Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/75

Rh a genuine reintegration of consciousness. Surely help ought rather to lie in the direction of a more intelligent repression. In any case a biological treatment is bound to throw more light on the nature of the malady than on that of its cure, since the former spells regression to the brute, while the latter demands that the patient play the man. Finally, the unconscious, viewed from the standpoint of pathology, is a mere rubbish-heap of obsolete tendencies. But, as Dr. Rivers hints in his chapter on "sublimination," there is another side to its activity, if it be true that the genius, or one kind of genius, draws his energy from the conflict engendered in his soul by promptings from the depths. One may be level-headed, perhaps, at the price of shallowness. Thus, as the best scientific work always does, this interesting book, while solving many problems, raises more.

interesting work on mirror-magic by Dr. Géza Róheim of Budapest is one of the early results of an institution established to advocate the methods and processes of Freud's investigations into psychic activities. It begins by laying down that "one of the weightiest results of Freud's enquiries is the three-steps theory of the development of sexual desire." The first stage of this development is the simple childish Narcissism, in which no ulterior object than the self is mingled. In the second stage the self is still the object; but it is an ego personified, or rather its image, that is loved. The third and last stage is that of fully developed normal sexuality, which seeks its object in the external world and in the other sex. This thesis is expanded and illustrated throughout the work.

But apart from psychical theory the author has from a wide reading compiled a very full collection of facts concerning the superstitions, magical beliefs and practices connected with mirrors, crystals, pools of water and other objects used for