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COLLECTIVE REVI EWS
from without to within, to the deep unconscious sources of affect.
The "complex of bodily inhibitions" found by Sperber in Meyrink,
especially paralysis, blindness and suffocation, arouses many thoughts
in the analytical expert. The essay by Kiimer (18) is an appreciation
of the two mentioned above.
The two essays on music (2, 39) give us hope that even tliis difficult subject, lying farthest from psycho-analytic exploratioD, will perhaps be understood by our mctliod.s. The possibility of awakening certain affects by sounds might be explained by their effect on the unconscious. Hitschmann (13) deals, in connection with a dream, with the psychic life of the young Schubert and his family conflict.
The investigation of "uncanniness" by Freud (7) explains in a more detailed way what had been said before in a footnote to the "Drei Abhandlungen". He points out that htimlich is one of the ambivalent words, which unite two opposite meanings, "homely" and "hidden, dangerous". Of special interest are the e.xplanations of the conditions under which the re-awakcning of the "omni- potence of thought" causes a disagreeable feeling, this being the reason why they are characterized as "uncanny". The complete revival of the childish omnipotence, as in fairy-tales, does not give us this impression, but if poetry places itself into reality, then a sudden going back to omnipotence has an uncanny effect, quite the same as in reality itself, when a chance makes us believe for a moment in tliis possibility. The other root of uncanniness lies in the return of the repressed; especially the castration complex plays here an important part.
