Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/99

 BOOK REVIEWS 9I

pour arriver a effectuer la sublimation k laquelle ils aspirant ... La vie de J^sus est une affirmation et une demonstration de la sublimation jusqu'au divin des instincts humains et, par consequent, une garantie inalienable qui s'est inscrite dans I'histoire, qui permet de ne jamais desesperer de i'effort et qui lui fournit une base certaine. La vie du , Christ introduit ainsi dans le monde des valeurs nouvelles que rien ne peut plus arracher k I'humanite. En ce sens elle modifie la psychologique meme de Thomme; an plut6t elle y ajoute une dynamique nouvelle qui, sans en changer le mecanisme interne, hii permet de franchir des bomes qu'elle n'aurait jamais franchies autrement '

We have cited these passages almost in full because they seem to represent most clearly the fundamental standpoint of the book:. It was, according to this view, to the fact that Christ actually lived, lived as a personality of supreme moral excellence (i. e. possessing the highest degree of sublimation), that the success of Christianity (i. e. the satis- faction it has been able to give to human needs and aspirations) is principally due.

To psycho-analysts, who have become more and more habituated to accept purely psychological causes (including imagined events) as, for many purposes, equally significant with external occurrences in the determination of thought, feeling and conduct, this insistence upon the aetiological importance of the real (as distinguished from the merely imaginary) event, will doubtless come as something in the nature of a shock. It is true that they will agree with Dr. Berguer as to the immense importance of converting dreams into reality (i. e. the transition from the Pleasure-Principle to the Reality-Principle). They will also perhaps agree that the personality of Christ itself represents, in many important respects, such a transition. But they will certainly feel less inclined to believe that the actual existence of a particular person possessing unusual powers of sublimation represented the essential cause of the success of Christianity' and of its religious adequacy. Still less perhaps wiU they be willing to regard Christ as an actual historical instance of perfect sublimation; such a phenomenon would be so unusual that it could scarcely be accepted without good (historical) evidence, whereas, as Dr. Berguer himself points out, the historical evidence concerning Christ is lamentably inadequate and, moreover, most certainly biassed in nature, being written from the point of view of religious edification rather than from that of historical accuracy.

It would seem indeed that in insisting on the historicity of Christ as a perfect moral being Dr. Berguer is needlessly sacrificing one of the principal advantages to be derived from his adoption of the psychological point of view. From this latter point of view it would appear that, just as in the individual a train of psychological events of