, is primarily metaphysical in aim, though psycho- logical as regards its subject matter. It has grown, the author tells us in his preface, out of an attempt to harmonize two apparently inconsistent tendencies in modern science—the materialistic attitude of many psycho- logists (especially those of the behaviourist school) and the contrary attitude of many physicists (especially Einstein and the other exponents of the theory of relativity) who ‘have been making matter less and less material’. In pursuit of this aim Mr. Russell endeavours to bridge over the at first sight impassable gap between mind and matter by showing that mind is less mental and matter less material than is commonly supposed. His. ultimate view of the nature of the world is that it is made up of a ‘neutral stuff’ itself neither mental nor material, but out of which both mind and matter are constructed, and with which, there- fore, both psychology and the physical sciences are ultimately concerned, though the former is in a sense nearer to what actually exists than are the latter. The essential distinction between psychology and physics lies in the way in which they treat their data rather than in any difference as regards these data themselves. In either case the principal data consist of sensations, but whereas physics is interested in ‘the appearance ot a given thing from different places’, psychology is concerned with ‘the appearance of different things from a given place’. The former point of view leads to the conception of external things, the latter to the con- ception of a mind which apprehends these things. Psychology is, however, richer than physics in that it deals with images as well as sensations; since images are not capable of being included among the aspects which constitute a physical thing or piece of matter and therefore belong to psychology alone.

This rapprochement between the material and the mental is rendered easier by an analysis of mental phenomena, as a result of which it appears that the apparently diverse contents and processes of the mind, such as desires, feelings, emotions, beliefs, reasonings and thoughts can all ultimately be reduced to sensations and images and their relations. The largest portion of the book is devoted to the carrying out in detail of this analysis, a difficult task in which the author exhibits much skill, subtlety and persuasiveness. Opinions will probably differ very con- siderably as to how far the attempted reduction to sensations and images meets with success. To the present writer the process of packing all the varied contents of the mind into two neat compartments seems to be accomplished only with the help of a good deal of squeezing and pushing in the case of certain inconveniently obstreperous items. In some cases too Mr. Russell appears to attach too little weight to the results of ex- perimental investigations which are apparently in conflict with his attempted. analysis. This is the case, for instance, in his treatment of the results

of the Wiirzburg school of introspectionists as regards the existence of thoughts that cannot be reduced to either words or images (p. 223); and perhaps still more strikingly in his allusion to the view ‘which regards discomfort and pleasure as actual contents in (the minds of) those who experience them’—a view which is summarily rejected as having ‘nothing conclusive to be said in its favour’ (p. 69), in spite of the contrary result of the painstaking investigation of Wohlgemuth (an author with whose work Mr. Russell seems nevertheless to be well acquainted, though he does not refer to his monograph on ‘Pleasure- Unpleasure’ in which the chief experimental evidence bearing on this point is brought forward).

Psycho-Analysis is welcomed by Mr. Russell as an ally against the

excessive demands of consciousness upon Psychology (demands which are repugnant to him as tending to widen the gap between the mental and the physical), and as proving the existence of unconscious tendencies; though he complains that even psycho-analysts attach too much importance to consciousness and (like so many other English students of Psychology) objects to the concept of the Censorship. ‘Psycho-analysts’, says Mr. Russell, in a passage that deserves to be quoted, ‘speak always as though it were more normal for a desire to be conscious, and as though a positive cause had to be assigned for its being unconscious. Thus “the unconscious”’ becomes a sort of underground prisoner, living in a dungeon, breaking in at long intervals upon our daylight respectability with dark groans and maledictions and strange atavistic lusts. The ordinary reader almost inevitably thinks of this underground person as another consciousness, prevented by what Freud calls the “Censor” from making his voice heard in company, except on rare and dreadful occasions when he shouts so loud that everyone hears him and there is a scandal. Most of us like the idea that we could be desperately wicked if only we let ourselves go. For this reason, the Freudian “Unconscious” has been a consolation to many quiet and well-behaved persons.’ (p. 37). ' The book undoubtedly deserves to be carefully read by all who are interested in the metaphysical bearings of Psychology, even though Mr. Russell’s conclusions on purely psychological matters must sometimes be treated with caution and accepted with restraint. i GF.

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History or PsycHo.oey. By G. S. Brett, M.A., Professor of Philosophy in the University of Toronto. Vol. If:. Mediaeval and Early Modern Period; Vol. III: Modern Psychology. (George Allen and Unwin. London. 1921. Vol. Il. Pp. 304; Vol. IIL Pp. 322. Price 16s. each volume).

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The first volume of this work was published in 1912 under the title of ‘A History of Psychology: Ancient and Patristic’. The present volumes bring the work to about the end of the nineteenth century, and we hope that the author will face the formidable task of completing this series with a final volume on the present position of psychology. The work itself will stand as one of the monuments in the history of psycho- logy and is a magnificent tribute to English scholarship, being con- - siderably superior to its only serious rival, Siebeck’s work, published some forty years ago. Although its conception is on a grand scale, aiming at nothing less than a history of psychological thought from the earliest times to the present day, it is far from being a mere encyclopaedia, inclusive though it is, The author's chasteness of style and the directness and serenity of his judgement make it a most valuable presentation of the essential contributions made by the more important writers of the past two thousand years.

A small section on psycho-analysis has been, perhaps unwisely, included at the end of the last volume. We say unwisely, because it is evident that the author is far from familiar with the development of this subject, nor has he been able to select the central ideas in a way that might have been done in the space at his disposal; the word ‘Unconscious’ for example, is not mentioned, and the subject is regarded too much as being merely a branch of medical science. We trust that this deficiency will be remedied in a future edition.

The author rightly points out that ‘If the student is not to be left with the idea that knowledge is a fixed quantity of indisputable facts, if on the contrary he is to acquire a real understanding of the process by which knowledge is continually made and remade, he must learn to look at the movement of ideas without prejudice as a separate fact with its own significance and its own meaning for humanity. To despise forgotten theories because they no longer hold good, and refuse on that account to look backward, is in the end to forget that man’s highest ambition is to make progress possible, to:make the truth of to-day into" the error of yesterday—in short, to make history’. To those who grasp the significance of this broad point of view and wish to enrich their education in this desirable respect, we warmly commend this invaluable work. E. J.

7

A History oF THE ASSOCIATION PsycHOLOGY. By Howard C. Warren, Stuart Professor of Psychology, Princeton University. (Constable, London. 1921. Pp. 328, Price 16s.)

This book represents a nainatekvig labour of years. It will be of value chiefly to specialist workers on the subject; for the general reader

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it is rather dry and lifeless. It is a conscientious collection of the various stages in the development of views on the subject of association, from Plato to the present day. Two deficiencies of the book may be remarked on. While the account of the earlier English Associationists is clear and full, that of later workers is presented in such a condensed way as to render it not always easy to appraise it. Im the second place, little effort is made to bring this earlier form of psychology into line with that of the present day, and, indeed, it may be said that practically all the book could have been written fifty years ago. Even on the subject of association itself there is no sign of any modern outlook. Jung’s revolutionary work on the subject, for instance, is dismissed in half a page, without any hint of its implications; the words ‘complex’ and ‘psycho-analysis’ are not to be found at all. Within these limits the book will doubtless constitute a useful reference work for historical purposes. E. J:

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PsycHoLocy. A Study of Mental Life. By Robert $. Woodworth, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology in Columbia University. (Methuen & Co. London. 1922. Pp. 580. Price 8s. 6d.)

This is another of the numerous text-books of psychology now available and it appears to present no outstanding features. It takes the student over the various chapters, reactions, emotions, sensations etc., in a quite adequate manner, and Professor Woodworth’s name is a guarantee of its general trustworthiness. Its tendéncy lies mid-way: be- tween the older text-books, with their insistence on cognition, and the newer psychology, which is so much concerned with motive, conflict and like topics. With regard to the newer psychology, Professor Woodworth adopts a conservative but not a shut attitude. We read that ‘attraction towards the opposite sex is felt by a small number of children’ (p. 147), so that this phenomenon is admitted to exist at all events occasionally. A sketchy account is given of Freud’s theory of dreams, but, as the author remarks, ‘Not that Freud would O K our account of dreams up to this point’ (p.505). His three vague objections to the theory are: (1) That Freud fails to see how easy-running the association mechanism is. This seems to be a reversion to the old associationist psychology when associations were thought to form themselves without any motive forces being at work, (2) That ‘Freud overdoes the Unconscious’, a statement so general that nothing can be said about it. (3) That ‘ Freud overdoes the libido’, a comment more appropriate to the newspaper press than to a text-book on psychology. Altogether his acquaintance with Freud’s work is a very cursory one. For instance, he says that Freud divides instincts into the self-preservative and reproductive

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one’s, and objects that this leaves out many others, such as the self- assertive instinct. Freud’s classification is, on the contrary, into egoistic and sexual instincts, and the former includes far more than the impulse to save one’s self from drowning.

The main feature that might militate against the success of the book, especially in this country, is the extreme colloquialism of its style, which frequently degenerates into familiarity and slang. E, J.

5

ZuR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PSYCHOPATHOLOGIE DER GEGENWARTSGESCHICHTE. By Dr. phil. Gaston Roffenstein. (Ernst Bircher, Bern and Leipzig, 1921, Pp. 32.)

An interesting application of the ideas of Nietzsche and Adler to the field of politics, with especial reference to revolution, class antagonism and class warfare. The revolutionary tendencies at present manifested in sO many countries, are, the author maintains, due to reactions against feelings of class inferiority rather than to economic causes (such as were emphasised by the earlier socialists). Recent events have stimulated such reactions by emphasising the importance and indispensability of the proletariat and by diminishing class barriers, which, when—as pre- viously—of larger dimensions, were felt to be natural, justifiable and inevitable, Though admittedly treating the phenomena from a single point of view only, the little book contains many suggestions that should be of interest to the student of social psychology. Js Neseaes

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AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY. Plebs Textbooks Number One. (Published by the Plebs League, Affiliated to the National Council of Labour Colleges, London, 1921, Pp. 167. Price 2s. 6d:) |

This is a distinctly original departure in the writing of text books. It is presented to the proletariat as an additional weapon of knowledge in the fight against the bourgeoisie and is written from that point of view. We need hardly say that this innovation of writing text books on scientific subjects from particular political points of view is one which no scientific worker can welcome, constituting, as it does, a retrogres- sion to the days when they had to be written from particular religious points of view. As the very essence: of science is impartiality, it could not long survive if treated in this way. A text book on Chemistry from the tariff reformer’s point of view, or one on Biology in support of the vegetarian cause would be books that would soon cease to have any serious value.

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This point of view colours a large part of the book. We meet with such headings as ‘Determinism and the Class Struggle’; such curiously one-sided statements as that ‘the home is essentially an economic in- stitution’, or that Mr. Woodrow Wilson’s inconsistencies in behaviour are due to a partition between a ‘Christianity’ complex and a ‘capitalist politics’ complex; or pronouncements such as that ‘for Marxians, the “purpose” of life is to fulfil the destiny to which conation urges man, the ever-increasing control of his environment.’

