MIESCHER, Beiträge zur Farbenlehre. A critical review of Ostwald's theory of colour vision which is shown to be not in contradiction to but an extension of Helmholtz's theory. The measurement of colour, colour systems, relativity of colour, the theory of contra-coloration, graphic presentation of colours, are among the questions discussed with experimental data. Ibid. Band 57, Heft 3. POSCHOGA, Der einseitige Astigmatismus u. sein Einfluss auf das binokulare Sehen. Self-experiments which demonstrate that binocular sensation is unitary; there is no binocular synthesis and the theory of the summation of monocular sensations breaks down. MITSUMOTO, Olfaktrometische Untersuchungen. Experiments to determine the threshold stimulus of the olfactory nerves with various substances. Is there an absolute threshold stimulus? VOM HOFE, Die Beurteilung der Körperrichtung. Judgment as to direction is uncertain in the absence of the sense of vision. It is influenced by movements of the head and by the adduction of the arm horizontally. MITSUMOTO, Narkoversuche am Geruchsorgan. Evidence that under narcosis of the olfactory mucous membrane there is a general reduction in sensitivity; no evidence of predilection for particular smells. M. D. E. Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie. Band III, vi, Dec. 1925. FRITZ KÜNKEL, The Secret Gulf between Man and Woman, a contribution to the examination of the sexual impulse. I. The Problem; Flight from life involves flight from one's partner and contrariwise flight from one's partner is a flight from the tasks of life. Impotence and frigidity are the crassest signs of fear of love and of life, and of weakness of courage to live and to love, these disorders, then, present not only erotic problems but problems of social feeling. Putting aside general ethical and philosophical questions the author comes to the practical question whether clinical evidence can be adduced for an impeccable love for humanity accompanying incapacity for sexual pleasure in love, or an apparently full sexual capacity along with an obviously faulty community feeling. These propositions are discussed by means of clinical histories. II. First Case: An only son in the middle of a family of daughters, brought up by a wealthy father who bred horses and a mother whose cold nature chiefly found pleasure in the elegance and sporting pluck of her children, developed into a Don Juan; he had no social feeling, woman was merely a bit of flesh,' coitus the 'crown of victory.' Sexual function was put to the service of the will to power, his partner as a human being was of no account, the genitalia were only instruments of mastery. Where then is the neurotic inhibition in such a life as this? It lies in the centripetal path of the reflex, in the sensory not the motor side. For the patient the outer world was a place for deeds not for the reception of feelings. Lacking in sympathy completely, he conjugated the verb of existence for ever in the first person singular, never plural. But at bottom he was dispirited and had feelings of inferiority. His earliest recollection was of his mother going out riding, he cried and caught hold of her habit. She beat him lightly with her riding whip on the finger, and said, "Now then, no crying!" This acted as a cluster memory1 for situations of his early childhood, the natural feeling of affinity is disturbed. the mother goes out, the child is left to himself and the attempt to overcome her fails; he is thus weaned from tears, suffering and from feeling. From this time on he becomes an enemy of man, neither in erotic nor in spiritual life can he make affinities. His sexual successes are tasks in forcefulness which finds its readiest outlet in sexual function. This case can be solved best by a study of the female counterpart in the next example. III. Second Case: An authoress who had given the coup de grâce to many a man. A thinker as companion for her brains, two athletes for her bed, and three coal magnates for her purse, and a new lot every month, were her requirements from this 'poodle-populated' Europe. In spite of many prostitute-tendencies, she was different from them in that she was not frigid. But her social feeling was obviously weak. Her cynicism was born of an ever disappointed passion, love of mankind was sunk in an undiminished sexual impulse. Does this case contradict the theories of Individual-psychology? Only on superficial examination. Her contempt, poured out lavishly in her novels, was an expression of the masculine protest which dated from infancy. Her father ruled the house, everything soft, tender, and all warmth of feeling was forbidden. Her mother was a pedant and a prude, interested only in women's duties. The patient, an only child, sought to shape her course between these two. From her father she took her over-estimation of masculine activity because this gave