Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/29

Rh bears a striking resemblance to that exerted in childhood by the father.

It may be objected that such transference, if it exists, is pathological and belongs to the long chain of events which have produced the attitude towards the self and its environment determining the special form of disorder which the physician is treating. There is little doubt, however, that a similar process of transference is prominent in connection with religion, especially in those forms of religious cult in which the priest takes an important place. In this case there is a tendency, or more than a tendency, to put the priest into just such a position of authority as is occupied in childhood by the father, the two relations resembling each other so closely as to lead in our own culture to the frequent identification of the two in nomenclature.

In the case in which a person hands over the regulation of his life to a priest we have a definite example of transference closely, if not exactly, comparable with that which is liable to be a result of psycho-therapeutic treatment. There is reason to believe that a process of a somewhat similar kind forms an element in the success of all those movements in the world which depend on the influence of personality. The great teacher and the great social reformer, perhaps even the successful charlatan and swindler, owe their success to the capacity of the human being to transfer the body of affects associated with his father-ideal to some other person.

A third finding of modern psychology, and one which is well established, is that conflict is an essential factor in the production of new or exceptional mental products, whether these be the symptom of a psycho-neurosis, the strange elaborations of the dream, or, less certainly perhaps, the artistic productions of the poet or the painter. Especially striking is the outcome of conflict in new formations in which each side in the conflict maintains its