American Imago

Roheim, Geza. The Psychology of Patriotism.

Sterba, Richard. On Spiders, Hanging and Oral Sadism.

Gloyne, Howard F. Tarantism.

Bergler, Edmund. Does ‘Writer's Block’ Exist?

Devereux, George. Psychodynamics of Mohave Gambling.

Hitschmann, Edward. Franz Schubert's Grief and Love.

Roheim, Geza. The Psychology of Patriotism. The author examines some of the cultural literature. The point is that all nations believe that they have the privilege of virility. “Unamerican” and “sissy” are related though not identical concepts. Some nations may represent themselves as sedate middle aged men (John Bull) others as young dashing heroes but maleness and national character certainly go together. Eating national food means introjecting the father and belonging to a nation means the successful mastery of the Oedipus complex. For the member of a group (nation) belonging to the group means that he has identified himself with his own father, and that he has a right to the land, the symbolic mother. The parental images are introjected, they have become a part of his ego-ideal, something that is a powerful synthesis of object love and narcissism. To be separated from the nation is a castration threat and means being guilty of oedipal desires. Furthermore every nation claims, the one privilege of being the most valiant the world has ever seen. This is merely the censored representative of a more original claim of being a man in the phallic sense of the word. The unconscious contents discussed in this paper are summarized in the integration of the group, in the psychological frontiers of in-group versus out-group. So far everything is consistent. But anthropologists themselves are part and parcel of trends now manifesting themselves in groups and they tend to overemphasize this integrational element. They see only the nation, mankind and the individual are forgotten.

Sterba, Richard. On Spiders, Hanging and Oral Sadism. Unerring psychological intuition has made man choose two compa