Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/92

 S4 COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

results from the differentiation between tliesc two views the oppo- sition of the two methods, whether that of social or that of indi- vidual psychology, of which the representatives were unquestionably recognised to be Wundt and James.

One of the non-medical representatives of psycho-analysis, O. Pfister, took a definitely religious personality, the Count von Zinzendorf, as the subject of an analysis (43, 44,45) and endeavoured to explain the special features of the piety of this enthusiast on the basis of the peculiar trend of his erotic nature : similar mono- graphs are occupied with the analysis of ecstatic devotees (41, 42). The same author collected instances of religious glossolalia and brought considered opinions to bear on their unriddling, derived from psycho-analytic practice and from the theory of the instincts which is based on it (47). (Osterreich |37] rates highly the impor- tance of Pfister's research into glossolalia, while Ileilcr in his mono- graph on prayer [18], which up to now is at once the most com- prehensive and the most scientific of any published, only recog- nises the erotic conditioning of ecstasy in my.sticism without paying any attention to the other results of analysis which relate to the stages preceding actual worship and to the development of ritual.) In these and other articles psycho-analysis .showed itself capable of making intelligible the religious phenomena of individual personalities and the processes of religion most nearly approaching pathological symptoms by applying the elucidation which it achieved in its original field of enterprise.

At a quite early stage the relations between dream and myth, to which attention was first directed in an arresting manner by Freud, opened up the possibility of obtaining through psycho- analysis a grasp of the creations of the collective mind in respect to its psychic material, mechanism, and forms of manifestation. Rank, Abraham, Rikhn, Jones, Silberer and others steadily Avidened the scope of the psycho-analytic investigation of myth. The religious myth proved to be equally open to interpretation with the myth which had not been previously recognised as having any religious y

significance : particularly symbolism and wish-fuliilmcnt in short as p

revealed by dream-analysis proved to be the principal instruments |f

in the technique of interpretation. By comparison and interpretation jf

of the rich sexual symbolism of the material A.J. Storfer succeeded ||

in making a most valuable contribution to the understanding of ||

the Madonna legend (77). One special piece of symbolism in this

M