Imago: Zeitschrift fiir Anwendung der Psychoanalyse auf die Geisteswissenschaften

Reflections on War and Death. Sigm. Freud.

œdipus at Colonus. Emil Lorenz.

The “Play” in “Hamlet.” A Contribution to the Analysis and to the Dynamic Understanding of the Work. Dr. Otto Rank.

Some Relationships between the Erotic and Mathematics. Dr. H. v. Hug-Heixmuth.

Reflections on War and Death.1 Freud here probes beneath the illusions upon which our confidence in civilization is based to discover some meaning to the phenomena of the war. It seemed, he says, that civilization had advanced beyond the possibility of war between leading nations, at least of any war other than a mere chivalric matching of strength ameliorated by all the arts of civilization. Instead the reverse proves true. Perhaps, Freud suggests, the moral standard of individual and of nation is not a so well constructed part of our inner fabric as we have believed. It is largely imposed upon the individual by the nation and adhered to by the latter because it is expedient. Then if the nation finds the opposite course more suited to its immediate ends the adoption of such a course loosens also the restraints toward morality imposed upon individuals. The sacrifices which morality had entailed is now refused by the state and the individual quickly follows suit.

Freud says, in regard to the weakness of moral restraint still apparent, that our illusion of morality has prevented understanding of the actual affective factors underneath the external attitude. The deepest character of man consists of elemental impulses in themselves neither good nor evil, but the expression of primitive needs These meet with inhibitions, diversion, they unite, seek different objects, in part turn against one's own ego. In so doing they give rise to reactions which appear so different from the original impulse that the latter we believe

to be quite changed. Instead there remains an ambivalence of feeling which can be seen in the ant