The essays treated here appeared under the subtitle of this book
in the first numbers of the periodical Imago edited by me. They represent my firstefforts to apply view-points and results of psychoanalysis to unexplained problems of
racial psychology. In method this book contrasts with that of W. Wundt and the works
of the Zurich Psychoanalytic School. The former tries to accomplish the same object
through assumptions and procedures from non-analytic psychology, while the latter
follow the opposite course and strive to settle problems of individual psychology by
referring to material of racial psychology. I am pleased to say that the first stimulus
for my own works came from these two sources.
I am fully aware of the shortcomings in these essays. I shall not touch upon those
which are characteristic of first efforts at investigation.
The others, however, demand a word of explanation. The four essays which are here
collected will be of interest to a wide circle of educated people, but they can only be
thoroughly understood and judged by those who are really acquainted with
psychoanalysis as such. It is hoped that they may serve as a bond between students
of ethnology, philology, folklore and of the allied sciences, and psychoanalysts; they
cannot, however, supply both groups the entire requisites for such co-operation.