Applied: Martha Mitnitzky-Vagó. 'Ethos, Hypokrisie und Libidohaushalt: Versuch einer libido-ökonomischen Analyse der indischen Gesellschaft.' ('Ethics, Hypocrisy and Libidinal Economy: an Attempt at a Libidinal-Economic Analysis of Indian Society.') Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Imago, 1940, Bd. XXV, Heft 3/4, S. 356–396.

The writer proposes to analyse, according to Freud's theory of the libido, on the one hand the hypocrisy which lies hidden behind the patterns of ethical behaviour that are subscribed to by the various races of man, and, on the other, the truth which is nevertheless present in them. For this purpose she has confined her attention to the Hindu caste system as affording the most striking case for an analysis of this kind; and she devotes the greater part of her paper to a discussion of the position of the highest caste, the Brahmin, in that system. The prohibitions with which the Brahmin is hedged in are so many and so restrictive that his activities are to all intents and purposes reduced to the practice of asceticism—to a cult of the death instinct. His life or libidinal instincts can only find expression in various hypocritical methods of circumventing his taboos—such as his use of leather goods in spite of the prohibition against 'making use' of any part of the cow. However, the writer concludes that the degree of healthy, overruling hypocrisy in the Brahmin is not sufficient to make his attitude of melancholy and rejection of the world a mere pretence.