An attempt is made to incorporate psycho-analytical conclusions into the whole medley, but that the result is an unhappy one will be gathered from one fact alone:_in the bibliography appended, the only work on psycho-analysis specially recommended is one by Tridon, whose ignorance of the subject is notorious. We are not surprised to meet again the ridiculous idea that Freud regards the sexual instinct as ‘the driving force behind all action’, and ‘the basis of psychic phenomena’; he is here further supposed to identify it with the pleasure principle. We also learn that impulses which would tend to retain the pleasure principle are repressed, the converse of the truth. We read further that ‘where physical defect or privation induces creative effort in some in- tellectual or artistic field. This is what psycho-analysts term sublimation’. These quotations illustrate the level of the book.

On the other hand it must be said that a mass of information about psychology has been compressed into the book and that the arrange- ment, with a full glossary, bibliography and index, is an excellent one. It only needs to be revised by someone with a knowledge of the subject. KE. J,

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Jesus, THE CHRIST, IN THE LiGHT oF PsycuoLocy, By G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D. LL.D., Professor of Psychology, President of Clark University. (Doubleday, Page & Co. New York. In 2 vols. Price 25s. net.)

This book is, as the title states, an exhaustive study of Jesus from a psychological point of view. In the first chapter the physical personality of Jesus is dealt with and the various representations of Him as depicted by pictorial art. ‘Jesus in Literature’ the longest of the eleven chapters, begins with the Apocrypha and mediaeval literature and goes on to modern publications the majority of which emanate from America. Much of this provides somewhat wearisome reading, as the schemes and plots of a vast amount of novels and plays are given in résumé. Some pages in the long chapter on the ‘Negative Views’ are devoted to Nietzsche’s criticisms and to the views of the Monists, Smith, Robertson and Drews, and to Jenson’s theories. The Nativity is taken from a psycho-analytical standpoint and the subjects of virgin birth and the

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psychology of pregnancy are dealt with in the same chapter. Chapter VI is devoted to what Professor Stanley Hall terms the three great achieve- ments of Jesus: the Messianity, the Sonship and the Kingdom; and the stages are discussed by which He came to regard Himself first as the Messiah and later as the Son of God, and His conceptions regarding the Kingdom, which the author holds to be entirely ethical and as owing nothing to the pagan cults of the dying and rising gods. A detailed discussion on the Parables and the Miracles occupies some hundred and sixty pages; the latter are termed by the author ‘the baby talk of religious faith’. Chapters VII and XI are intended to be taken together and have for content the subjects of Jesus’ eschatalogical con- ceptions and the psychology of death, guilt and resurrection. Professor Stanley Hall holds Jesus as unique in that He was no usurping aspirer for the godhood by displacing His predecessor, Yahveh, to the position of an ex-god or by diabolizing him, ‘but by the laws of ambivalence and compensation the better elements of Yahveh’s nature were not only conserved but... given a loftier... interpretation than ever before.’ The author believes in the authenticity of the historical Jesus and is ‘convinced that the psychological Jesus Christ is the true and living Christ of the present and of the future’. As a book of reference the value of this work is much impaired by the complete absence of any index and the predilection of the author for coining new words derived -from the Greek renders it necessary for more than a bowing acquaintance with that language for a correct understanding of his meaning. To the orthodox churchman the book will be anathema but it will be welcomed by many who under analysis find their religious conceptions inseparably bound up with their neuroses, and by those who are in the throes of evolving a fresh ethical standard founded on the basis of the church teachings of their childhood; it is to such as these that Professor Stanley Hall dedicates the results of his labours of twenty years.

SYBIL PORTER. *x

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. By T. W. Pym, D.S.O., M.A. (Student Christian Movement, London, 1921. Pp. 134.)

This little book is an attempt to adapt the latest psychological teaching to the Christian religion. The author, a clergyman of the established church, feels that it is time Christianity recognised some of the latest psychological truths. He gives a list of ten books from which he states he has consciously obtained his psychological knowledge. As the only one quoted which has any direct bearing on psycho-analysis is ‘The New Psychology’ by A. G. Tansley, it may be inferred that a wide knowledge of the latest schools of thought is not to be expected.

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Too much importance is ascribed to the New Nancy School of thought and to reflective auto-suggestion, which is compared with religious meditation. In his discussion of psycho-analysis, based appa- rently on Tansley's book, we find evidence of the usual fear of sex. This fear, that sex may be stronger than he desires, probably causes the author to base his theories on three primary instincts, and he sand- wiches sex between the self and social instincts. He appears to think that sexuality simply means gratification of desire. Thus he shews a narrow-minded attitude towards sexuality in which the old idea of the terrible nature of fornication is conveyed. |

On page 67 an undue amount of stress is placed on the cure of fornication and impurity of heart: ‘To cure fornication find other and creative channels for surplus physical energy.’ To quote again from the same page: ‘To cure impurity of heart... pray for the positive virtues and believe in God’s power to make you clean.’ This suggests that prayer must be considered as the chief agent in the cure of sexual conflict.

From the standpoint of the Christian belief, the book is written _lucidly; from any other standpoint it is too one-sided and presupposes a dogmatic belief in all Christian doctrines. It is implied that the baulked sexual instinct is merely lustful and consequently sinful and that only those who believe in God will win through. Belief in Christ is considered to be the first and final requisite in dealing with sin, by which presumably auto-erotism is meant. Chapter IV on the Psycho- logy of Sin ends with the following sentence: ‘Sex is too big to find final satisfaction anywhere but in God Himself.’ Chapter V deals with Christianity and Psycho-Analysis and must not be taken too seriously. The following sentence from page 79 will illustrate this point: ‘The cause of the sickness is revealed through psycho-analysis and the sickness is cured largely by suggestion.’ An idea of course, completely at variance with psycho-analytical teaching. Apparently Mr. Pym regards the doctrine of forgiveness of sin as a panacea for the guilt complex (page 85). Apart from these criticisms, the book is a praiseworthy attempt to reach that class of religious society to which Psychology in any form is a closed book, and in this respect alone it will serve the purpose for which it was written.

ROBERT M. RIGGALL.

*

Tue History or HuMAN MARRIAGE. By Edward Westermarck, LL.D., Professor of Sociology in the University of London. (Macmillan & Co., London. 1921. Fifth Edition. In 3 Volumes. Pp. 1753. Price four guineas.)

Since the first edition of this work appeared, over thirty years ago, it has won an unchallenged place as the standard classic on the

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subject. Nevertheless, so much new work is constantly appearing that the author decided entirely to re-write the present edition and so little of the former ones remains that it can be regarded as a new book. It is a veritable encyclopaedia of information on all conceivable matters relating to marriage, and almost rivals Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’ as a bibliographical reference book. Like that work also, it defines its sub- ject matter very widely and so comes to deal not only with marriage in the narrower sense, but with almost every aspect of heterosexuality, both in its positive and its negative aspects. To mention only a few of the headings: virginity, celibacy, religious prostitution, jus przmae nocizs, modesty, secondary sexual characteristics, etc.

While the information on the various aspects of the subject has enormously increased in the past thirty years, and quite new sections have been added to the book even in the present edition, the author’s own views have changed but little in this time. The one perhaps most associated with his name, the denial that sexual promiscuity was ever a primitive state of mankind, has stood the test of time and is now

widely accepted. Other views of his, however, such as those on the

origin of exogamy, are still striving for recognition.

It is probable that most reviews of the work will contain nothing but the respectful admiration which is its full due and which we also freely accord. But the present review must differ from most others in adding also a note of fundamental criticism, on a matter where we have every right to speak. It is that the author has not profited from just those researches which in recent years have thrown most light on many of the problems that engage him. We refer, of course, to the investigations of psycho-analysis. Over and over again on reading the book one comes across a series of sterile speculations about some obscure problem the answer to which would be given at once by some knowledge of the unconscious, i.e. primitive, mind such as is afforded by psycho-analytic research. The overestimation of virginity and the taboos relating to it are a striking case in point. The extraordinary discussion of exogamy is another. For instance, the author rightly remarks that ‘any theory of the origin of the prohibition of incest which takes no account of the relation

between father and daughter (i.e. only of that between son and mother) is.

obviously a failure.’ This point is solved at once when one realises that prohibition of the father incest must be not .only weaker (and therefore more often broken through) than the son incest, but also inevitably secondary to it, simply because when the father-daughter relationship develops it becomes identified in the unconscious mind with the son-mother relationship, as the present reviewer has shewn in his study of the ‘alternation of generations’ phantasy.

The author makes every effort to prove that the prohibition of incest is due to a primary inborn aversion against such acts and heatedly

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opposes any other possible explanation. By the way of a reductio ad absurdum of Frazer’s obvious objection that were this so there would have been no need to reinforce that instinct by such stringent penalties, and that ‘we may safely assume that crimes forbidden by law are crimes which men have a natural propensity to commit’ Dr. Westermarck makes the really exquisite reply: ‘Would Sir James Frazer maintain... that the exceptional severity with which parricide is treated by many law-books proves that a large number of men have a natural propensity to kill their parents?’ (vol. II, p. 203). Now those having a serious faith in the determination of all mental acts must pause and ask, what made Dr. Westermarck choose just this very example to parallel the absurdity of Frazer’s statement? Can it be that the two have other points of connection besides that of absurdity? There are of course a thousand other examples of absurdity from which Dr. Westermarck could have made a choice, but the simple fact remains that he happened (by chance!) to choose just this one, the one which Psycho-Analysis has shewn to be an integral constituent of the Oedipus complex of which . the incest tendency is the other constituent, that complex which dominates the unconscious mind of all men.

Dr. Westermarck's belief that close association extinguishes lustful feelings, even to the point of intense aversion, is so strong that he extends it even to associations formed outside the family. One reads, breathlessly, that ‘Even between lads and girls who are educated together in the same school there is a conspicuous absence of erotic feelings, according to an interesting communication of a lady who has for many years been the head~mistress of such a school in Finland’ (p. 193). In a well-known novel a heroine somewhat uneasily remarks of her fiancé, ‘His mother told me he had had no love affairs’, whereupon the disappointed suitor who has been hinting the contrary makes the cynical rejoinder ‘Oh, of course, his mother would know’. It is a serious enough exposure of one’s naiveté to expect someone who has been ‘a head-mistress for many years’ to retain any knowledge of the intimate feelings of children z# eroficzs, but the situation must be des- perate if one has to go to Finland for such information. To those who have had the experience of exploring the private mental life of children the innocence that anthropological students of sex can at times display in these matters seems almost to rival that to which one is accustomed in members of the educational profession.

