Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/104

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COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

Lou Andreas-Salomt^* (1) has produced a delicate and thorough essay on tlie conditions of artistic production.

To deduce a piece of fundamental psychology of the artist from one single, though distinguished, example, is the problem Freud has solved with his book on Leonardo da Vinci (5). The second edition is enriched by two findings which fully confirm Freud's hypotheses. One of thcni a "mistake", or indeed a number t)f diem, in Leonardo's attempt to represent the sexual act schematically, has been discovered and described by Dr. Reitler, the other a "cryptographic" presentation of the vulture on the picture of "Saint Anna" is from O. Pfistcr,

In a short essay on the poet Dauthcndey (11) Hitschmann demonstrates his father-fixation not only as being important for his poetical production, but as the origin of a phenomenon regarded by the poet as "telepathic" and <»f his religious turning-point Hitschmann has dealt more fully with (iottfricd Keller (12) and drawn an excellent picture of his unconscious psychical activity by comparing the poet's typical motives with his behaviour towards mother and sister both in social life and in his work. The most important results are as follows: pleasure in looking directed mainly to the female breasts and its repression which allowed the great depicter of human character to paint only landscapes; the motive of "half family", son and mother, daughter and father, living to- gether as a reminiscence of his childhood-days after his father's early death, a period the boy longed to return to when a step- father arrived who lived unhappily with the mother; the inhibited aggression towards women and its inversion into masochistic phantasies; and finally the mother image in the poet's most inte- resting female figure, Judith.

A valuable and interesting investigation into the poet's motives is given by Rcik's book on Schnitzlcr (29). The main stress is laid upon the delicate psychological understanding of the poet, which arose from his familiarity with his own unconscious, though a familiarity of a quite special kind. Of special interest are the ana- lyses of the dreams which Schnitzlcr uses in important passages of his works. Interpretation shows that the construction of these dreams is quite on a line with the rules laid down by Freud.

That the connection between unconscious and poetical production is not an achievement of our generation is proved by Dr. Alice Sperber who deals with Dante's unconscious life (36). Of Special

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