[62]. Compare the similar views in my article, “Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox,” Halle 1907; and “Inhalt der Psychose,” Deuticke, Wien 1908. Also Abraham: “Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und der Dementia praecox,” Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1908. This author, in support of Freud, defines the chief characteristic of dementia praecox as Autoerotism, which as I have asserted is only one of the results of Introversion.
[63]. Freud, to whom I am indebted for an essential part of this view, also speaks of “Heilungsversuch,” the attempt toward cure, the search for health.
[64]. Miss Miller’s publication gives no hint of any knowledge of psychoanalysis.
[65]. Here I purposely give preference to the term “Imago” rather than to the expression “Complex,” in order, by the choice of terminology, to invest this psychological condition, which I include under “Imago,” with living independence in the psychical hierarchy, that is to say, with that autonomy which, from a large experience, I have claimed as the essential peculiarity of the emotional complex. (Compare “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.”) My critics, Isserlin especially, have seen in this view a return to medieval psychology, and they have, therefore, rejected it utterly. This “return” took place on my part consciously and intentionally because the phantastic, projected psychology of ancient and modern superstition, especially demonology, furnishes exhaustive evidence for this point of view. Particularly interesting insight and confirmation is given us by the insane Schreber in an autobiography (“Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken,” Mutze, Leipzig), where he has given complete expression to the doctrine of autonomy.
“Imago” has a significance similar on the one hand to the psychologically conceived creation in Spitteler’s novel “Imago,” and upon the other hand to the ancient religious conception of “imagines et lares.”
[66]. Compare my article, “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.”
[67]. As is well known, Anaxagoras developed the conception that the living primal power (Urpotenz) of νοῦς (mind) imparts movement, as if by a blast of wind, to the dead primal power (Urpotenz) of matter. There is naturally no mention of sound. This νοῦς, which is very similar to the later conception of Philo, the λόγος σπερματικός of the Gnostics and the Pauline πνεῦμα (spirit) as well as to the πνεῦμα of the contemporary Christian theologians, has rather the old mythological significance of the fructifying breath of the winds, which impregnated the mares of Lusitania, and the Egyptian vultures. The animation of Adam and the impregnation of the Mother of God by the πνεῦμα are produced in a similar manner. The infantile incest phantasy of one of my patients reads: “the father covered her face with his hands and blew into her open mouth.”
[68]. Haydn’s “Creation” might be meant.
[69]. See Job xvi: 1–11.
[70]. I recall the case of a young insane girl who continually imagined that her innocence was suspected, from which thought she would not allow herself to be dissuaded. Gradually there developed out of her defensive attitude a correspondingly energetic positive erotomania.