Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/124

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part of psychoanalysis into the domains of mythology and comparative religion, whence we have derived a deeper insight into ethical psychological symbolism. Those who are well-acquainted with the symbolism of dreams and of dementia præcox have been greatly impressed by the striking parallelism between modern individual symbols and those found in folk-lore. The extraordinary parallelism between ethnic symbolism and that of dementia præcox is remarkably clear. This fact induced me to make an extended comparative investigation of individual and ethnic symbolism, the results of which have been recently published.[11] This complication of psychology with the problem of mythology makes it impossible for me to demonstrate to you my conception of dementia præcox. For the same reasons, I must forego the discussion of the results of psychoanalytic investigation in the domain of mythology and comparative religions. It would be impossible to do this without setting forth all the material belonging to it. The main result of these investigations is, for the moment, the knowledge of the far-reaching parallelisms between the ethnical and the individual symbolisms. From the present position of this work, we can scarcely conceive what a vast perspective may result from this comparative ethnopsychology. Through the study of mythology, the psychoanalytical knowledge of the nature of the unconscious processes we may expect to be enormously enriched and deepened.

I must limit myself, if I am to give you in the course of my lectures a more or less general presentation of the psychoanalytic school. A detailed elaboration of this method and its theory would have demanded an enormous display of cases, whose delineation would have detracted from a comprehensive view of the whole. But to give you an insight into the concrete proceedings of psychoanalytic treatment, I decided to bring before you a short analysis of a girl of eleven years of age. The case was analyzed by my assistant, Miss Mary Moltzer. In the first place, I must mention that this case is by no means typical, either in the length of its time, or in the course of its general analysis; it is just as little so as an individual is characteristic for all other people. Nowhere is the abstraction of universal rules more difficult than in psychoanalysis, for which reason it is better to abstain