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DISCUSSION: Dr. Niederland was complimented on his thought-provoking, fascinating, and carefully documented study. Dr. K. R. Eissler compared the study to his research on Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci. He felt Schliemann was an extremely talented man, possibly a 'near genius', and emphasized that some problems of creativity may be seen with even more clarity in the near genius than in the genius.
Dr. Maurice Friend stated that Dr. Niederland's discovery and understanding of the death of the eight-year-old brother was a major addition to our understanding of Schliemann's life and psychopathology. He also felt that the material attests to a persistence of the family romance enacted by means of the 'collective alternates'. He questioned the existence of a depression at nine years, and felt rather that it was predominantly a loss reaction and an effort to reconstitute the lost mother. Dr. Friend related the traveling mania to the infantile desire to defy the father and escape with the mother to a distant land where the father could not disturb them.
Dr. Sidney Tarachow pointed out that most reported necrophiliacs and lust murderers are interested in women's bodies, with the goals of love and identification with the mother imago. Schliemann had the additional problem of enforced identification with his dead brother, and was impelled to prove that the dead were not only alive but indestructible, having a continuing identity. In this connection Dr. Tarachow discussed Marie Bonaparte's differentiation between the lust murderer and the necrophiliac: the former identifies with the sadistic father in the sexual act which he now acts out himself, while the latter allows another to kill the mother first and takes second place (after the father). Schliemann seems to belong to the latter, more passive group.
Dr. Elisabeth Geleerd felt the paper was an important contribution to applied psychoanalysis, as well as a service to the sciences of archæology and history. Schliemann