Swiss Psycho-Analytical Society

October 6, 1928. The Training Committee announced that on October 25 the first of a course of lectures on psycho-analysis would be given in Zürich.

Direktor Dr. Kielholz (Königsfelden): Johann Georg Zimmermann as the forerunner of psycho-analysis. Zimmermann, the poet, physician and philosopher, the two-hundredth anniversary of whose birth was being celebrated by the Swiss Medical profession this autumn, was the only child of weakly parents who coddled and spoilt him. He was early left an orphan, but his later narcissism was derived from his parents' attitude towards him—a narcissism which left him no peace till, in the highest Court circles, his association with Frederick the Great and the Empress Catharine of Russia gratified his exalted self-regard and vanity, but ministered also to the hypochondria which made him the victim of moods of the most profound depression, to which he finally succumbed. In his most famous writings, on loneliness, we find deep psychological insight, together with the struggle with the autism which was threatening him.

October 28, 1928.

• 1Zulliger: The displacement of a reaction of conscience. A boy lost a coin, and thereupon committed a trifling theft. He confessed the latter to his father and subsequently maintained that he had told him about losing the money. Unconsciously the theft had been substituted for the loss of the money, which was narrated as a screen-memory. (Author's abstract.)

• 2Dr. Blum: The symbolism of eating and nourishment. A certain patient, having suffered from digestive disorders for twenty years, was cured by psycho-analysis. The dream-material in this analysis showed the significance of eating. The Oedipus conflict was here reflected on the oral-anal level. Of special significance to the patient was a kind of uncooked vegetarian food, called 'Bircher-Misli'. In accordance with his neurotic tendencies, this food represented the form of nourishment which was digestible and permissible f