Correspondence

It is most welcome news to learn of Doctors Jelliffe and White's foundation of a broadly planned journal, which aims at the compilation of general psychological literature, and which therefore may be expected to fill a gap that the existing forms of psychology have rendered painfully evident. Each of these forms deals with a special domain, such as philosophical psychology, which is largely transcendental, experimental or physiological psychology, which has been accused, not without cause, of being physiology rather than psychology, and medical psychology, which through the psychoanalytical method of Freud has now come to encroach freely upon the domain of normal psychology. The complex psychic phenomena are left practically unexplained by the first two forms of psychology, whereas the psychoanalytical method of medical psychology has started a line of inquiry which would seem to have a general range of application.

Two problems in particular are adapted to exert an activating effect upon normal psychology. One of these is the recently elaborated dynamic interpretation of the psychological experience, which endeavors to explain the psychic manifestations as equivalent energy transformations. The other problem is represented by symbolism, which comprises the structural analogy of the intellectual functions, in their onto- and phylogenetic evolution. Medical psychology naturally came closest to these problems, as being most likely to observe, examine and analyze the mode or origin of powerful affects or extraordinary psychic structures. The delusional structures of the insane; the illusions of the neurotic; and the dreams of normal as well as abnormal individuals have also afforded abundant opportunities for studying the remarkable analogies with certain ethnological structures.

In my paper on the “Changes and Symbols of the Libido,” a faint attempt has been made at sketching these relations, not in order to propound a finished theory, which would