Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/56

212 with the standards of the Ego' (ichgemafies Selbstbeivufitsein). For Stern therefore the number of falsifying factors is larger than that recognised by psycho-analysis, which is concerned only with those kinds of self-consciousness which produce a high degree of dis- tortion (neurotics). Would that all our opponents could learn as much from psycho-analysis and would acknowledge too, as Stern has done, from what source they have learnt!

There are however certain aspects of psycho-analytic theory which Stern also has failed to understand or to appreciate.

B. META-PSYCHOLOGY AND THE THEORY OF AFFECT

Descriptive Psychology needs to be supplemented by Explana- tory Psychology, which latter, according to Freud (8), may be called Meta-Psychology and which has as its task: (1) to determine the sources of conative energy involved in psychic processes (the dynamic point of view); (2) to take account of psychic locality, i- e. to indicate the systems in which or between which any process takes place (the topographical point of view); (3) to study the history of definite quantities of energy, the so-called 'charges' (the economic point of view). In principle, Meta-Psychology is allied to the Psych- ology of Act (as distinguished from Content), in so far as in both cases the essential psychic elements studied are processes or per- formances. Thus in Meta-Psychology ideas are considered as charges manifested in memory traces, while affects and feelings are regarded as processes of discharge.

One of the most important concepts of Meta-Psychology is that of instinct (Trieb) (7). Instinct is a border-concept which refers both to the physical and the psychical; it is a psychical stimulus, which comes from within the organism itself The current psycho- analytical distinction between ego-instincts and sexual instincts is not a necessary presupposition; it has however up to the present been iustified as a useful working hypothesis.

What is the connection between love and instinct? Love is no partial sexual-instinct. It would be more justifiable to regard it as a manifestation of the whole of the sexual tendencies. If we treat it in this way, however, it becomes impossible to understand its material opposite — hate. Love has three possible opposites— to hate, to be loved and to be indifferent. Now psychic life as a whole also manifests three polarities: (1) subject-object (self and outer