Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/107

 AESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 99

Heimkehr" have reduced ad absurduvt the idea of replacing the ' erotic problem by an egoistic one.

In the reviewer's essays (33, 35) the attempt is inade to trace back to the psychical situation of the author the production of two of the standard works in literature. In both cases the problem of inhibition in production is hinted at, a temporary one in Schiller's case and a final one in Shakespeare's. In the novel of Th. Mann (34) the agreement with dream symbolism between the understanding shown for the basis of homosexuality is pointed out.

An essay on the Moses of Michelangelo (40) by an anonymous author takes quite a distinctive position. Neither the starting point nor the result belong to the domain of psycho-analysis, but the method of the investigation guessing the past from the present, important things from slight indications, and the psychical tendencies of the artist answers fully to the psycho-analytic method in its best and purest form.

Among the aesthetic investigations directed to general problems most are based on Something or other pointed out by Freud e. g. 17, 38; their merit lies in the clear presentation and the working out of details. The parallel drawn by Kaplan between tragic hero and criminal (16) is well-proved psycho-analytically and shows this author's right feeling for the new tendency in defining our problems. Through Freud's "Totem and Taboo" we know that it is more than an analogy, that it is the recurrence of the same original crime in different shapes.

A quite uncommon investigation, which in many passages comes very near psycho-analysis, is that by Sperber and Spitzer (37) on the connection between motives and words. Spitzer proves how in the writings of the grotesque poet Christian Morgenstern the word comes before the thing, indeed how the word stimulates the imagi- nation to creativeness. "To treat words like things" is according to Freud a typical quality of childhood, and Morgenstem's humour is based to a great extent on this quality. Still nearer psycho-analysis comes Sperber's shrewd and charming essay on Gustav Meyrink He show^s how certain complexes occur again in this poet's writings, sometimes as a colloquial turn, sometimes as an original com- parison. When Sperber speaks about the influence of certain com- plexes on style and language, the idea arises of completing his investigation in the opposite direction, i. e. instead of working from the complexes to language, from within to without, to feel our way