penetrating and exhaustive demonstration of those influences, reaching back even as far as earliest childhood, which may affect the artistic creation.

When employed with taste and common sense, such treatment often provides an attractive general picture of the way in which, on the one hand, the artistic creation is interwoven in, while, on the other, it reemerges from the personal life of the artist.

To this extent the so-called psycho-analysis of art-works is in no essential way distinguished from a penetrating and skilfully shaded psychologico-literary analysis. The difference is at most a question of degree, although it may occasionally astound us by indiscreet conclusions and references which a rather more delicate touch, or a certain feeling of tact might easily have avoided. This lack of delicacy in dealing with the all-too-human element, which seems to be a professional peculiarity of medical psychology, was perfectly understood by Mephistopheles: "So may you finger everything and welcome, round which another prowls for years and years"-although unfortunately not always to their own advantage. The possibility of daring conclusions may easily lead the way to regrettable lapses. A little touch of scandal often flavours a biography, but a little more becomes nasty inquisitiveness, a catastrophe of good taste beneath the cloak of science. Our interest is unwittingly diverted from the work of art and gets lost in the mazy, labyrinthine confusion of psychic preconditions; the poet becomes a clinical case, even serving on occasion as a curious example of psychopathy sexualis. But therewith the psycho-analysis of the art-work has also turned aside from its objective, and the discussion has strayed into a province that is as broad as mankind, and not in the smallest degree specific for the artist, and, hence, possessing even less relevance to his art.

This kind of analysis brings the work of art into the sphere of general human psychology, whence everything else besides art may proceed. An explanation of a work of art obtained in this way is just as great a futility as is the statement "every artist is a narcissist." Every man who pursues his own line to the limit of his powers is a "narcissist"—if indeed it is at all permissible to use a concept so specifically coined for the pathology of neuroses in this wider application—hence such a statement says nothing, it merely surprises in the manner of a bon-mot. Because this kind of analysis is in no sense concerned with the art-work itself, but is always striving, with the instinct of a mole, to bury itself as quickly as possible in the murky back-ground of the human psyche, it always finds itself in that same common earth which unites all mankind.

Accordingly its explanations possess an indescribable monotony-that same tedious recital, in short, which can daily be heard in certain medical consulting rooms.

The reductive method of Freud is purely a method of medical treatment, having for its object a morbid and figurative product. This morbid creation has taken the place of normal accomplishment, and hence must be broken down before the way can be cleared to a sound adaptation. In this case the process of leading-back to a general human basis is entirely appropriate. But when applied to the work of art, this method leads to the results depicted above. From beneath the shimmering robe of art it extracts the naked commonness of the elementary Homo sapiens, to which species the poet also belongs. The golden semblance of sublime creation we were about to discuss is blotted out, for its essence is lost when we try to seize it in those same hard-etched lines with which we depict the deceptive, phantastic products of hysteria.

Such a cross-section is, of course, interesting, and might conceivably possess an equal scientific value with a post-mortem examination of the brain of Nietzsche, which might certainly teach us the particular atypical form of paralysis from which he died. But what has this to do with Zarathustra? Whatever may have been its subterranean background, is this not a world in itself beyond the sphere of all-too-human imperfections, beyond the world of migraine and cerebral atrophy?

I have spoken hitherto of Freud's reductive method without stating with any particularity in what the method consists. It has to do with a medico-psychological technique for the investigation of morbid psychic phenomena. This technique is exclusively occupied with ways and means for circumventing or peering through the conscious foreground in order to reach the so-called unconscious, or psychic background. It is based upon the assumption that the neurotic patient is repressing certain psychic contents from consciousness because of their incompatibility or inconsistency with conscious values. This incompatibility is regarded as a moral one; accordingly, the repressed contents must bear a correspondingly negative character, namely, infantile-sexual, obscene, or even criminal. It is these qualities that render them so distasteful to consciousness. Since no man is perfect, it is clear that everyone must possess background whether the fact be admitted or not. Hence it can be disclosed in all cases if only we apply the technique of interpretation. elaborated by Freud.

I cannot, of course, enter here into the details of the technique. A few intimations as to its nature must suffice. The unconscious background

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does not remain inactive, but betrays itself by certain characteristic effects upon the conscious contents. For example, it creates phantasyproducts of a peculiar quality, which are in most cases easily referable to certain subterranean sexual representations. Or it effects certain characteristic disturbances of the conscious process, which are likewise reducible to repressed contents. A most important source for the knowledge of unconscious contents is provided by dreams, which are direct products of the activity of the unconscious. The essential factor of Freud's reductive method consists in the fact, that it collects all the circumstantial evidence of the unconscious backgrounds, and, through the analysis and interpretation of this material, reconstructs the elementary, unconscious, instinctive processes. Those conscious contents which give us a clue, as it were, to the unconscious backgrounds are by Freud incorrectly termed symbols. These are not true symbols, however, since according to his teaching, they have merely the rôle of signs or symptoms of the background processes. The true symbol differs essentially from this, and should be understood as the expression of an intuitive perception which can as yet neither be apprehended better nor expressed differently. When, for example, Plato expresses the whole problem of the theory of cognition in his metaphor of the cave, or when Christ expresses the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven in his parables, these are genuine and true symbols, namely, attempts to express a thing, for which there exists as yet no verbal concept. If we were to interpret Plato's metaphor in the manner of Freud, we should naturally come to the uterus, and we should have proved that even the mind of Plato was still deeply stuck in the primeval levels of "infantile sexuality." But in so doing we should also remain in total ignorance of what Plato actually created from the primitive antecedents of his philosophical intuition; we should, in fact, carelessly have overlooked his most essential product, merely to discover that he had "infantile" phantasies like every other mortal. Such a conclusion could possess value only for the man who regards Plato as a super-human being, and who is therefore able to find a certain satisfaction in the fact that even Plato was also a man. But who would want to regard Plato as a god? Surely only a man who is afflicted by the tyranny of infantile phantasies, in other words, a neurotic mentality. For such an one the reduction to universal human truths is profitable on medical grounds. But the real meaning of the Platonic parable is completely beyond his grasp.

