Imago

Jekels, Ludwig. The Psychology of Pity.

Reik, Theodor. Final Phases of Belief Found in Religion and in Obsessional Neurosis.

Zullinger, Hans. Psychoanalysis and Leadership in Schools.

Sperba, Alice. Inhibitions in Daydreams.

Bernfeld, Siegfried and Feitelberg, Sergi. On Psychic Energy, Libido and Their Measurement.

Kaiser, Hellmuth. Kleist's “Prince of Homberg.”

Jekels, L. The Psychology of Pity.—Jekels agrees with Freud's division of pity into two forms, that which represents an idenification with the object and that which arises from reaction to a sadistic partial drive. Jekels calls the first “feminine” sympathy and the other “masculine.” In the feminine the masochistic ego, craving punishment, seeks and finds satisfaction, so that this sort is nothing but a form of sexual satisfaction. The apparent pain conceals a pronounced hedonic factor. It is connected with the beating phantasy. Nietzsche calls it a perversion. Augustus in the Confessions praises the sweetness of tears of sympathy. Rousseau emphasizes “la pitié douce.” Moses Mendelssohn exclaims “What joys flow from the spring of pity,” and Herbert Spencer speaks of the “rapture of sympathy.” To this feminine sympathy Nietzche's words apply “Has your pleasure not taken on a disguise of pity?” This sort of pity is sentimental, paralyzing, an obstacle to active service, and is really a sedative. The masculine sympathy is entirely different. Here the ego wishes to unburden itself of the feeling of guilt. It rejects this claim of the Es energetically and by many devices, first of all by investing the object with desexualized love. The origin of this sort of sympathy is much more complicated than that of the feminine. Jekels gives cases in illustration of the mechanism and finds that the development of this form results from a dissolution of the identification with suffering object in order to get rid of the castration anxiety, springing from identification with the person suffering. Toward the object,