Not that the author has never heard of Freud. He even refers to him in a couple of contemptuous footnotes. In one, quoting a statement of Freud’s about the incestuous tendencies of childhood, he writes: ‘That the results of the so-called (!) psycho-analysts are destructive to my theory is a supposition for which I must see some evidence before I can take it seriously... the study of neurotic persons can hardly be

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regarded as a safe guide to the proper understanding of the normal manifestations of the sexual instinct. Dr. Jung, Freud’s most distin- guished disciple, says “I am able to attribute as little strength to incestuous desires in childhood as in primitive humanity”.’ (p. 204). The evidence which Dr. Westermarck demands is to hand for his study in the numerous journals and books devoted to the subject; he has only to read it. Whether the study of neurotic persons, which incidentally is far from being the only source open to psycho-analytic investigation, is a safe guide to an understanding of the normal is a matter that can be decided only by those who have made a comparative study of both, and no one has yet done this and answered the question in the negative. For Dr. Westermarck’s information we may add that the most interesting difference between the two classes is that itis the former which contains in the more accessible form the evidence relating to the nature of primitive human tendencies which gives the key to so many of the problems he is attempting to solve. We would also inform him that Dr. Jung, so far from being a ‘disciple of Freud’s’, is one of Freud’s chief opponents, so that he might just as well quote his own opinion as Dr. Jung’s.

The author has in the preparation of this new and greatly enlarged edition lost an unrivalled opportunity of incorporating the results of research that would have been invaluable for his purpose. It will not be long before the results of these researches, which he now despises, will belong to the commonplaces of general scientific information, when many of the profitless speculations to which the author devotes so much attention will have been superseded. In spite of these strictures, however, we must repeat our opinion that his work remains a massive store-house of valuable information, one quite indispensable for all students of the subject. Bevis:

TABOO AND GENETICS. A Stupy of THE BIOLOGICAL, SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY. By M.M. Knight, Ph.D., Iva Lowther Peters, Ph.D., and Phyllis Blanchard, Ph.D. (Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1920. Pp. xv +301. Price $3.00.)

This book is divided into three parts. The first of these parts, by M. M. Knight, is devoted to ‘The New Biology and the Sex Problem in Society’ and contains information as to the biological réle of sex and the processes of reproduction and heredity at different biological levels, together with an account of a good deal of the modern work on internal secretions, Mendelism and Eugenics. Part 2 on ‘The Institutionalized Sex Taboo’, by Iva Lowther Peters, treats the subject from the point of view of anthropology and ethnology, indicating the nature of the principal

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sexual taboos as manifested in primitive society and the influences exercised by these taboos in modern civilisation: while Part 3 on ‘The Sex Problem in the Light of Modern Psychology’, by Phyllis Blanchard, is concerned with the influence of the same taboos upon the individual mind. |

The book thus covers a very wide field; the biological and ethno- logical aspects, however, being treated at considerably greater length than the psychological aspects. For those who desire a brief but com- prehensive treatment of the various aspects of sex, such as can usually be found only by consulting several different works, the book is to be recommended as containing much varied information presented in an agreeable and simple manner, with constant reference to original authorities, As the authors say in their preface, ‘the influence of the primitive sex taboos on the evaluation of the social sores and family life has received too little attention in the whole literature of sexual ethics and in the sociology of sex’. It is therefore very desirable that all who are con- cerned in one way or another with sex problems (and who indeed is not?) should be provided with some means of realising the nature of the influence of our past history upon the present sexual behaviour of individuals and the present sexual institutions of society. If the book before us can help to bring about a more general realisation of this kind, it will undoubtedly perform a very useful task. The reader should however be warned that, despite the sub-title, certain important aspects of the family, such as the relations between parents and children, the reckoning of descent and the classification of family relationships, are barely touched upon, the emphasis being laid throughout upon the relationship between the sexes and the operation of dysgenic and eugenic racial factors. Parts 2 and 3, it should be added, treat the subject from the point of view of women more exclusively than would be expected in a work of this description. It is further to be regretted that the treatment of the subject from the psychological point of view should be so much shorter and more superficial than the other parts. These blemishes in some respects detract from, but by no means do away with, the general usefulness and interest of the book for popular purposes.

Perhaps the most serious criticism that may be levelled against the general presentation of the subject is that, although great stress is (tightly) laid upon the many harmful effects of sexual taboos and the relics of such taboos, there is attempted but little if any explanation of the biological and psychological functions of taboo, so that the reader is apt to be left wondering by what means these apparently so detri- mental inhibitions can have been established or perpetuated. This is perhaps not altogether the fault of the authors, being due largely to the general deficiences of our knowledge on this subject. Nevertheless, in

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a work of this kind room might profitably have been found for some more detailed consideration of the facts of sublimation and of the general function of the displacement of sexual energy to ends of ‘higher’ cultural value, and perhaps also for some mention of Herbert Spencer’s general biological law of the ‘antagonism between Individuation and Genesis’. It is only where there is some realisation of the biological advantages to be derived from sexual inhibition and the consequent diversion of sexual energy to other fields that there can be any full understanding of the ultimate nature of sexual taboos and of their réle in human society. Gk.

*

THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EvurROPE. A STUDY IN ANTHROPOLOGY, By Margaret Alice Murray. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1921. Pp. 303. Price 16s.)

The current view d4bout witches is, we presume, that they were a collection of sour beldams and neurotic girls, unusually prone to lascivious hallucinations, who were the victims of terrified or malicious neighbours aided by ignorant and superstitious judges. It is a chapter in the history of mankind which we would rather forget, an epidemic aberration. In a monograph devoted to the subject the present reviewer attempted to give it some psychological meaning, particularly from the point of view of the unconscious signification of the mutual reactions. Miss Murray attacks the problem, i.e. that of meaning, from an historical stand- point, basing her study on her knowledge of anthropology and com- parative religion, and she has produced an extremely valuable, original and illuminating work.

Miss Murray will have nothing to do with any pathological ex- planations and dismisses this aspect lightly with the words “Much con- fusion has been caused... by the unfortunate belief of modern writers in the capacity of women for hysteria’ (p. 231). It is no wonder that even with such an intelligible phenomenon as the anaesthesia and anaemia of the ‘marks’ inflicted by the devil she is reduced to saying ‘I can at present offer no solution of this problem’ (p. 86). But we cannot make this a matter of reproach to Miss Murray, for she has offered solutions enough of other and more weighty problems. |

The main thesis of the book can be shortly stated. Witches and sorcerers are alleged to represent the survival of a pre-Christian fertility cult, to which the author gives the name of the ‘Dianic cult’. Her view is that witchcraft was a definite organised religion which regarded: Christianity as its natural enemy. Its main characteristics were various rites and ceremonies designed to increase fertility in human beings, animals and crops. When Christianity undertook to eXtirpate it as a

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particularly odious form of paganism it defended itself and retaliated, along the lines of a ‘castration-complex’, by shifting its interest in the increased fertility of its own members on to that in diminished fertility of its enemies. This was the reason, as indeed was avowed in the celebrated Decree of Innocent VIII, why Christians were alarmed at the idea of witchcraft and destroyed witches whenever possible. This view certainly tallies with the conclusion reached by the reviewer that the various forms of malefictum exercised by witches were all symbolic forms of the ‘ligature’, i.e. were designed to induce impotence.

The greater part of the book consists of a detailed study of the individual rites, admission ceremonies, meetings and so on, and the actual evidence on which this is founded is admirably marshalled and amply documented. From the mass of detailed conclusions a few only can be mentioned here. There is reason to think that there was a con- siderable hierarchy of officials and that each congregation, or ‘coven’, comprised thirteen fully initiated witches, or rather twelve and a ‘ devil’, There are many indications of a totemistic God-sacrifice, akin to the Christian one; sacrifices were made of just those animals whose form was assumed by the God-Devil, and leaders voluntarily submitted to be executed by the law, the devotees often acquiescing in this God-sacrifice even when they might have prevented it. In this way is in part to be explained the supineness of the French in the case of Joan of Arc, for, sad to relate, Miss Murray thinks it probable that after all Joan was a devil-worshipper, witch and heretic. So after five centuries of execration the Bishop of Beauvais experiences a belated vindication, at least of his intellectual judgement if not of his humanity. There would, incidentally, seem to be scope for a psycho-analytic study of Joan. Miss Murray pro- vides an interesting, and rather convincing, explanation of the old riddle of the coldness of the devil’s genitalia, a feature which recurs over and again in the trials. She points out that the man who impersonated the devil in each district was doubtless called upon—from both ritualistic and lewd motives—by the ladies of the congregation to exercise his virile powers to an extent far exceeding his physical capacities, and she suggests that he eked these out by the obvious device of providing himself with an artifical phallus, e.g. of leather. This would seem to account for a number of the features recorded, such as the usual absence of semen with the devil, the impossibility of his impregnating the witch, and the curious and manifold descriptions of the size, colour and shape of the organ. Another riddle Miss Murray does not solve—one pointed out, we believe, for the first time—is that the vast majority of the names of witches are eight in number, including their respective variants: Ann, Alice, Christian, Elizabeth, Ellen, Joan (by far the commonest), Margaret and Marion.

On can only admire the evidence in the book of solid work. As to

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the author's conclusions we find many of them highly suggestive, including her main thesis, but there appear to us to be two important gaps in it which need to be filled before it can be regarded as established. In the first place proof is lacking of the elaborate degree of higher organisation which Miss Murray rather, as it seems to us, assumes. The evidence she quotes would accord quite as well with the assumption of a scattered and only loosely connected set of customs and beliefs (much as with superstitions) as with that of an elaborate secret society on the pattern of the mythical ‘Elders of Zion’. Secondly, if the theory were true in the form stated by Miss Murray, it should be possible to discover more evidence bearing on it from the Christian side, and especially from earlier epochs when presumably the cult would be much more open and widespread. In general it is a pity that the data here given are so late, mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although it is true that witchcraft as, so to speak, an institution was especially as- sociated with the years between 1400 and 1700 (a limitation in time, by the way, which speaks against Miss Murray’s theory), yet there is no difficulty in tracing back the constituents of the phenomenon to the earliest times.

In conclusion a word of praise should be reserved for the general arrangement of the book, with its comprehensive index and its com- plete addenda giving amongst other things the names and addresses of all known witches, lists of covens, and a study of the ointments used for flying.

The book is by far the most important one on the subject that has appeared in recent years and will be invaluable to those interested in the various aspects of this gruesome subject. E. J.

THE PRIVATE CHARACTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Frederick Chamberlin. (The Bodley Head, London, 1921. Pp. 325. Price 18s.)

‘I have never been able to control the M.S. of this publication’, says Mr. Chamberlin in almost the first words of his preface. To the expectant reader they are a little ominous—and the reader of this book must be decidedly expectant.

Queen Elizabeth has always been an enigma. Two fairly obvious facts about her and her reign stand out: the first is her exceptional ability, which abundance of contemporary evidence attests; the’second is that during her reign ‘the British Empire was born', as Mr. Chamberlin proclaims —an unquestionable fact, however you express it. But the problem for the historian lies in the relation between these facts. To what extent

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did Elizabeth’s ability bring about or contribute to the ‘birth of the British Empire’, and what were the ways and means by which her ability was manifested to achieve this end? Not many historians have attempted to approach this problem in the light of psychology—perhaps Beesley came near to it; one of the earliest of them, Sir Anthony Weldon, in 1652, left her reign out of his work altogether on the grounds that ‘I have nothing to do with women and wish I never had’—his sense of inadequacy was complete. Most of the historians have turned the obscurity of the past to their own account by tracing out a figure of the Queen that agrees with their own views. This is the way of historians, however; perhaps it is this trait that has led many critics of Mr. Chamberlin’s book to hail it as a contribution to history. For although he has no political or religious axe to grind, and is exclusively interested in intimate matters relating to the Queen, yet his own view of her has proved all-compelling—he is concerned to trace out a figure of her which first grew in his imagination.

