Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse

1. Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Theory of Emotion. G. jelgersma.

2. The Castration Complex. august staercke.

3. Psychoanalytic Observations on Tic. S. ferenczi.

1. Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Theory of Emotion. In Jelgersma's opinion emotion is the psychic side of a certain intensity of a process in the organ of thought. A slight acceleration in the material process always produces a feeling of pleasure; with further increase the pleasure is diffused and when the intensity of the material process has attained a slightly greater increase the pleasure vanishes and with still greater increase there arises the feeling of pain in some one of its intensities and varieties. Jelgersma holds that the same conditions which prevail in regard to simple senses (taste, etc.) also exist in the ideational and thought spheres, in the instinctive and ideational spheres; here also the lesser degrees of intensity of the material processes are accompanied by pleasure and the higher degrees by feelings of pain or melancholy. The author notes the resemblance of his views to those of Ebbinghaus and their divergence from those of Wundt. It is very remarkable, he says, that the contribution of psychoanalysis to the theory of the emotions has been so small, since the important results which the new method of research have brought to light have been for the most part in the emotional sphere. However Jelgersma sees confirmation of his view of the emotions in something Freud says incidentally in the discussion of an entirely different question (Zur Einfuhrung des Narcissmus) Freud explains the pain produced by the damming back of the libido in the ego by saying: “I content myself with the explanation that pain is the expression of a higher tension, dependent on a certain degree attained in the physical process, which, in the psyche, is transformed into the quality of pain; it would seem then that the pain is not due to an absolute quantity in the material substratum, but to a f