90
COLLECTIVE REVIEWS
is in its main thesis already recognised by and has been described
under the thecjry of the sublimating processes. The resulting retro-
grade tendency of the works of the Jungian school on the science
of religion is evidenced by the central significance and use of the
concept "introversion" in their analytical researches (Morel, Jung
Riklin and Silberer). A comparison of Freud's theory of sacrifice
with that of Jung shows that the conception of the latter, which
incidentally overestimates in a curious way the heterosexual im-
pulse in this connection, takes the uppermost psychic layer as the
ultimate, and gives value to the primary tendencies only as a
symbolic method of expression; the sacrifice would seem to be
as though reprisals were exacted from the beast in man — thus too
says theology, "although in somewhat other words". The tendency
is observable to allow the religious-ethical element to penetrate
the analysis instead of the reverse process. To what reactionary
and pseudo-scientific results such a theologising outlook may lead
may be seen in the explanation given by Riklin of the sin of
Adam (62): to him this is "tlic backwards-striving principle repre-
sented in the incest motif and its symbolism reversed. And if the
punishment of the sin of Adam is work the motive for the sin is
thereby clear: it was the horror of the deliberate undertaking of
cultural performances". As we see, such an inteipretation has no
longer anything analytic about it, but represents a modern recrudes-
cence of scholasticism and its symbolic intcrjiretations with the
aid of psychology called in. The processes of .sublimation and
transformation of the sexual and grossly egoistic impulses nowhere
shape themselves more clearly than in the world outlook of the
mystics and the immense piety of the middle ages. The strong
interest which has been taken in the mystics by individual Swiss
analysts and those investigators who are influenced by their views
may find its explanation very largely in this fact; Morel, Riklin,
Silberer, Pfister, Kielholz have for this reason brought personalities
and phenomena belonging to the mythical province of religion
into the central forces of their analysis (35, 63, 68, 43, 27).
Among the spheres of historical culture to which analysis has been directed one of the most recent is religion. The analytical psychology of religion has thus, it may be noted, from the first effected a junction with the investigation of myths, where already the traces of folk-psychology have been examined by analytic methods. In the writings of Abraham (fl] Prometheussage) and
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