Imago

Balint, A. Atl-tlachinolli, the Mexican War Hieroglyphic.

Van Der Wolk, P. C. The Dance of Ciwa.

Pfeifer, S. The Psychology of Music.

Van Der Chijs, A. Infantilism in Painting.

Balint, A. Atl-tlachinolli, the Mexican War Hieroglyphic.— Dr. Balint offers a detailed account of the symbolism in the religious picture writing of the early Mexican Indians. Research in this material was made possible largely through a Father Sahagun, who came to Mexico in 1529, and compiled an encyclopedia of the picture words with their meanings as communicated to him by the natives. The language abounds in myths and the writer has discovered in the interpretation of them the mental processes by which these Indians raised themselves to the position of a conqueror race.

Fear of killing results from a fear of retribution, of being killed in return. By means of a regression to the oral-anal level, death was done away with in their thinking, and war-making raised to an important religious act. The stages of the regression may be briefly indicated. “To kill “-is “to eat” and to eat means “to become fruitful.” In this way every slain (eaten) warrior becomes an embryo, and the slayer becomes the mother. Being killed in retaliation leads to rebirth, and the castration fear present in the fear of death is transformed into fear of birth. Not the death but the capture of the enemy was the goal; the captive was sacrificed, as a rule, eaten. The warrior who had taken a prisoner was therefore identified with the child-bearing woman. On the other hand, the enemy was also identified with the mother, and the captive was a symbol for the penis snatched from the mother, and likewise, for the child begotten with the mother. In the myth of the trinity, the figure of father and son merge together or the mother and children only appear, the father being present in the symbol of a feather ball. The filial sin of devouring the father, which would form the greatest hindrance to the identification of fat