Imago

Deri, Max. Natural Objects and the Works of Man.

Kaiser, Hellmuth. Franz Kafka's Inferno.

Zoller, I. A Study of the Alphabet.

Lorenz, Emil. Hänsel and Gretel.

Deri, M. Natural Objects and the Works of Man.—Deri seeks to present in noncontradictory form psychological, sociological and psychoanalytic views in regard to the artistic and technical creations of man. In the exposition of the understanding of natural objects he cites the epistemological definition of Moritz Schlick: understanding in science, as in daily life, is a recognition of one thing in another, the most complete form of this recognition being quantitative. Thus in all natural sciences only one sort of concepts is necessary in order to “understand,” and by using these concepts certain original qualities are discovered, though they are relatively arbitrarily chosen for certain fore-determined purposes. Artificial constructions, however, arise from psychic sources and before any of these creations existed, human power of movement and conscious processes must have been present, and in studying these an entirely different method must be used from that employed in studying the objects of natural science. All the objects created by man, which would not be there if man did not exist, must be studied as psychic qualities through the methods of “introspective psychology.” The material groups itself about four concepts which may be regarded as four levels, the phenomenal (which is shared with natural objects) and three causal levels, belonging to the individual consciousness, social consciousness and to the unconscious. Deri studies two examples, one, the plow, from the technical field and one from pictorial art, Leonardo's Anna Selbdritt in the Louvre. In reference to the plow he explains that at the analytical level, the motor and affective energy of the repressed incestuous sexual desire found release in working the ground and that through the plow this work is facilitated in an extraordinary man