PART II.[201

The number of psychoanalytic investigations into the psychology of dementia præcox has considerably increased since the publication of my book upon the subject.[202] When, in 1903, I made the first analysis of a case of dementia præcox, there dawned on me a premonition of the possibilities of future discoveries in this sphere. This has been confirmed.

Freud first submitted a case of paranoid dementia to closer psychological investigation.[203] This he was enabled to do by means of an analytic technique perfected through his rich experiences with neurotics. He selected the famous autobiography of P. Schreber, "Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken." The patient could not be analysed personally, but having published his most interesting autobiography all the material wanted for an analysis was to be found in it.

In this study Freud shows out of what infantile forms of thought and instincts the delusional system was built up. The peculiar delusions which the patient had about his doctor whom he identified with God or with a god-like being, and certain other surprising and really blasphemous ideas, Freud was able to reduce most ingeniously to his infantile relationship to his father. This case also presented similar bizarre and grotesque concatenations of ideas to the one I have described. As the author himself says, his work confines itself to the task of pointing out those universally existent and undifferentiated foundations out of which we may say every psychological formation is historically developed.[204] This reductive analytical process did not, however, furnish such enlightening results in regard to the rich and surprising symbolism in patients of this kind as we had been accustomed to expect from the same method in the realm of the psychology of hysteria. In reading certain works of the Zürich school, for example, Maeder,[205] Spielrein,[206] Nelken,[207] Grebelskaja,[208] Itten,[209] one is powerfully impressed by the enormous symbol-formation in dementia præcox.

Some of the authors still proceed essentially by the method of analytic reduction, tracing back the complicated delusional formation into its simpler and more universal components, as I have done in the preceding pages. One cannot, however, resist the feeling that this method hardly does justice to the fulness and the almost overpowering wealth of phantastic symbol-formation, although it does undoubtedly throw a light upon the subject in certain directions.

Let me illustrate with an example. We should be thankful for a commentary upon "Faust" which traced back all the diverse material of