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The Self. dr. géza róheim. (Continued.)
The Mystical. aurel kolnai.
The Psychology of Mistrust. dr. helene deutsch.
The True Nature of the Child Psyche. Edited by dr. H. hug-hellmuth. (Continued from Psa. Rev. VII, 4. The “Middle” Child. Dr. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth.)
The Self.—(Continued.)
The Mystical.—Kolnai studies the mystical as something psychological which operates within the psychic life either to serve the regressive tendency or to lead the impulses forward, “anagogically” in Silberer's sense. The mystical is too prevalent to be disregarded since it surrounds all objects and interests with which the psyche has to do. Kolnai defines the term mystical as denoting a feeling tone or as extended to the qualities of an object which call forth that tone. He calls attention to the distinction necessarily to be made between the mystical and the more objective or logical forms of the idea contained, mysticism, mystic, mysterious, all of which make use of the mystical but diverge from it. The mystery contains the feeling of anxiety but the truly mystical arises where mysticism ceases. Even knowledge creates the mystical, for the latter opens up something still further so that it in turn leads on to new knowledge. It is therefore anagogic both in a scientific and moral sense. Art is an actualized form of the mystical but the mystical is much more dynamic and simple than art.
This anagogic function of the mystical is discerned by the comparison which the author makes of the mystical with the comic as the latter has been discussed by Bergson and Freud. The mystical penetrates to the inner essence of the strange and unexpected, with which the comic deals, so that everything strange and unexpected is on the borderline between the comic and the mystical. Thus the features of a dream, psychotic symptoms, religious beliefs, are comic or mystical according to that which the observer sees in them. If the comic and the mystical unite the result is the grotesque. In gener