her a weapon against her mother, and she tried to overcome her father through regarding men as the very devil, which she learned from her mother. To find out what part sex played in her life is therefore merely a matter of calculation: her frivolity was an antithesis to her mother's prudery, her irresponsible endeavours to outdo her father in manliness led to a devaluation of men, but behind this lay masculine ambition. Her erotic insatiableness was thus equally a weapon against father and mother. Can the physiological function of sex be put to the service of a plan of life, can craving for influence be ascribed to sex? The impulse is not sexual but springs from the aim of mastery. In these two cases the term erotic and sexual have been used, the former means only the function of the sexual apparatus and its psychological superstructure without regard for its connection with the total personality; we must now examine the relation of organic function to the lifeplan, of erotic life to the total personality. IV. Third Case: An art student, with St Francis-tendencies, felt that though his married life, which was platonic, was not disturbing, yet in the presence of more strongly sexed women than his wife he was troubled by his impotence. His social feeling was strong, the very opposite of the two preceding cases. His love life had the dichotomy described by Freud, dividing between Madonna and prostitute. The problem of sensuality versus spirituality however, on closer view, is found to cover the problem of personal worth, behind the attitude to Madonna and prostitute lies the relation of the person to his own position of power, the latter is a slave, the former a ruler. The art student patient with his high social feeling could only 1 An Adlerian term for the phenomena of 'cover-memory,' with the difference that Individual-psychology does not employ the concept of the unconscious so does not need to differentiate the memory of events which only find symbolic expression in the 'covermemory' from those which follow. In Individual-psychology the first or earliest memory is regarded as highly important but is not to be confused with the Freudian Primal Scene.' This instance also illustrates the Adlerian theory of symbolism, not as an expression in consciousness for ideas which are unconscious, but as typical examples of types of action or situation.-J. R. feel well while he was doing good, his aid to the weak, idealised in St Francis, was a sign of his ambition-and of his weakness. His failure lay not in the sphere of sex or of social feeling but in the weak unification of the individual, both were disturbed together, so the Individual-psychological theory is still undisturbed. These cases [and one which is omitted] show that disturbance of the social feeling often brings with it an erotic disturbance, and vice versa, even in cases which on the surface seem to point to the opposite conclusion. Looking at the cases as a group, they show in different ways lack of courage and an attempt to put a distance between themselves and life. They lack security' and try to attain it by abandoning in fact a part of themselves, their individual integrity is lost, and so, lacking subjective reality, they lose objective reality too. We can sum up their troubles by saying that their sexual difficulties are symptoms of a general disturbance of social feeling, for the erotic relation of man to woman is none other than an organic expression of the general relation of man to man. Opponents of Individual-psychological theories are influenced by an uncritical belief in the sexual impulse. Man is a unidimensionable variable, at one pole are his courage, adaptability, and readiness to solve life's tasks, at the other are timidity, egocentricity, obstinacy, and readiness to shirk. When courage fails a third polarity appears-feelings of inferiority. On closer examination the analogy must be given up because the attributes of the mind cannot be measured, though we say that a person's courage was more in a previous year than now, or that his social feeling was less. On the problem of the relation of sexuality to social feeling he writes, "Die Sexualität verhält sich zum Gemeinschaftsgefühl wie Modus zu Attribut." The Modus cannot function properly if there is defect in the Attribut, and there can be no defect in Modus that is not grounded in Attribut. This philosophical aspect is developed further. Returning to clinical matters he says, "Let the inhibition in development in childhood be what it may, for the adult the sole ground for inhibition in love is the inhibition in courage. But an inhibition-a negative cannot exist for itself, every inhibition disappears when it ceases to have basis...it disappears like the shadow when there is nothing to keep back the light." [This paper is important in that it marks a certain change in Individual-psychology, first