The preface opens by telling us that eight years ago Mr. Chamberlin set out to write a biography of Queen Elizabeth on the usual lines. Then come the words quoted above, indicating that something in the subject carried him away; it is clear that an obsession concerning the Queen gradually absorbed all the writer’s interest. We discover that the con- templated biography has reduced and expanded itself into a con- sideration, a collection, ‘of all the contemporary evidence for and against the morality of Elizabeth’ (documentary evidence, he means), and that this is the point which proved so uncontrollable to Mr. Chamberlin. We open a study on the private character of an enigmatic historical woman, which, besides having the obvious intrinsic interest of all personal narratives about the great, should inevitably throw light on the problem of her influence on the affairs of her time. We find the book devoted to the question of her chastity, strictly speaking, of her physzcal virginity, and about one third of it taken up with the question of her health —apparently on the assumption that an invalid is precluded from the experience of the sexual act. Mr. Chamberlin can be sarcastic enough about those who use words in too narrow a sense—e. g. neurotic to mean erotic, and specific to mean syphilitic—but he himself sees in the word ‘character’ no connotation but that of the physical sexual act!

After the first shock of this disappointment we might reflect that the question of a woman’s virginity has many aspects of importance, and we would certainly not be understood to belittle them. It is a matter that has affected human development probably as much as any other. The problem of Elizabeth’s chastity, and incidentally of her health, may be quite worth considering in itself; although we may differ widely from Mr. Chamberlin in thinking it ‘the most significant inquiry that can be raised concerning the life of Elizabeth’. In this book these questions are

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exhaustively investigated, in so far as contemporary documentary evidence contains any reference to them—of inferences bearing on them drawn from other known facts about the Queen there is practically nothing. The book is crammed with quotations, footnotes and references and bears every mark of careful and patient research. Enthusiasm and boundless devotion to his task could alone have produced such labour, and indeed Mr. Chamberlin makes no secret of his attitude towards the Queen. His superlatives are quite unrestrained: Elizabeth is ‘by far the greatest woman of history... the greatest monarch who has ever occupied the throne of England’, or, with three exceptions, any throne. Again, she is ‘a genius’, and a letter written by her at the age of fifteen ‘shows signs of greater ability than anything written by any other person of similar age in all the records of history’.

In order that his defence of his idol may be more telling, the author greatly magnifies, if he does not altogether invent, a general supposition that Elizabeth’s private life was morally licentious; few people would agree with him that ‘it is the unanimous opinion of mankind’ that she was the mistress of four men or more. He himself is passionately con- vinced of her chastity; and believes that his book will reverse the opinion of the world. He has sought to surpass all previous historians, and he has greatly overestimated the importance of the problem and of his own contributions to a solution of it. His aim, he says, has been to let the evidence speak for itseli—and it does, leaving us all exactly where we were before. The five distinguished medical authorities to whom he sub- mitted the mass of evidence about her ill-health are extremely guarded in their judgements of it. Most of it emanates from the Spanish and French Ambassadors, who of course, when times were dull, were glad enough to fill up their reports home with hopeful rumours of the Queen’s expected early death. In many instances it is perfectly clear that the ‘illnesses’ arose conveniently in political exigencies. In the light of modern knowledge of the neuroses many of the minor ailments, even if authentic, may well have been manifestations of some hysterical tendency; indeed, one observer, Leicester, in writing of rumours of her ill-health actually diagnoses one of them thus: ‘The Queen is in good health; somewhat her Majesty hath been troubled by a spice or show of Mother! but indeed not so’, meaning that the ‘spice’ did not develop seriously, as he goes on to explain. Incidentally, and as bearing on the value of this ‘kind of evidence generally, it is interesting to note that Leicester, whose interests, in contrast to the Ambassadors’, were of course bound up with the Queen’s health, is always at pains to describe her as well. At any rate, the fact remains that she lived to be all but seventy, in spite of the appalling medical treatment of those days, and that she took an active part all her life in affairs.

‘ Common contemporary term for hysteria.

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The evidence about her chastity is equally inconclusive. Pang her lifetime several people recorded their belief that there was ‘nothing wrong’ in her intimacies with her favourites—apparently the Spanish Ambassador used these very words. But we have to remember that the expressions of opinion of all her entourage, not excepting Burghley who probably knew the truth, were liable to be coloured by political if not personal considerations—namely, the ardent desire of every politician that the Queen should marry and have an heir. Similarly, much of the scandal about her was an inevitable result of her position and of her injudicious behaviour. Elizabeth was no prude; it is even possible that she would not have approved of Mr. Chamberlin’s efforts to attribute to her a morality far in advance of the general standard of her age.

The best approach to the problem would be by the path of modern psychology. But even so, greater knowledge brings with it further uncertainties. Here it can only be said that, apart from any political, moral, or religious motives restraining her, there are plenty of indications that Queen Elizabeth was a woman whose sexual needs were far from normal. The circumstances of her early life were heavily against a normal development: the character of Henry VIII, her father, and his marital relations, his treatment of her mother and of herself can hardly have failed to be traumatic in their effect. An attempt at seduction of the little Princess, at the age of thirteen, by the second husband of. Katherine Parr, her step-mother, evidently left traces on her subsequent health and character, as Mr. Chamberlin has dimly perceived. The detailed narrative of this affair and of the way in which the young girl dealt with the dangers to which it exposed her is the contribution of most value and interest in the book.

There was little about the Queen characteristic of anormal fully-developed woman—little passivity, no submissiveness, little orno maternal feeling ;acom- parison with her successor, Victoria, makes that instantly clear. Of unco- ordinated primal tendencies several are very marked, notoriously of course exhibitionism; they all stand in close relation to narcissism, clearly the dominant note of her character. The narcissism and the masculinity complex (evident in her astonishing intellectual development and many masculine traits) make it very probable that the female part in the normal sexual act had no attraction for her and that she never experienced it. She had many opportunities for sublimation of her narcissism. In its unsublimated crude form, closely allied with exhibitionism, it is expressed in the craving she showed for devoted adorers, of whom Mr. Chamberlin appears to be the latest. It is indeed unlikely that the real Elizabeth ever inspired such a passion as his—which is a sufficient explanation of the uncontrollable nature of his book.

JOAN RIVIERE.

REPORTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO- ANALYTICAL ASSOCIATION

AMERICAN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY List of Members

Ames, Dr. T. H., 375 Park Ave, New York.

Brill, Dr. A. A., 1 West 7oth Street, New York.

Brown, Dr. Sanger II., 173 East 7oth Street, New York.

Burrow, Dr. Trigant, The Tuscany, Baltimore, Md.

Clark, Dr. L. Pierce, 20 East 48th Street, New York.

Coriat, Dr. Isador H., 416 Marlborough Street, Boston, Mass.

Emerson, Dr. L. E., 64 Sparks Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Farnell, Dr. F. J.. 219 Waterman Street, Providence, R. I.

Frink, Dr. H. W., 17 East 38th Street, New York.

Hall, Prof. G. Stanley, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.

Hamill, Dr. Ralph G., 666 Spence Street, Winnetka, IIL.

Hutchings, Dr. R. H., Utica State Hospital, Utica, N. Y.

Jelliffe, Dr. S. E., 64 West 56th Street, New York.

Kempf, Dr. E. J., 100 West soth Street, New York.

Luce, Dr, L. A., 536 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.

McCurdy, Dr. John T., 46 West 55th Street, New York.

Meyer, Dr. Adolf, Phipps Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bal- timore, Md. :

Oberndorf, Dr. C. P., (Secretary) 249 West 74th Street, New York.

Payne, Dr. C. R., Wadhams, N. Y.,

Pope, Dr. Curran, 115 West Chestnut Street, Louisville, Ky.

Reed, Dr. Ralph, 180 E. McMillan Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Singer, Dr. H. D., State Psychopathic Hospital, Dunning, Ill.

Stern, Dr. Adolph, 40 West 84th Street, New York.

Stuart, Dr. D. D. V., 1728 Connecticut Ave., Washington, D. C.

Tancyhill, Dr. G. Lane, 405 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, Md.

Van Tesslar, Dr. J. S., 12 Kent Street, Brookline, Mass.

Walker, Dr. W. K., 1018 Westinghouse Bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa.

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REPORTS 261

Wells, Dr. F. Lyman, McLean Hospital, Waverley, Mass. White, Dr. Wm. A., St. Elizabeths Hosp., Washington, D. C. Wholey, Dr. C. C., 4616 Bayard St., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Young, Dr. G. A., 424 Brandeis Bldg., Omaha, Neb.

*

BERLIN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY

February 1, 1922. Business meeting to discuss points relating to the preparations for the forthcoming Congress.

February 7, 1922. Dr. F. Alexander: The castration complex and character-formation.

February 14, 1922. Short communications relating to cases seen at the Folikiintk.

a. Dr. Simmel: General remarks on the dreams of an epileptic female patient.

é. Frau Klein: A ‘Sunday’-neurosis in a child.

c. Dr. Alexander: Supplementary remarks on the neurotic character.

d. Dr. Harnik: Remarks on the analysis of an obsessional neurosis in a homosexual.

e. Dr. Eitingon: Some peculiarities of the material met with at the FPolikiinzk. :

February 21, 1922. Discussion on Dr. Alexander’s review of February 7; further remarks by Frau Klein: On latent anxiety.

March 7, 1922. Frau Dr. Hubermann: On the concept of disease among primitive peoples.

March 14, 1922. Short Communications.

March 21, 1922. Léwenstein: The Black Mass.

Dr. Abraham: Faulty performance of actions with a com- - pensatory tendency.

April 4, 1922. Dr. H. Sachs: Remarks on the analysis of a case of obsessional neurosis.

April 11, 1922. Short Communications.

a. Dr. C. Miiller: Objects symbolic of the testicles,

4. Dr. H. Sachs: The symbolism of ball games.

c. Dr. Harnik: On throwing objects out of the window.

d. Dr. Abraham: A blunder: mistaking an expression.

e. Frau Dr. Klein: Analysis of a school composition,

262 REPORTS

J. Dr. C. Miiller: A further source of envy of the penis.

g. Dr. Boehm:? Difficulties in the analysis of a case of homo- sexuality.

April 25, 1922. Dr. Abraham: A case of Pseudologia phan- tastica.

DR. M. Errincox Secretary.

List of members November 1, 1921.

A. Members

Dr. med. Karl Abraham (President), Berlin-Grunewald, Bismarck- Allee 14.

