Miscellaneous Abstracts

1. Incest in Mormonism. Amer. Jour, of Urology and Sexology.

2. Proxies in Mormon Polygamy. The Forum, LV, No. 3, pp. 341-351, March 1916.

3. Der Sexuelle Anteil an der Theologie der Mormonen. Imago, III, 197-204, April 1914. (Translated from Alienist and Neurologist, XXIX, 208-222, May, 1908.)

The first two essays deal largely with disputed questions of fact to prove the existence of the esoteric doctrines and practices indicated in the titles. It is believed that the facts are established by the authorities quoted and cited. In this abstract will be considered only the psychologic import of the facts found. Those seeking the original authorities on the questions of fact, are referred to the original essays, which are thoroughly annotated, except that in the one German translation the citations were omitted, as they will be here.

1. Incest of Mormonism.—The incestuous indulgences of the Latter-day Saints have a specal interest for the psychanalyst, for reasons other than the universality of infantile sexuality to tend toward incestuous manifestations. In the case of Mormon polygamous families, we find greater variety and degrees of incestuous sexuality, than would be possible under a different system. Because of this, the materials of this essay can be so rearranged as to exemplify the greatest possible number of stages in the psychosexual evolution from the primal autoerotic interest of the infant, through varying degrees of incestuous attachments, toward extraverted interest and a complete emancipation from the erotic ties of the home.

With the contraction and intensification of the physiologic erotic zones, toward a focalization in the sexual centers, there comes a parallel psychologic expansion of erotic interest, toward sexual objectives progressively more removed from the primal autoerotism. Manifestly the minimum of psychic growth away from the diffused, yet quite exclusively egocentric erotic interest of extreme infancy, is the preadolescent attachment to parents, which