網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

thoughtfully and independently on this and allied topics before the so-called New Psychology disturbed the minds of advanced discussion circles; and her books have, in addition, been characterised by a wide range of familiarity with the work of contemporary authorities.

Indeed the main flaw in the present volume may be ascribed to her effort to maintain this same standard of far-flung eclecticism in matters psychological. Her obvious solicitude to omit no reference bearing on the theme discussed, has blinded her to the fact that fundamental divergencies in psychological opinion cannot be composed by the simple expedient of textual dovetailing and that the result is likely to be rather bewildering to readers who are hardy enough to follow up the numerous references to authorities holding strongly conflicting and often mutually incompatible views on the problems in question.

Mrs Hartley shows every sign of being able to think for herself and she would have been better advised to settle the question of her own psychological affinities and restrict her references to accessible passages from original authorities rather than to load her Bibliography with second-hand and often inferior presentations of their views.

Careful sub-editing of her book from this point of view would greatly enhance its value as a spirited piece of popular exposition written in an idiom which will appeal to the class of readers for whom it is designedly written. JAMES GLOVER.

The Birth of the Psyche. By L. CHARLES BAUDOUIN. Translated by Fred Rothwell. London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1923. Pp. xxii + 211. In his Preface to the English edition of The Birth of the Psyche M. Badouin warns the reader that the book is "anything but a learned treatise on psychology or psycho-analysis." It is "just a tiny corner of the heart, a little music of a very intimate nature." The author desires to appear in the rôle not of the scientist but of the poet, and he devotes several pages to the discussion of "the marriage of art and science."

In the twenty-four sketches which make up the book and which, he tells us, were jotted down just as and when they came, he has tried to revive impressions of his early childhood. He gives us glimpses into the mind of a sensitive, egotistic child, happier in the life of phantasy and the warm intimacy of the home (he was a much-loved only child), than in the company of other boys, from whose rough games he shrank, though his vaulting imagination enabled him to take the lead when muscular prowess was not required of him.

Several of the chapters contain impressions of his earliest school-days; in others we see him leading his procession of paper ducks through the rooms of his home, dressing up in the faded silks and ribbons of the lumber-room, or frightening himself with the shadow of his own head in the lamp-light. He has not forgotten that childish days were not all golden but were clouded by mysterious fears. In "The Terrors of Sleep" and "Steam Rollers" he expresses something of the agony of dread which a little child may go through in silence. M. Baudouin says that in writing these sketches he has "forgotten what psychology and psycho-analysis have taught him," but he admits what is indeed obvious, that this knowledge has influenced his vision. Those familiar

with psycho-analytic theory will read much that is significant between the lines of every chapter, even where it is less directly conveyed than in those on "Parricide" and "The Anguish of Love." We see the child's sense of omnipotence as he watches the snow-flakes, "the little white souls" (he is already a poet!), "See, there's one which is now in America.... Its name is Camaralzaman; I call it by name and it comes and settles on my finger." Or again, to what superstitious practices of the race is this laughable, yet pitiful, scene a parallel: "I had got into the habit of crouching down like a toad, and jumping about the room. Whenever I played this game, I was sure my father would tell me to stop, after a few leaps. And so, no sooner had mamma gone out and I had begun to feel anxious, than I decided mentally that I would pretend to be a toad and would count my leaps. If my father protested before the twelfth leap or the fifteenth this would mean that mamma had got run over. If I went beyond the fatal number...then she was safe" (p. 210).

It is perhaps inevitable that something of the charm of the original should be lost in the translation of a book of this kind. In Mr Rothwell's translation a somewhat stilted turn is given at times to the sentences, which weakens the impression of naïve childish thinking. Such words as 'revivescence' or 'droplet' strike strangely on an English ear. Possibly also some English readers may regret the occasional lapse of the author of the book into rather obvious sentiment a certain tendency to dot the i's and cross the t's of a pathetic or edifying reflection. But they will appreciate the atmosphere he conveys, the insight into the child's mind and the delicate humour that plays over the book.

CECIL BAINES.

ABSTRACT.

Eine Teufelsneurose im siebzehnten Jahrhundert, by Sigmund Freud.

(Imago, 1923, No. 1.)

In this paper Freud discusses in the light of psychoanalytic theory a case of "possession by the devil," the record of which has been put into Freud's hands by Dr R. Payer-Thurn, Director of the Fideikommissbibliothek in Vienna. This record is contained in a manuscript which came from a place of pilgrimage named Mariazell, and tells the story of an artist, Christoph Haitzmann, who made a compact with the devil and was released by the aid of the Blessed Virgin at the chapel of Mariazell in the year 1677. The manuscript consists of a Latin compilation by a monk, giving an account of the case and its miraculous cure, and a fragment of the artist's German diary. A coloured title-page shows the scene of the compact and of the release, and on another page are eight coloured pictures of subsequent apparitions of the devil. These pictures are affirmed to be copies of Haitzmann's original paintings.