Dr. med. Franz Alexander, Berlin W., Dtisseldorferstrafe 77.

Dr, med. Felix Boehm, Berlin W. 50, Rankestrafe 20.

Dr. med. Max Eitingon (Secretary), Berlin W. 10, Rauchstrafe 4.

Dr. med. Rudolf Foerster, Hamburg, Parkallee 42.

Dr. med. Gerstein, Hamburg, Kolonnaden 96.

Dr. med. Georg Groddeck, Baden-Baden, Werderstrafe 14.

Dr. med. J. Harnik, Berlin W. 35, Potsdamerstrafe 29/IV, Poliklinik.

Frau Dr. med. Karen Horney, Berlin-Zehlendorf-Mitte, Sophie- Charlotte-Strafe 15.

Dr. med. Heinrich Koerber, Berlin W. 15, Meinekestrafe 7.

Dr. med. Hans Liebermann, Berlin W., Trautenaustrafe 18.

Dr. phil. Karl Miiller-Braunschweig, Berlin-Schmargendorf,, Helgo- landstrafe 1.

Dr. med. M. Nachmannsohn, Koenigsberg, Mozartstrafe 34.

Dr. jur. Hanns Sachs, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Mommsenstrafe 7/IlV.

Dr. med. Simonson, Berlin-Halensee, Georg Wilhelm-Strafe 2.

Dr. med. Ernst Simmel, Berlin W. 15, Emserstrafe 21.

Fraulein Dr. med. Anna Smeliansky, Berlin W. 35, Potsdamer- strahe 29/IV,. Poliklinik.

Frau Dr. med. Margarete Stegmann, Dresden A, Sidoniestrafe 18.

Dr. med. Vollrath, Teupitz, Kreis Teltow J, Landesirrenanstalkt.

Dr. med. Wanke, Friedrichroda i. Thiir, GartenstraBe 14.

Dr. med. Wittenberg, Miinchen, Elisabethstrafe 17.

Frau Dr. med. Happel, Frankfurt a.M., Leerbachstrafe 39.

Frau Dr. med. I. Miiller, Berlin-Schmargendorf, Helgoland- strafe I.

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B. Associate Members

Frau Melanie Klein, Berlin-Schmargendorf, Cunostrafe 46. Frau Dr. phil. Helene Stoecker, Berlin-Wannsee, Miinchow- strafe 1. |

C. Honorary Member

Dr. med. Alexander Ferenczi, Budapest.

*K

BRITISH PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY

There have been six meetings of the Society since the last report.

The Meeting held on January 4, 1922 was devoted to a general dis- cussion on various points brought forward by members.

At the Meeting on January 18, Mr. Duggan (a visitor) read a paper on ‘Psycho-Analytical Principles in Education’.

Abstract: In recent years the aims and methods of education have been considerably changed. Psycho-analysis is of value in helping us to attain our aims. It affects the educator in two ways, » by revealing his own complexes and by giving insight into the child’s mind. At present we need chiefly to avoid the mistakes of the old educators in the problems which faced them. These are often connected with the sexual life, notably masturbation and homosexuality. Whatever may be the best solution the old methods are to be deprecated. Experiments in new methods appear to be desirable.

A discussion took place on the various points raised in the paper.

At the Meeting on February 1, Miss May Smith (a pn, read a paper on ‘Repression in Industry’.

Abstract: The conditions of modern factory life ne a very considerable repression on the part of individuals, for against a background of compulsion and monotony the self-assertive instinct in particular has little chance for expression. To some in whom this instinct is weak the situation is not difficult, but to others the difficulty of adjustment is great, and the resultant differences in conduct are great. Several types seem to stand out clearly:

‘I. The truculent type who is always up against authority.

264 REPORTS

2. The type that is outwardly submissive, but compensates in phantasy life. , ’

3. The type that reacts in exaggerated form outside the works, etc.

4. The type that: reconciles anxiously the two instincts.

Various points arising out of the paper were then discussed.

At the Meeting on February 16, Rev. P. Youlden Johnson (a visitor) read a paper entitled ‘Technical Terms for the Various Dynamic States of the Mind’.

Abstract: The chaotic state of psychological terminology and consequent confusion. The danger of static rather than dynamic interpretation of present terms. The failure of the conscious to find original terms. The marks of the Freudian teaching, i.e. work of the unconscious traced, even in this failure. The task then given as an experiment to the unfettered unconscious and the result analysed by the Freudian method. The terms found fulfilled all four previously determined conditions, confirmed Freud’s teaching regarding infantile and childhood’s impressions and choice of material, and were therefore Freudian in nature and typically Freudian in respect to the dynamic states of the mind as classified by Ernest Jones. A discussion followed.

At the Meeting on March 1, Dr. W. Inman (a visitor) read a paper on ‘Some Psychical Symptoms in Ophthalmic Practice’.

Abstract: The paper dealt with the generally accepted opinion amongst the public and the medical profession that the most common cause of headache was eye-strain, and the view was expressed that whilst frontal aching, due to over-action of the frontalis and corru- gator supercilii muscles, was frequently associated with an appreciable error of refraction, there was grave reason for doubting if pain elsewhere was ever caused by eyestrain. It had been found that many other neurotic symptoms were present in these cases, and that when one was removed the patients usually took refuge in another.

In accordance with the view that the eye had a phallic significance several symptoms associated with the appendages of the eyes were brought forward, including fibrillary twitching of the orbicularis muscle (‘live blood’), watering of the eyes without obvious obstruction of the tear passage or reflex irritation, inflammation of the conjunctiva at times of emotional stress (comparable with the conjunctivitis neurotica described by Abraham), atropine irritation of the lids,

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and denudation of the brows and eyelashes. Cases illustrating these conditions were described.

Inequality of the pupils and partial ptosis following psychical disturbance were referred to.

A relation between concomitant squint or heterophoria, left- handedness and stammering had been found in a series of over five hundred cases, and the opinion was expressed that whereas the left-handers almost invariably proved to be rebels against parental authority, the squinting and stammering were indications that an element of fear was present in the attitude of the children towards one or both parents.

A discussion followed.

Atthe Meeting on March 15, the Interim Report of the Propaganda Sub-committee was discussed. The points brought forward specially concerned methods for increasing the circulation of the /uternational Fournal of Psycho-Analysts, and getting the status and activities of the Society more widely recognised. The question of the organisation of a course of lectures was considered and the sub-committee was asked to make a further report with respect to details, such as

lecturers, syllabus of lectures, etc.

Douctas BRYAN Hon. Sec.

List of Members October 13, 1921.

Major Owen Berkeley-Hill, I.M.S., European Hospital, Ranchi, India.

Dr. Douglas Bryan, (Hon. Secretary), 72 Wimpole Street, London, W. I.

Mr. Cyril Burt, 30 Princess Road, Regent’s Park, N. W. 1.

Dr. Estelle Maude Cole, 12 Weymouth Court, Weymouth Street, London, W. I.

Mr. J. C. Fliigel (Member of the Council), 11 Albert Road, Regent's Park, London, N. W. I.

Dr. D. Forsyth, 74 Wimpole Street, London, W. 1.

Dr. Ernest Jones (President), 111 Harley Street, London, W. 1.

Miss Barbara Low, 13 Guilford Street, Russell Square, London. W.C. I.

Dr. Stanford Read, 31 Wimpole Street, London, W. 1.

Dr. R. M. Riggall, 31 Wimpole Street, London, W. 1.

Mrs. Riviere, 10 Nottingham Terrace, London, N. W. 1.

Dr. Vaughan-Sawyer, 131 Harley Street, London, W. 1.

266: REPORTS

Dr. W.H. B. Stoddart (Hon. Treasurer), Harcourt House, Cavendish: Square, London, W. 1.

Associate Members

Dr. C. Bose, 14 Parsi Bagan, Calcutta, India.

Dr. O. H. Bowen, Gwynant, Peak’s Hill, Purley.

Dr. W. H. Brend, 14 Bolingbroke Grove, Wandsworth Common, London, S. W.

. Mrs. Brierley, 53 Hunter Street, London, W.C. 1.

Dr. Chuckerbutty, c/o Grindley’s, Calcutta, India.

Dr. M. Culpin, Meads, Loughton, Essex.

Dr. H. E. Davison, 34 Russell Gardens, Golders Green, London, N. W. II.

Dr. J. Glover, 26 Mecklenburg Square, Russell Square, London, W. C.1.

Rev. P. Gough, S. Thomas’ Vicarage, Halifax.

Dr. Bernard Hart, 81 Wimpole Street, London, W. 1.

Dr. Herbert, 2 St. Peters Square, Manchester.

Dr. M.B. Herford, 19 Redlands Road, Reading.

Dr. W. J. Jago, 50 Leyland Road, Lee, London, S. E. 12.

Major C. McWatters, c/o Grindley’s, Bombay, India.

Dr. T. W. Mitchell, Hadlow, near Tonbridge, Kent.

Prof. Percy Nunn, London Day Training College, Southampton Row, London.

Mrs. Porter, 34 De Vere Gardens, London, W. 8.

Dr. J. Rickman, London,

Dr. W. H.R. Rivers, St. Johns College, Cambridge.

Major R. B. Ryan, 4 Milverton Street, Moonee Ponds, Melbourne, Australia.

Miss Ella Sharpe, 2 Mecklenburg Street, London, W. C. 1.

Dr. T. Waddelow Smith, City Asylum, Nottingham.

Dr. C. R. A. Thacker, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Dr. Rees Thomas, Greyridges, Retford, Notts.

Mrs. Walker, 11 St. Georges Road, London, S. W. I.

Dr. Monier Williams, 48 Onslow Gardens, S. W. 7.

Dr. Maurice Wright, 4 Devonshire Place, London, W. 1.

Honorary Members

Dr. S. Ferenczi, Budapest. Dr. Otto Rank, Vienna.

é

REPORTS 267

DUTCH PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY

Fanuary 14, 1922, at the Hague: Dr.J. Knappert described the work of a painter whom he had had under observation for some time. The paintings and drawings impressed him from the first as plastically-reproduced dreams. The analysis confirmed this; the productions proved to be actually disguised expressions of the painter’s thoughts.

February 18,1922, at Amsterdam; Dr. A. van der Chijs described the work of another painter whom he had treated for a considerable time. In this case also the drawings and paintings expressed very clearly the artist’s conflicts. In drawing them he had usually no notion of their meaning, which only became clear to him after analysis.

Dr. van Ophuijsen communicated an analysis of an ‘unintelligible’ song which had been sent to him by a literary man. This-song belonged to a collection kept by a society of total abstainers; it described the sexual act in symbolic terms of a nautical character.

Dr. J. Varendonck then gave an account of what he has called ‘duplicative memory’. As a first example he mentioned Anna O,, Breuer’s well-known patient, who for a long period lived in the reminiscences of the preceding year. But in normal persons also this kind of repetition plays an important part; he himself often re-lived in thought experiences which he had gone through earlier in a similar situation—several examples of this were given.

