Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/72

 228 COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

The reproaches levelled at Morel by Moser, nullifying each other as they do by their mixture of scientific nai'vety and exaggeration, cannot be brought against Riklin's article (15), though it deals with one of the great saints among the mystics. From the symbolic interpretation of a mosaic of Giacometti re- presenting Francis of Assisi Riklin goes on to trace out the process of spiritualisation in the case of this saint. Special stress is laid on the point that the 'base' primordial forces become in the course of this process 'divine, astral, ethereal'. The edifying considerations involved in these remarks cannot obviate a feeling of disappointment on the part of the reader who has been looking forward to learning by means of what spiritual forces and by what psychic paths the ascetic and ecstatic was evolved from the swaggering soldier, and how the 'Poverello' came into being who preaches to the birds and yearns to Uve over again in himself the sufferings of Christ. Kielholz brings us nearer an understanding of a transformation of this kind, showing as he does that out of the almost unlettered cobbler comes the theo- sophical-mystical writer Jakob Boehme who feels himself to be the . inspired prophet of God, and builds up a profoundly complicated system of thought. Three phases admit of being clearly distinguished in the pathological process in Boehme's case. The first of these is a phase of depression, characterised by self-reproach of a pre- ponderatingly sexual kind, by apprehension of death, melancholy and fear: the second a transition phase, marked by complete absorption in the depths of individual being ; and finally a phase of euphoria with visual sensations and a feeling of happiness, the erotic nature of which is beyond doubt. The peculiar mystical experience is the vision of the divine, the glimpse into the centre of Nature being the heart of the process. Kielholz explains the centrum naturae as a comprehensive projection into creation of Boehme's mental experiences, and as the portrayal of the sexual act in the universe. He admits that the work of the cobbler of Goerlitz is to be understood in a large measure as the sublimation of the infantile impulse to look, to which impulse he gives full weight as the principal factor in the urge towards knowledge characteristic of mysticism. The most important personifications and modifications adopted by Boehme of biblical and legendary events are recognised as conditioned psychically, the infantile and sexual factors having their due weight (the Virgin Wisdom as

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