Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/93

 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION S5

religious group has been dealt with by Ernest Jones who has made the story of the Virgin's conception through the ear the subject of analysis, and has been able to show the meaning of this curious tradition in the light of infantile theories and ideas (22). ' Thus analysis had explored the realm of subjective religion by means of the psycho-pathological investigation of myths long before a theoretical exposition had been put forth as to the subjective and objective factors in the development of religion.

Although the first analytic researches, namely Pfister's (41 — 45), in the religious emotional life of selected personahties laid special stress on the pathology of the cases and rendered it more intelli- gible in the light of sexual impulses and the mechanism of the un- conscious psychic life, thus obviously showing traces of the effects of the views of James, nevertheless this influence later on fell more and more into the background. Pfister's later psychological work, while still investigating the religious phenomena of an indi- vidual hfe, takes into consideration the religious institutions within the Hmits of which that individual life works itself out: the tradi- tion on the basis of which or in opposition to which a personality displays its activity i. Abraham's analysis of the figure of Amenho- tep IV and his endeavours for the establishment of monotheism Is a model of the investigation of the blending in religious life of trans- mitted influences with personal experience (4). Institutional reUgion must enter largely into the foreground of analytic interest, when the attention is diverted from the religious emotions of single personalities and concentrated on the community in its religious life. Among the actual facts which called for the notice of the analyst in this connection were particularly the details of rites, ceremonies and of religious worship which gave promise of elu- cidation by use of the analytic method. In place of individual and somewhat elusive phenomena which materiahsed as written con- fessions, prayers, lyrical outpourings and the like, of great interest especially to the Swiss analysts, there emerged objective material — dogmas, rites, cults — the psychological motivation and mechanism of which was. now the object of enquiry. Already in 1907 « Freud had made the first advance in this direction by bringing into com-

« This is especially so in Pfister's article on Paul which has just appeared in Imago VI, thus falling outside the scope of this review.

' In his "History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement" {Jahrb. VI, s. 233) Freud erroneously gives 1910 as the year in which this article appeared.

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