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The Choice of a Mate and Marriage. Hans Blüher.
Neurotic Exogamy. A Contribution to the Correspondence in the Psychic Life of Neurotics and Savages. Dr. Karl Abraham.
The Dismemberment Motive in Myth. Herbert Silberer.
Sexual Prototypes in Simple Inventions. Dr. Phil. Fritz Giese.
The Choice of a Mate and Marriage.—The question continually presents itself whether the individual and society are best served by the institution of marriage or of promiscuity. The problem is considered usually in the light of the question whether marriage is an externally imposed institution or one which has arisen naturally from within. The writer believes that if the unconscious is examined there will be found there determinants for the institution of marriage in the nature of the choice of a partner. The hypothesis that marriage has grown out of a preceding state of promiscuity, he believes, is based upon insufficiently supported deductions. In looking instead for unconscious motives one has to ask why man makes an individual choice of a permanent partner as over against many possible love objects. Little can be learned from a biological investigation of the problem.
Blüher considers the question by starting with the Odyssey, which he believes permits of a less prejudiced view of the comparison between the man's desire for one partner and the enjoyment of a number of love objects than the later Christian conception in literature would afford. For in the ancient tale the question is considered more as a purely psychological and not an ethical one. The Odyssey is unmistakeably an epic of marriage. The longing of Odysseus for his wife Penelope runs through all the varied tale of his adventures. Other female charmers are typified by Calypso and Circe, to whom no blame is attached, who are desirable objects in themselves, who are young where Penelope is
an older matron and yet cannot tempt Odysseus from his loyal longing for the wife. In the same apparently inexplicable manner,