The record states that on September 5th, 1677, Christoph Haitzmann came to Mariazell, seeking to be set free from a compact with the devil which, he said, he had made nine years previously and written in his blood and under the terms of which he must shortly pass, body and soul, into the power of the fiend. He was sent to Mariazell by the priest of Pottenbrunn who related in a letter how the artist had been seized with convulsions while in church and had confessed, upon examination, to having made the diabolical compact. (In passing, Freud comments on the possibility of this examination having 'suggested' the idea of a compact.) At Mariazell Haitzmann prayed and did penance, and on the 8th of September, the birthday of the Virgin Mary, there appeared to him in the Chapel the devil in the form of a dragon and gave back the deed written in blood, which the artist duly delivered to the monks who were present but to whom the devil was invisible.

Feeling himself to be set free he went to Vienna, to his sister's house, but on October 11th his seizures returned, and he was again tormented by visions and temptations by the devil. In May, 1678, he presented himself once more at Mariazell and confessed to having made a still earlier compact written in ink, and likewise binding him to the devil. Once more the Virgin came to his help; he was released, and the agreement was returned to him. This time he felt that all was well and he was received into a religious Order in which he died at peace in the year 1700. We learn, however, that, even after the second exorcism, he was at times tempted to give himself again to the devil but, by the grace of God, he resisted.

Such is the story of Christoph Haitzmann, artist and neurotic.

In giving his analytic interpretation Freud observes that he is writing for those who believe in the psychoanalytic theory. To those who do not his explanation is likely to appear improbable and unnecessarily subtle. Further, he is careful to state that he believes in the good faith both of the monks who made the record and of the artist himself. The fact that the latter doubtless wrote the two compacts and took them to the Chapel while in an abnormal mental state does not imply that he was a dissimulator

The motive of the compact is first considered. There is no indication that Haitzmann was influenced, as others who made similar agreements are said to have been, by a thirst for power, wealth or the pleasures of the senses. We learn that he made the compact when in a state of depression, following on his father's death. He found himself falling into melancholy and inhibited in the pursuit of his calling, so that he was in a condition of destitution. The terms of the agreement are peculiar: it simply says that he affirms himself to be the son ("leibeigner Sohn") of Satan and that in nine years' time he will deliver himself to the devil, body and soul. There is apparently no mention of what the devil is to do for him in return. Freud conjectures that for the space of nine years he was to take the place of the patient's father, to act, that is, as a father-substitute. He argues that, just as the idea of God is, according to the psychoanalytic doctrine, derived from the figure of the father as he appears to the child, so the notion of the devil springs from the hate side of the ambivalent relation between parent and child. The record of a case such as this shows, in clear relief, mental processes which can only be reached in modern times by the analysis of neurotic symptoms and the free associations of patients. The conjecture seems to be borne out in the case of Haitzmann by the fact that we are expressly told that after his father's death he fell into a state of melancholy. Freud has shown elsewhere ("Trauer und Melancholie," Sammlung kl. Schriften, IV) that melancholia has its origin in the ambivalent conflict following upon the loss of the loved object.

If it be assumed that this was indeed the meaning of the compact other points in the record may be analysed. The sexual motive Freud holds to be represented in the number 9 (the compact for nine years), which is the number of months in the period of gestation, and by the fact that the devil frequently appeared in the male form but with the breasts of a female. In this apparition Freud sees a reaction against a repressed phantasy of the artist's, namely, that of bearing a child to his father-a phantasy arising out of a feminine attitude towards the father such as is often met with in the analysis of male patients. The reaction against the phantasy is due to the fear of castration (for the abandonment of the male rôle carries with it the loss of the male organ) and expresses itself in a new phantasy by which the feminine rôle is forced upon the father. In Haitzmann's visions this is symbolised by the female breasts upon the male figure. This feature may be over-determined and indicate a displacement of love from the mother to the father and a previous mother-fixation. It is to the Mother of God that he turns in his distress, and it is on her birthday that he is released from his compact.

The fragment of the artist's diary contains the account of the second phase of his illness, the period between the first and second exorcisms. He was once more tormented by apparitions, sometimes of the tempter, sometimes of Christ and the Virgin: all of these he regarded as manifestations of the Evil One.

Having emerged from his state of melancholy after the first deliverance, he became a prey at first to worldly and sensual visions; on rejecting these he was bidden by the heavenly visitants to forsake the world and become a hermit, the command being accompanied by promises of bliss and threats of damnation if he refused. Later, a sexual phantasy obsessed him, after which he fell into a trance, endured the torments of hell and heard a voice which told him he was being punished for his wicked thoughts. Some months later he returned, as we know, to Mariazell, was finally released from his compact and became a religious

This was the solution at once of the moral conflict and the problem of his material necessities. He had been unable to pursue his calling; possibly, as Freud suggests, the inhibition indicates remorse and self-punishment, or even a tardy obedience to his father who may have opposed his artistic career. It is probable that he belonged to that class of persons who are always dependent on others for their maintenance because of a fixation to the infantile situation at the mother's breast. But material necessity alone, without the inner conflict arising out of his relation, would not have driven him to sign his pact with the devil-in other words, would not have resulted in neurosis.

CECIL BAINES.

« 上一頁繼續 »