Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/35

This page has been validated.
HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT
29

tempt into the problems of the psychology of religion in 1910, when I compared religious ceremonials with neurotic ceremonials. In his work on the "piety of the Count of Zinzendorf," as well as in other contributions, the Rev. Dr. Pfister, of Zürich, has succeeded in tracing back religious zealotism to perverse eroticism. In the recent works of the Zürich School one is more likely to find that religion becomes injected into the analysis rather than rationally explained by it.

In my four essays on "Totem and Taboo"[1] I made the attempt to discuss the problems of race psychology by means of analysis. This should lead us directly to the origins of the most important institutions of our civilization, such as state regulations, morality, religion, as well as to the origins of the interdiction of incest and of conscience. To what extent the relations thus obtained will be proof to criticism cannot be determined today.

My book on Wit[2] furnished the first examples of the application of analytic thinking to esthetic themes. Everything else is still waiting for workers, who can expect a rich harvest in this very field. We are lacking here in workers from these respective specialties and in order to attract such, Hans Sachs founded in 1912, the journal Imago, edited by himself and Rank. Hitschmann and v. Winterstein made a beginning with the psychoanalytic elucidation of philosophical systems and personalities. The continuation and deeper treatment of the same is much to be desired.

The revolutionary findings of psychoanalysis concerning the psychic life of the child, the part played therein by sexual impulses (v. Hug-Helmuth) and the fate of such participation of sexuality which becomes useless for the purpose of propagation, naturally drew attention to pedagogics, and instigated the effort to push the analytical viewpoint into the foreground of this sphere. Recognition is due to the Rev. Pfister for having begun this application of analysis with honest enthusiasm, and for having brought it to the

  1. A translation is in preparation.
  2. Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, translated by A. A. Brill, Moffat, Yard & Co., New York.