THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



and literature disclosed Narcissistic trends. Narcissus, like 

 Oedipus, grew out of the unconscious artistic following of 

 clues deeply imbedded in the psychic nature; Greek and 

 Roman fantasies achieved a renaissance in psycho-neuroses. 



But even more directly pertinent is the tracing of these 

 trends in the anthropological institutions of totem and 

 taboo, the protections and prohibitions by which the 

 primitive mind had safeguarded its unconscious recognition 

 of psychic values, culturally expressed. Freud's contri- 

 butions to psycho-anthropology are incidental. The 

 anthropologists, from Tylor to Levy-Briihl and Boas and 

 Radin, and from Spencer to Frazer and Crawley and 

 Malinowski and Briffault, have laid the foundations for a 

 psychology of primitive mentality that has important conse- 

 quences in the interpretation of human cultures, low and 

 high, simple and evolved. To cap this edifice with the 

 social psychology of our own economic, political, and 

 social management, was the completing stage. Meanwhile 

 the folklore movement had gathered inexhaustible material 

 for tracing the story of mind in its popular expressions. 

 The psychology of the crowd, from Le Bon to Trotter and 

 Conway and Martin (who applies the Freudian concepts), 

 sets forth alike the products of gregariousness and of the 

 collective integration in which communities have their 

 being. Social psychology has become a specialty of large 

 proportions; it, too, dates from the application of evo- 

 lutionary concepts to the social structure. It would have 

 been impossible without the collateral contributions of 

 the several developments that came in the wake of the 

 renaissance of psychology in a brief half century. It brings 

 evolution once more to the forefront. 



Applied psychology may be briefly surveyed. Its fans et 

 origo lies in the modern pragmatic attitude, which asserts 

 that if psychology is an actual working clue to the life of 

 the mind, individually and collectively, it must leave the 



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