Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/58

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COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

love — in Feuerbach's sense — is superfluous, since it is of the essence of love to aim at * something higher', whether this 'something- higher' be present to consciousness or not.

"To undertake, as Freud has done, an ontogeny of the sym- pathetic feelings and of love is without doubt in itself extremely valuable". Of importance from the point of view of principle is the assumption of psycho-analysis that every experience has a local value iSteUenwert) in typical human development. An ex- perience in childhood may have different results from those which would follow the same experience in later years, not only because the traces of previous experience which it meets in the two cases are markedly different, but also because of its local value; it is this value that decides which experiences shall be favoured as regards future influence and which shall be inhibited or cut off from such influence.

Scheler also finds a lack of clearness in some parts of Freudian tlieory, as in the distinction between libido and sexual impulse ; the concept of libido appears to have lost its qualitative content. The facts themselves seem- only to warrant the conclusion that the heterosexual stage (with the idea of a definite object of tlie oppo- site sex) is preceded by another stage in which the same instinc- tive impulses are directed, not to some definite object of the opposite sex, but to a mere difference of sex in itself. The Freudian concept of the libido originates from an associationist idea of conation. There exist from the beginning various distinct qualities of love, which may become fused, but which cannot be reduced one to another. Freud is right however in regarding sexual love as the primary, fundamental factor in all otlier kinds of love, even in the love of life or of nature. But there exists no love of food that corresponds to sexual love (in the m that the nutritive in- stinct corresponds to the sexual instinct). [See Meta-Psychology above.] The theory of Sublimation also contains much truth, and errs only in refusing to recognise in the highest mental acts the operation of a certain independent quantity of energy. Reference is here made to the somewhat similar views held by J.J. Putnam. Griininger, in his Inaugural Dissertation (14), is concerned with the problem of the Displacement of Affect. He starts from psycho- analytic experiences, but, following Jung, he develops too much on 'energetic' lines. The most successful portion of his work is the chapter on the Theory of the Emotions, in which an attempt is