in the greater prominence given to the interplay of sexuality and social feeling, second in the diminished stress laid on the inferiorities of childhood.] ALFRED ADLER, Salvaging Mankind by Psychology. (An interview in "The New York Times" by Eugene Bagger.) In three pages Dr Adler gives a résumé of the application of Individual-psychology to social problems. He emphasises the two basic principles permeating all historic evolution, first the 1 Individual-psychology lacking the notion of the unconscious explains what psychoanalysts call 'repression' by supposing that the patient causes and then establishes a psychical 'distance' between himself and the execution of a given act or the gratification of a given impulse; the phenomena known as 'the return of the repressed' and 'reaction formation' and 'sublimation' as well as the modes of dealing with instinctual energy which Freud described as 'turning against the self' appear in Adlerian psychology as phenomena of the 'life-plan.' The life-plan is not decided upon consciously but is built up ‘unwittingly' (to borrow a term from Rivers) and if followed out enables the subject to keep a distance between his conscious mind and those impulses which-did he face them-would bring grave unrest to his mind. It will be guessed, and rightly, that those who have no fear have no need to put a 'distance' between themselves and the gratification of their impulses; those who fear do so because they lack courage and this is ultimately to be traced to an organ inferiority against which the subject reacts by psychical measures-by the "life-plan."--J. R. inferiority complex and second the "sense of solidarity innate in every human society." "The degree to which this sense of solidarity is developed in a person gives the measure not only of his desires, but even more of his actions. The same holds good of groups." He finds one of the chief causes of the Great War was the fact that the great financial powers pressed on peoples of other countries; the consequent difficulty in getting a livelihood, bad wages, inadequate educational and cultural facilities, reluctance of young people to get married and of the married to have children, the joylessness of existence, continuous irritation and nervousness, led to an increased feeling of inferiority and an exaggerated sensitiveness, so that the individual and the nation were led to seek 'solutions.' The young murderers of the Austrian Archduke were at odds with themselves, the nations of Europe were at odds with themselves. In seeking the 'solution' of destructiveness the masses felt a release from situations of intolerable inferiority. If the life tendencies of an individual coincide completely or nearly so with the direction of a mass movement, he becomes a leader, in him mankind's struggle for salvation is re-enacted in himself, it is the essence of his being and therefore he cannot fit himself into the inherited forms of life; these cramp him, he must burst the bonds. His power is limited by the lack of preparation of the masses to receive and fall into line with him. The requirements of such a personality are a strongly-developed sense of solidarity, optimism and self-confidence. Can Individual-psychology turn every child into a leader? [The question was probably put by the interviewer.] Of course not, partly because "we do not claim to possess an infallible technique of training," also because Individual-psychology is not able to increase the number of those fitted for leadership. It "claims to increase the standards of individual efficiency" and those of the group and to restore a large number of neurotics to the normal routine of life. On the sex question: he regards the hatreds and jealousies between man and woman to be due to the inferiority complex; "unfortunately this tradition and this prejudice root so deeply in both sexes that it will take at least two generations till they are ultimately and definitely dispersed." Thus the founder of Individual-psychology opens a wide field for testing by his theory the short interview which might well be called "Group Psychology and the Individual-psychological-analysis of the Superman." J. R. PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY MEDICAL SECTION (Previous Notices in this Journal, Vol. 1, p. 96; Vol. п, p. 99; Vol. v, pp. 64 and 160) 1925 October 28th. November 25th. 1926 January 27th. February 24th. March 8th. April 28th. June 23rd. Joint Meeting with the Psychiatry Section of the Royal Society of The Neurotic Character, by EDWARD GLOVER. Investigations into the Predisposition to Breakdown, by MILLAIS A Hypothetical Mental Constitution of Compulsive Thinkers, by Joint Meeting with Education Section. A Symposium on The What is a Mental Illness? by N. H. M. BURKE. The Psycho-Analytical Technique as a Scientific Method, by JOHN Some Aspects of Bi-Sexuality, by DOUGLAS Bryan. |