March 25, 1922, at the Hague: The President called attention to the fact that five years had passed since the Society was founded; he then passed in review the events of this first /ustrum and mentioned the earlier history of the movement and the fact that as long ago as August 1913 the founders of the Society had been in the habit of meeting for discussion at irregular intervals.

Dr. F. P. Muller gave a review of Freud’s ‘Jenseits des Lust- prinzips’, which was followed by a lively discussion in which all

the members present took part. Dr. Avoten F. Meyer

Secretary List of Members

Professor Dr. K. H. Bouman (Librarian), Jan Luijkenstraat 24,

Amsterdam, 18

268 REPORTS

Dr. A. van der Chijs, van Breestraat 117, Amsterdam.

Dr. W. H. Cox, Asylum ‘Willem Arntsz Hoeve’, Den Dolder.

Dr. J. E. G. van Emden (President), Jan van Nassaustraat 84, The Hague. :

Dr. A, Endtz, Asylum ‘Endegeest’, Oegstgeest (near Leiden).

Dr. J. H. van der Hoop, P. C., Hooftstraat 5, Amsterdam.

Professor Dr. G. Jelgersma, Terweepark 2, Leiden.

Dr. J. Knappert, Middelburg.

Dr. B. D. J. van de Linde, Boomberglaan 4, Hilversum.

Dr. Adolph F. Meijer (Secretary), Koninginneweg 77, Haarlem.

Dr. S. J. R. de Monchy, Schiedamsche singel 112, Rotterdam.

Dr. Fred Muller, Julianastraat 8, Haarlem.

Dr. F. P. Muller, Leidsche straatweg 2, Oegstgeest (near Leiden).

Dr. J. H. W. van Ophuijsen (Treasurer), Prinsevinkenpark 5, The Hague.

Dr. A. W. van Renterghem, Bronckhorststraat 18, Amsterdam.

Dr. J. M. Rombouts, Oegstgeesterlaan 31, Leiden.

Dr. W. U. Schuurman, Wilhelmina-Gasthuis, Amsterdam.

Dr. Aug. Starcke, Den Dolder (near Utrecht).

Dr. A. J. Westerman Holstijn, van Breestraat 1, Amsterdam.

Forezgn Member: Dr. J. Varendonck, 42 Rue de la Pacification, Ledeberg-Gand (Belgium).

*

HUNGARIAN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY!

I

November 5, 1921. Dr. S, Feldmann: Remarks on the Analysis of a Pregnancy-Neurosis.

The case described was that of a female patient in whom the outbreak of neurosis coincided in point of time with her pregnancies and was also connected in content with them. She was overtaken by depression after the birth of both her first two children; she suffered from a peculiar sense of loss, cared nothing for the children and so on. After she had procured the abortion of a third pregnancy, her condition became worse. She was aware of violent feelings of revenge directed against her children, her husband, and

=

‘ The reports are made up from the notes of the various speakers.

REPORTS 269

her father whom she had been passionately fond of, and was tormented by an impulse to murder her children:

Analysis revealed that the central point of the neurosis lay in the castration complex. To the patient her child was her penis: the confinement was a repetition of the castration. Her aim was to retain her children within her body and her confinements had consequently been lengthy and difficult. On the other hand, her - narcissism was affected by pregnancy; the children were ‘destroy- ing’ her body. Stereotyped dreams were concerned with damage to her room and her furniture. Her impulses to murder the children proved to be reactions to this feeling of injury.

The developments undergone by the sadistic-masochistic pair of impulses played the principal part in the neurosis; but these remarks cannot very well be condensed. The speaker took the view that a pregnancy-neurosis belongs to the group of patho- neuroses (Ferenczi).

In the course of his remarks the speaker referred to the injurious consequences of artificial abortion, and also invited discussion on three other cases observed by him, in which an un- conscious (hysterical) pregnancy had hindered the development of a real pregnancy ; after the elucidation of the hysterical symptom the long-desired conception took place.

The following took part in the discussion: Hollés, Réheim, Eisler, Radé, Ferenczi.

November 26, 192r. Dr. Imre Hermann: Contribution to the Psychology of Expressional Movements.

The fundamental principle of psycho-analysis in the scientific investigation of expressional movements is as follows: the affects are conditioned by a latent primary preconscious process, and by two secondary processes, namely, a subjective conscious one and an objective motor one. (Criticism of the Lange theory). The guiding principle of the primary process, according to Freud, is reminiscence, which also to some extent explains the problem of the secondary process. The latter motor process is the main subject of this paper.

A general review of the older theories concerning expressional movements shows that the idea of reminiscence is not entirely absent from them, although not clearly expressed (Darwin, Lehmann). Many of the theories lay a marked emphasis on the latent psychic content (J.J. Engel—1785, Piderit, Ribot). The dominating ideas

18*

270 REPORTS

of these theories are contained in the conception of ‘analogy’ (Engel) and of ‘imaginary excitation’ (Piderit); the material is grouped according to them. Ferenczi’s ‘ materialization-phenomenon’ may be regarded as a combination of the two. Besides his theory concerned with the idea of reminiscence, Darwin gives other examples of psychic mechanisms activated in expressional movements; these the speaker recognizes as primitive mechanisms employed in dream-work (representation by an opposite, appearance of a repressing instead of a repressed idea). Many authors regard the expressional movements as symbolic, but all the older theories prove unsatisfactory in cases where the libido is concerned (With regard to anal-erotic components, see Preier: ‘Die Erklarung des Weinens’),?

The speaker’s conclusion is that all expressional movements are conditioned by a topographical regression to a particular system, the ego-body-system. (The bodily organs are doubled in the mental apparatus; they belong to the ego, and also to the system for concrete ideas (Sachsystem), according to a conclusion of Ferenczi’s). This assumption opens new paths to a conception of artistic activities. The speaker here took occasion to refute an old and wide-spread fallacy, namely, that affects are impelled towards motor discharge from energic causes; the source of energy for motor activity is provided locally and does not lie in the mental apparatus.

In contrast to Ferenczi (‘Hysterie und Pathoneurosen’) the speaker takes the view that thought-processes are carried on in the ego-body-system and that regression does not merely occasion simple reflexes. The standpoint thus arrived at inductively can also be traced out deductively, on the one hand from the conception of thought itself, on the other by reference to a primitive process of abstraction (Rand-Hervorhebung). This is linked up with the explanation of laughter which is supported by the conception of a primitive marginal abstraction (Rand-Abstraktion) and by the assumption of a ‘fore-pleasure repository’ (cheek, larnyx, mouth- zone, etc).

An attempt is then made to apply Wundt’s three dimensions of feeling to three different kinds of processes: excitation and inhibition would follow upon changes in sexual chemistry, tension and release upon the metapsychological process of cleavage (or

‘ (The Explanation of Weeping. Tr.]

REPORTS 271

mingling) in the system. Sexual-chemical processes would thus bring the actual neuroses very near to expressional movements, as Freud maintains of the symptom in the psycho-neuroses. In conclusion, the speaker controverts the view that the act of thinking can arise in motor activity: action can only be ranged alongside of thinking. Both of them however are purposive per- formances, which cannot be said of every motor activity. Action is a more primitive form of thought-expression than so-called ‘preconscious thinking’. If thinking is accompanied by motor dis- charge as well as by affects, it merely confirms the rule that every mental process pursues the course of the phylo- and onto- genetic path of development characteristic of it.

Discussion: Dr. S. Radé’s opinion was that although the speaker had expressly accepted Freud’s reminiscence theory of affects, he had tacitly abandoned it again in attempting an explanation of expressional movements from the isolated investigation of motor phenomena. That is exactly the line taken by the James-Lange theory, which the speaker explicitly rejects! The speaker has given a very valuable review of the past literature on the subject: Rad6o wished particularly to draw attention to Darwin’s invaluable achievement in first propounding the phylogenetic origin of affects. Darwin’s formula—expressional movements: are archaic functions of utility, which have been retained in the course of the evolution of the species after their original purpose had ceased to exist—may be modified by Freud’s view that archaic processes of libido-develop- ment determine the formation of affects (as in the hysterical attack). Much that the speaker said was unfortunately not entirely com- prehensible to Raddé. Psycho-Analysis must hold fast to the conception of ‘motor discharge’, heuristically so important, in spite of Berger’s experiments in temperature-measurement, which incidentally do not in any way controvert this conception.

Dr. S. Feréncezi said that by the assumption of special ego- memory-systems in the mind, which register subjective experiences apart from objective ones, he did not in the least exclude the possibility, as the speaker had erroneously supposed, that more complicated processes of thinking could exist in this system. However this may be, the first task of the psycho-analyst in regard to affects must be to discover the genetic (historical) causes of expressional movements. The psycho-physiological paths by which reminiscences find expression can then in their turn be investigated;

272 REPORTS

this will be in part a matter for physiology and not for psychology. The attempt to explain laughter and weeping fell short by a failure to assess the importance of the part played by respiration. The respiratory tract is actively engaged where affects are concerned; on the one hand in its capacity as an erotogenic zone (Forsyth), on the other hand because shortness of breath (or apnoea) can take part in the whole gamut of pleasure-pain feelings and is thus specially adapted to reflect emotions of every kind. A similar réle belongs to the heart. The pleasurable and painful Capacities of the respiratory and the circulatory systems may be ultimately traced back to the alterations in circulation at birth, phylogenetically to the process of adaptation by which water- animals became land-animals, or to the reminiscence of these traumata, which have not yet been fully abreacted and which seize upon every available opportunity for the purpose of achieving motor discharge. :

December 10, 192i. Dr. Sigmund Pfeifer: Problems of the Psychology of Music in the Light of Psycho-Analysis. Part 2. On Rhythm. :

Like sound, rhythm is an elementary phenomenon of music; the intoxicating effect of it and the feeling of leaving the world behind are due first and foremost to rhythm. Its similarity to suggestion in this respect and its power to induce dreams and phantasies are emphasized by Souriau and Groos, analytically by F, Teller and E. Bardas, and its compulsion by Nietzsche. The compulsive repetition in it draws to itself (and so ‘binds’) conscious attention, so that the cathexis is withdrawn from the repressing censorship and the way opened to wish-fulfilling, pleasure-producing tendencies, all of which is evinced in a general feeling of pleasure, of intoxication. A similar though more extreme process may be observed in the traumatic neurosis, where loss of consciousness (withdrawal of cathexis from consciousness) ensues upon a single stimulus which mostly takes the form of a sound resolving itself into rhythmical reverberations. The rhythm enables this painful effect (which represents the hostile outer world) to be mastered by means of a series-formation on the principle of compulsive repetition: and to be converted into pleasure by a regression to unconscious narcissism.

The other source of pleasure in rhythm is the economy of expenditure in ideas and perception possible with the repetition

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of a single stimulus (cp. Freud's preliminary pleasure mechanism in ‘Wit and its Relation to Everyday Life’). This economy also brings about a diminution of the perceptive and of the censoring tension, and a regression to autonomic, narcissistic mental states. The prototype of this condition is sleep, in which periodic, autonomic processes are uppermost.