I have purposely lingered over the relation between medical psychoanalysis and the work of art, because I want to emphasize the point, that this kind of psycho-analysis is, at the same time, also the Freudian

doctrine. Freud himself by his rigid dogmatism has seen to it, that the two fundamentally different things should be regarded by the public as identical. Yet this technique may be employed with benefit in certain medical cases without any corresponding necessity to exalt it to the level of a doctrine. Indeed against this doctrine we are bound to raise vigorous objections. The assumptions it rests upon are quite arbitrary. In no sense, for example, are the neuroses exclusively based upon sexual repression, and the same holds good for the psychoses. There is no foundation for saying, that dreams merely contain repressed wishes whose incompatibility requires them to be disguised by a hypothetical dreamcensor. The Freudian technique, in so far as it remains under the influence of its own one-sided and therefore erroneous hypotheses, is patently arbitrary.

Before analytical psychology can do justice to the work of art, it must entirely rid itself of medical prejudice, for the art work is not a morbidity, and demands, therefore, a wholly different orientation from the medical. The physician must naturally seek the prime cause of a sickness in order to eradicate it, if possible, by the roots, but just as naturally must the psychologist adopt an entirely contrary attitude towards the work of art. He will not raise the question, which for the art-work is quite superfluous, as to its undoubted general antecedents, its basic human determinants, but he will enquire into the meaning of the work, and will be concerned with its preconditions only in so far as they are necessary for the understanding of its meaning. Personal causality has as much and as little to do with the work of art, as has the soil with the plant that springs from it. Doubtless we may learn to understand some peculiarities of the plant by becoming familiar with the character of its habitat. And for the botanist this is, in fact, an important component of his knowledge. But nobody will maintain that therewith all the essentials relating to the plant itself have been recognised. The personal orientation which is demanded by the problem of personal causality, is out of place in the presence of the work of art, just because the work of art is not a human being, but is essentially supra-personal. It is a thing which has no personality, hence for it the personal is no criterion. Indeed the especial significance of the genuine art-work lies in the fact, that it has successfully rid itself of the restraints and blind alleys of the personal and breathes an air infinitely remote from the shortwinded perishableness of the merely personal.

I must confess from personal experience, that it is no light matter for the physician to lay aside his professional spectacles in presence of the

work of art, while at the same time clearing his judgment of the current biological causality. I have learnt, however, to understand that a psychology with a purely biological orientation can with a certain measure of justification be applied to men, but never to the true work of art, hence still less to man as creator. A purely causalistic psychology is only able to reduce every human individual to a member of the species Homo sapiens, since its entire range is limited to that which is either transmitted or derived. But the art-work is not only transmitted and derived-it is a creative reorganisation of those very determinants to which a causalistic psychology must always reduce it. The plant is not a mere product of the soil, but a living creative process centred in itself, the essence of which has nothing to do with the character of the soil. In the same way the art-work must be regarded as a creative formation, freely making use of every precondition. Its meaning and its own individual particularity rests in itself, and not in its preconditions; in truth one might almost say, it is a being that uses man and his personal dispositions merely as a cultural medium or soil, whose forces it disposes according to its own laws, while shaping itself to the fulfilment of its own creative purpose.

But here I am anticipating somewhat, since I have in mind a particular class of art-work, which I have first to introduce. For not every work of art is produced under this constellation. There are works, verse as well as prose writings, which proceed wholly from the author's intention and resolve to produce this or that effect. In this case the author submits his material to a definite treatment that is both directed and purposeful; he adds to it and subtracts from it, emphasizing one effect, modifying another, laying on this colour here, that there, with the most careful weighing of their possible effects, and with constant observance of the laws of beautiful form and style. To this labour the author brings his keenest judgment, and selects his expression with the most complete freedom. In his view his material is only material, and entirely subject to his artistic purpose; he wills to present this and nothing else. In this activity the poet is simply identical with the creative process, whether he has willingly placed himself at the head of the creative movement, or whether this has so entirely seized upon him as a tool or instrument that all consciousness of the fact has escaped him. He is the creative process itself, standing completely in it and undifferentiated from it, with all his aims and all his powers. There is no need, I think, to bring before you examples of this identity, either from the history of literature or from the poets' own confessions.