The Psychology Of Men Of Genius

The Psychology of Men of Genius BY ERNST KRETSCHMER Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology in the University of Marburg TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY R. B. CATTELL B.Sc.' Ph.D.^ University of London LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE 1931 CO. LTD. AND COMPANY PRINTKD IN G1EAT BRITAIN BY THE EDINBURGH PRKSS, EDINBURGH CONTENTS Translator’s Foreword . . . Preface . . . . . Introduction ...... PAG« vii xi xiii Part One LAWS CHAP. I. The Inner Voice .... II. Instinct and Intellect . . 3 .24 III. The Chief Forms underlying Personality Differences . . . . -47 IV. The Breeding of Talent . 56 V. Genius and Race . . . .69 Part Two PATTERNS VI. Spiritual Periodicity. VII. Sex and Puberty. VIII. The Scientist The Artist of Life 107 The Curves of Life . 123 ..... IX. Heroes and Leaders .... X. Inspired Characters and Mankind’s Ven­ eration ..... XI. The Prophet ..... V 136 148 166 175 vi CONTENTS Part Three PORTRAIT COLLECTION Preliminary Remarks Portraits . . . 193 ...... 197 Sources of the Portrait Collection Index . . ...... . 253 255 TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD Since ancient times, many illuminating observations and many pretentious books have been written about genius, but the real, scientific study of this biological problem began with the modem psychological researches of Dr Lombroso and Sir Francis Galton. These pioneers started out on two distinct trails which have been followed up—one fitfully, the other systematically —right to the present day. Lombroso pointed to the connection of genius and mental disease, and his paradoxical observations were snatched up and ravelled into a tangle of popular literary discussion and psychoanalytic conjectures. Galton, in his classic Hereditary Genius, established the high degree of inheritance of talent among men of genius. His conclusions have been confirmed and expanded by McKeen CattelTs studies of eminent men, and Castle’s study of eminent women. They have been developed in many ways by Havelock Ellis. And finally, the attack which Galton began, and which has been characterised by strict empiricism, precise statistical methods and (wherever pos­ sible) psychological measurement, has armed itself with the technique of intelligence testing and gone on to new and permanent conquests in the Genetic Studies of Genius emanating from Professor Terman’s laboratory. Kretschmer is not blind to these achievements, but he himself is back on the neglected trail of Lombroso—neglected, that is to say, except for a few isolated psychoanalytic vii viii TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD incursions by Freud and Adler. The English-American approach has made progress because of the scientific rigour of its methods, but it has done so at the expense of dividing the subject piecemeal, concentrating on one part, and neglecting other aspects, particularly the emotional side. Kretschmer calls once more for the comprehensive view, and himself illuminates the rich complexity of the conative bases of genius. In a region where so much has been built on the shifting sands of speculation, he erects a structure which will be permanent because he has discovered a rock beneath—one of the few established principles in psychiatry. That basis