ABSTRACT
Psychology, which once eked out a modest existence in a small and highly academic backroom, has, in fulfilment of Nietzsche’s prophecy, developed in the last few decades into an object of public interest which has burst the framework assigned to it by the universities. In the form of psychotechnics it makes its voice heard in industry, in the form of psychotherapy it has invaded wide areas of medicine, in the form of philosophy it has carried forward the legacy of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, it has quite literally rediscovered Bachofen and Carus, through it mythology and the psychology of primitives have acquired a new focus of interest, it will revolutionize the science of comparative religion, and not a few theologians want to apply it even to the cure of souls. Will Nietzsche be proved right in the end with his ‘scientia ancilla psychologiae’?