The deeper unconscious levels of the mind may also exert an attraction upon the aperiodic higher activities, which then arrange these into arhythm (e.g. the pseudo-rhythmical noise of a railway train). This extreme case is seen in certain hysterical and catatonic manifestations.

According to this, rhythm would have arisen as a ‘complemental series’ from the co-operation of the following three factors: compulsive repetition, pleasure in economy, force of attraction exerted by the unconscious. All three lead away from consciousness, away from adaptation to reality, to the unconscious, to narcissism (autonomy).

Prototypes of rhythm are to be found in intra-uterine life and in the infantile activity of erotogenetic zones (Ferenczi, K. Weiss). Autonomic processes, the bodily prototypes of rhythm, are of course always periodic but not always rhythmic, Rhythm originates when an icfus exists, that is, when an activity adapted to reality lapses into regression to an autonomic activity. This accounts for the high degree of development of rhythm in humanity; the heart- beats of the embryo’ itself are not rhythmic until after birth.

Discussion: Dr. B. v. Felszeghy attempted to explain the suggestive effect of music by reference to the two types of father- and mother-hypnosis so ingeniously formulated by Ferenczi. He surmised that arhythmic music activates phantasies which are connected with the father-z#ago while those of rhythmical music would stand for the mother. Of these two forms the older historically would in his opinion be the arhythmic, produced after the murder of the father to propitiate his ghost.

Hermann, Roheim, and Ferenczi also took part in the dis- cussion.

II

Fanuary 15, 1922. By request of the members Dr. S. Ferenczi repeated the lecture which he delivered in Vienna to English and American physicians on ‘Metapsychology’.

274 REPORTS

The following members took part in the discussion: Pfeifer, Hermann, Radé.

Fanuary 29, 1922. Dr. Josef Michael Eisler: Review of Kurt Martens’ ‘Unsparing Record of my Life.’ (This review appears in the current number of the Zeztschrift.)

The following members took part in the discussion: Pfeifer.

Hermann, Radé, Ferenczi.

February 12, 1922. Dr. S. Feldmann: A castration-dream.

Frau Dr. Elisabeth Raddé-Révész: (a) On the phylogenesis of Llobus hystericus; (b) A case of menstrual depression. !

Dr. Sdndor Radé: (a) Illustrations to the text of dreams; (b) An hysteric who cured herself.

The following members took part in the discussion: Hermann, Réheim, Lévy, v. Felszeghy, Pfeifer, Ferenczi.

(These contributions appear in the current number of the Zeuschrift.)

february 26, 1922. Dr. S. Ferenczi: Theoretical contribution to the psycho-analysis of paralysis of the insane. (Published as Betheft Nr.5 of the Juternationale Zeitschrift fir Psychoanalyse.)

Discussion: Dr. S, Rado said that the lecturer had achieved a conspicuous success in removing the taboo imposed by psycho- logical research upon organic phenomena. He contributed some further observations on the peculiar inventive mania of paralytics, which has even been known at times to produce real results (examples quoted from Bleuler) and which probably corresponds to an attempt at a cure in accordance with the libido-theory. The lecturer had presented a complete psycho-analytic theory of paralysis, embracing details of great heuristic importance, but for the time _being Dr. Rado inclined to suspend his judgement in the matter. ‘The conception of paralysis at the present day was primarily de- termined by considerations of aetiology and histology, while the somatic symptoms were decisive in diagnosis; before the disease could be satisfactorily defined on a purely psychological basis analytic endeavours would need sure clinical foundation. On the other hand, a patho-neurotic theory of paralysis would have to define its position in relation to those psychotic conditions which arose after other (anatomical, toxic etc.) injuries to the brain.

In connection with the lecturer’s statement that psycho-analysis itself must assume the existence of a disposition to paralytic insanity, Dr. Rado then tried to enter more fully into the problem of this

REPORTS 275

disposition. As was demonstrated by the biology of immunity, syphilitic symptoms are properly protective reactions of the infected organism. They consist of lymphocyte infiltrations, the decomposition of which releases lipase, a ferment which breaks down the cell-lipoids of the spirochaeti and so destroys the morbific agent (cf. Bergel, Klin, Wochenschrift, 1922, p. 204). In the struggle of the organism to defend itself the skin plays one of the principal parts; together with the lymphatic glands, it displays the primary and secondary symptoms of the disease (i.e. protective reactions), In syphilis when violent cutaneous symptoms have broken out and subsided, long- established clinical experience shows that subsequent syphilitic illness is much less to be feared than in cases where the initial symptoms are trifling. If, with Freud, we endeavour to extend the conception of the libido on to the cells, and hence to the interrelation of the organs, then these biological facts may readily be translated into psychological theory. The skin is obviously able to put up a fight against the spirochaeti without any profound disturbance of its physiological function. Nevertheless, if it does not fulfil this task, to which it is necessary that it should constantly devote itself, or fulfils it imperfectly—if its behaviour towards the organism as a whole is marcissistic, or, so to speak, ‘unpatriotic’—then the latter will be forced to press into its service for defence other organs, which are perhaps of more importance for life. In this way the internal forms of syphilitic disease would arise and, owing to a series of further considerations, it might happen that at times the organism had to sacrifice its most precious component parts, namely, the ganglion-cells. Here it would be necessary for us to guard against _ jumping to the conclusion that the atrophy of the brain-elements was nothing more than a passive result of the injury sustained. The narcissistic behaviour of the other organs in the struggle of the organism to protect itself against the morbific cause would accordingly be one of the factors contributing to the disposition to paralysis. If this conception proved workable, it might properly be applied also to the psychological consideration of other infectious diseases, especially those which selected particular systems of organs for attack (tuberculosis, etc.).

Dr. I. Hermann recalled a fact. of pathology and physiology. It was pointed out by K. Schaffer that in ¢ades dorsalis the patho- histological process follows the same course as the ontogenetic development; further Mosso. proved experimentally that the

276 REPORTS

temperature of the brain of a dog rises higher when its name is called than in response to other acoustic stimuli—a fact which might confirm the supposed connection between narcissism and the brain.

Dr. B. v. Felszeghy paid a tribute to the value of the insight gained from the lecturer’s exposition and raised the question whether this knowledge could ever be converted into therapeutic power.

Dr. S. Feldmann said that psychic traumata could, in syphilitic subjects otherwise apparently healthy, induce the onset of para- lysis. He instanced the case of an artist who became infected with syphilis, but otherwise showed no organic disturbance, Fifteen years later, following on a serious blow to his professional vanity, paralysis suddenly supervened—the somatic symptoms (fixity of the pupils, dysarthria, etc.) developing within two days. From this it might be inferred that continued mental stability can stave off paralysis, at least temporarily, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility—and this was the answer to von Felszeghy’s question —that in the case of nervous syphilitics analytic treatment might intervene to prevent the onset of paralysis.

Dr. S. Ferenczi replied briefly to the above observations.

March 11, 1922. Dr. Béla v. Felszeghy: Review of Freud’s ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.’

The following members took part in the discussion: Pfeifer, Réheim, Ferenczi.

Fanuary 15, 1922. Business meeting: The Annual Report was adopted and the balance-sheet approved. All the officials were re- elected and the subscription for membership was raised to K 800.

Dr. Rapo Secretary

List of Members January 1, 1922.

Mané Dick, Budapest, VIL Erzsébet kérut 14.

Dr. Michael Josef Eisler, Budapest, V. Nador utca 5.

Dr, Man6 Eisner, Szeged, Dugonich-tér 11,

Dr. Sandor Feldman, Budapest, VIII. Baross-utca §9.

Dr. Béla v. Felszeghy, Budapest, IV. Veres Palné-utca 4.

Dr. Sdndor Ferenczi (President), Budapest, VII. Nagydiéfa-utca 3.

REPORTS 277.

Dr. Imre Hermann, Budapest, VI. Teleki ter 6.

Dr. Istvan Hollés, Budapest-Lipétmezé.

Hugo Ignotus-Veigelsberg, Budapest, Il. Margit kérut 64a. Aurél Kolnai, Vienna, VI. Webgasse II.

Dr. Lajos Lévy, Budapest, V. Szalay-utca 3.

Dr. Zsigmond Pfeifer, Budapest, VII. Rakoczi-ut 18.

Dr. SAandor Rad6é (Secretary), Budapest, IX. Ferencz-k6rut 14. Frau Dr. Erzsébet Radé-Révész, Budapest, IX, Ferencz-k6rut 14. Dr.. Géza Roheim, Budapest, II. Nyul-utca 13a.

Dr. Sandor Szabo, at present Zitirich, Voltastrasse 24.

Dr. Géza Szilagyi, Budapest, VII. Damjanich-utca 28a.

Honorary Member

Dr. Ernest Jones, London. Dr. Rapéd Sanpor Secretary

SWISS PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY

December 16, 1927. Present: Brun, Blum,. Furrer, Fiirst, Grii- ninger, Kielholz, Meier-Miiller, Minkowski, E. Oberholzer, M. Ober- . holzer, Peter, Pfister, Wehrli.

Dr. O. Pfister: Small Contributions to Freud's Theory of Dreams.

Fanuary 21, 1922. Present: Blum, Brun, Furrer, Fiirst, Hofman, Kielholz, Meier-Miiller, Minkowski, E. Oberholzer, M. Oberholzer, Peter, Pfister, Webrli.

The following were elected as members of the Society:

Allende - Fernando, Dr. med., Assistant Physician to the Cantonal

Asylum, Herisau. Blum Ernst, Dr. med., Assistant Physician to the Neurological

Polyclinic, Ziirich.

Brun Rudolf, Priv. Doz., Dr. med. Assistant Physician to the Neurological Polyclinic, Ziirich.

-Klinke Willibald, Priv. Doz., Dr. phil, Professor of Pedagogy at the Training College for Teachers, Ziirich, .

278 REPORTS

Meier-Miiller Hans, Dr. med., Assistant Physician to the Neur- ological Polyclinic, Ziirich.

Minkowski Mieczyslaw, Priv. Doz., Dr. med., Head Assistant at the Institute for Cerebral Anatomy, Ziirich.

Discussion on Pregenital Sexuality:

A. Furrer: Observations on Children.

FE. Oberholzer: Pregenital Sexuality and Neurosis. Excerpts from analyses were brought forward with a view to demonstrating the transformation of instincts in the obsessional neurosis, with especial reference to the réle of pregenital sexuality.

February 18, 1922. Dr. H. Rorschach: The Use of Experiments

in the Interpretation of Ink-blots for Psycho-Analytic Purposes

(to be published). List of Members

Fernando Allende, Dr. med., Kant. Irrenanstalt Herisau.

Hans Behn-Eschenburg, Dr. med., Kantonsspital Herisau.

Ludwig Binswanger, Dr. med., Sanatorium Belle-Vue, Kreuzlingen (Thurgau).

Ernst Blum, Dr., Nervenarzt, Hauserstrafe 4, Ztrich.

Pierre Bovet, Prof. Dr. phil., Institut J. J. Rousseau, Taconnerie 5, Genéve.

Rudolf Brun, Priv.-Doz. Dr., Nervenarzt, Theaterstrafe 14, Ztirich.

Hans Christoffel, Dr., Nervenarzt, Albanvorstadt 42, Basel.

Paul Dubi, Mittlere StraBe 127, Basel.

Hedwig Etter, Frl., med. pract. temporarily in Vienna.

Dorian Feigenbaum, Dr. med., Dir. Lunatic Asylum ‘Esrath Nashim’, Jerusalem. Albert Furrer, Padagogischer Leiter der Kinderbeobachtungsstation

_ Stephansburg-Burghdlzli, Stidstrafe 78, Ziirich.

Emma Fiirst, Frl. Dr., Nervenarzt, ApollostraBe 21, Ztirich.

Max Geiser, Dr. med., Dufourstrafe 39, Basel.

Guillaume Gontaut-Biron, 19 Aleja Ujasdowska, Varsovie.

Ulrich Griininger, Dr. phil. Stadt. Knabenheim, Selnaustrafe 9, Ziirich.

Walter Hofmann, Lehrer, Russenweg 9, Ziirich.

Arthur Kielholz, Dr. med., Dir, Kant. Irrenanstalt K6nigsfelden (Aargau).

Frank Kornmann, Dr. med., Dir. Arzt, Kurhaus Monté Bré, Lugano-Castagnola.

REPORTS 279

Emil Luethy, stud. med., Birsigstrafie 76, Basel.

Hans Meier-Miiller, Dr., Fii®listrafe 4, Ziirich.

M. Minkowski, Priv.-Doz., Dr. med., Physikstrafke 6, Ziirich.

Ferdinand Morel, Priv.-Doz. Dr. phil, 8 Rue Beauregard, Geneve.

Emil Oberholzer, Dr., Nervenarzt, Ramistrafe 39, Ziirich.

Mira Oberholzer, Dr., Nervenarzt, Ramistrafe 39, Ziirich.

Albert Peter, Lehrer, Eidmattstrafe 29, Ziirich.

Oskar Pfister, Pfr. Dr. phil., Schienhutgasse 6, Ziirich.

Jean Piaget, Dr. phil., Poudrieres 21, Neuchatel.

Hermann Rorschach, Dr. med., Kant. Irrenanstalt Herisau.

Philipp Sarasin, Dr. med., temporarily in Vienna.

Raymond Saussure, Dr. med., Asile de Cery, Lausanne.

Hans Jakob Schmid, Dr. med., Leysin (Waadt).

Ernst Schneider, Prof. Dr. phil. Wisby-Prospekt 14, Riga.

H. Tobler, Dir, Land-Erziehungsheim Hof-Oberkirch, Kaltbrunn (St. Gallen).

Gust. Ad. Wehrli, Priv.~Doz. Dr. med., Leonhardstrafe 1, Ziirich. .

Hans Zulliger, Lehrer, Ittigen bei Bern.

Committee

F, Morel.

E. Oberholzer (President).

O. Pfister.

H. Rorschach (Vice-President). P. Sarasin.

Advisory Committee

R. Brun.

A. Kielholz. E. Oberholzer. O. Pfister.

H. Rorschach.

*

.280 REPORTS VIENNA- PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY . | List of Members

Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld, XIII, Suppégasse 10, Vienna.

Professor Dr. M. Levi-Bianchini, Nocera Inferiore (Salerno).

Dozent Dr. Felix Deutsch, I, Wollzeile 33, Vienna.

Dr. Helene Deutsch,’ I., Wollzeile 33, Vienna.

Dr. Paul Federn, I’, Riemergasse 1, Vienna.

Dr. Otto Fennichel, V., Margaretenstrafe 25, Vienna.

Dr. Walter Fokschaner, VI, Kasernengasse 2, Vienna.

Professor Dr. Sigm. Freud, IX., Berggasse 19, Vienna.

Dozent Dr. Josef K. Friedjung, I, Ebendorferstrafse 6, Vienna.

Dr. H. v. Hattingberg, Ainmillerstrafe 62/II, Munich.

Hugo Heller, 1, Bauernmarkt 3, Vienna.

Eric Hiller, VIL, Andreasgasse 3, Vienna.

Dr. Eduard Hitschmann, IX., Wahringerstrafe 24, Vienna.

Professor Dr. Guido Holzknecht, 1, Liebiggasse 4, Vienna.

Frau Dr. Hug-Hellmuth, IX., Lustkandlgasse 10, Vienna.

Dr. Ludwig Jekels, IX., Berggasse 29, Vienna.

Dr. Robert Jokl, IIL, Sechskriigelgasse 2, Vienna.

Dr. Michael Kaplan, XVIII, Cottagegasse 48, Vienna.

Dr. Karl Landauer, Kettenhofweg 17, Frankfort o. M.

Dr. J. Marcinowski, Bad Heilbrunn, Isartalbahn, Bayern.

Dr. Richard Nepallek, VIII., AlserstrafSe 41, Vienna.

Dr. H. Nunberg, VIII, Florianigasse 20, Vienna.

Professor Dr. Otto Pétzl, Psychiatrische Klinik, Prague.

Dr. Otto Rank, I., Griinangergasse 3—5, Vienna.

Dr. Wilhelm Reich, IX., Berggasse 7, Vienna.

Dr. Theodor Reik, IX., Lackierergasse 1a, Vienna.

Dr. Oskar Rie, IIL, Estegasse 5, Vienna.

Dr. J. Sadger, IX., LiechtensteinstraBe 15, Vienna.

Dozent Dr. Paul Schilder, IX., Lazarettgasse 14 (Klinik Wagner- Jauregg). :

Med. Walter Schmideberg, III, Seidelgasse 36, Vienna.

Herbert Silberer, I, Annagasse 3a, Vienna.

Frau Eugenia Sokolnicka, Rue de l’Abbé Gregoire 3, Paris VI.

Frau Dr. S. Spielrein-Scheftel, 2 to rue St. Legére, Geneva.

Dr. Maxim. Steiner, I, Rotenturmstrafe 19, Vienna.

A. J. Storfer, IX., Porzellangasse 43, Vienna.

REPORTS 281

Frieda Teller, III., Plaska 14, Praguc.

Dr. Karl Weiss, IV., Schwindgasse 12, Vienna.

Dr. Edoardo Weiss, S. Giovanni inf. Guardiella 691, Trieste. Dr. Alfred Winterstein, I, Augustinerstrafe 12, Vienna.

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‘ia sa * ‘ . \ = ay re & \é Re et a' ' * * i] x * a r ~ eas we f . \ - f Volume III, Part > Issued June 19220 ° A 4 | . he ' * b hat ‘af tie) al | P V mH i eet ae

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THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO- ANALYTICAL LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST JONES

No. 4

ADDRESSES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

by J. J. PUTNAM, MLD. Emeritus Professor of Neurology, Harvard University With a Preface by

SIGM. FREUD, MD., LLD. and An Obituary and Bibliography by

ERNEST JONES, M.D. 49s. 6d. net or $ 2°50

Se

No. 2

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE WAR NEUROSES by Drs. S. FERENCZI (Budapest), KARL ABRAHAM (Berlin), ERNST SIMMEL (Berl) and ERNEST JONES (London)

Introduction by

Prof. SIGM. FREUD (Vienna) 5s. net or $1°0

No. 3

THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC STUDY OF THE FAMILY

by J. €. FLUGEL, B.A. naeiie® 4 | 40s. 6d. net or 32°10

ORDER BY POST: ALL PUBLICATIONS SENT POST FREE

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS

57 WEYMOUTH STREET, LONDON, W. t. (Postal Address only)

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CONTENTS

(ALL RIGHTS. a et

ORIGINAL ARTICLES 1. WESTER MAN- Ota From ‘he? Analysis of a Patient with Cramp of the Spinal Accessory ...... A. S. STRACHEY. Analysis of a Dream of Doubt and CEO EN Tai aR Saat Sr J anh Re a iY a, ILA S. FERENCZI. The Symbolism of the Bridge ........ O. PFISTER. Plato: A Fore-Runner of Psycho-Analysis. . .

COMMUNICATIONS

, S. PFEIFER. Disappointment in Love during Analysis... G. ROHEIM. Psycho-Analysis and the Folk-Tale....... S. HERBERT. A: Ghild’s Birth-Myth ‘Story 2... 56).

COLLECTIVE REVIEW G. ROHEIM. Ethnology and Folk-Psychology...... tae

BOOK REVIEWS DELUSION AND DREAM. By.Sigmund Freud..........; bEONAK DO: DA VINCI: By: Sigavand Freud... 26 sec eae 8 THE TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. By David Forsyth PSYCHO-ANALYSIS,! By’ R. HE .Hingley. 0.506.500 50. sec OUTWITTING OUR NERVES. By Josephine A. Jackson. .... HOW TO PSYCHO-ANALYZE YOURSELF. By Joseph Ralph . . PSYCHO-ANALYSIS OF THE ‘REFORMER’. By Joel Rinaldo REPRESSED EMOTIONS. By Isador H. Coriat. 2 ces Sates INSTINCT AND THE UNCONSCIOUS. By W.H.R. Rivers . .

A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD. By H. v. Hug- FRG T RCE FP St Bieta eyo hires shine) vas Sy UR ke Ala ha RUE a Sten he

PSYCHANALYSIS IN THE CLASS ROOM. By George H. Green THE EDUCATION OF BEHAVIOUR. By I. B. Saxby ..... THE ADOLESCENT GIRL. By Phyllis Blanchard. ........ THE ANALYSIS: OF MIND. By Bertrand Russell... 2... -... HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY. By Ge SBrette! io eee. gana e Se

A HISTORY OF THE ASSOCIATION PSYCHOLOGY. By ERNE AC BORE ee eg ghee RGU Ran oe ea CG, I Pa alle

Fo renGoLOGy, Be Robert 'S Woodworth ovis oie cate te age

ZUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PSYCHOPATHOLOGIE DER GEGEN; WARTSGESCHICHTE, By Gaston Roffenstein.......

AN OUTLINE, OF PSYCHO LOGY. Plebs Textbooks Number One

JESUS, THE.G Gi Stale Hal ea Oo ee a ON IN cre Bares

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. By T. W. Pym

a ibe wt ee a +

_ THE HISTORY OF HUMAN MARRIAGE. By Edward Westermarck —

TABOO AND GENETICS. By M.M.Knight............

THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE, By Margaret Alice TAY oe eds eT bee Fate aloe pet Cera als Sree Mel mL A Re

THE PRIVATE CHARACTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Frederick Chamberlin. .-. Oe ee Lr ee ee ae ee a

REPORTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO- be ANALYTICAL ASSOCIATION AMERICAN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY . BERLIN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY ....... BRITISH PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY........ DUTCH PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY ...... HUNGARIAN PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY .... SWISS PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCIETY......... VIENNA PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL SOCREA Nila a

PRINTED IN VIENNA BY THE SOCIETY FOR GRAPHIC INDUSTRY

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256

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