BF 173 .R3 Copy 1 002 272 435 6 JBF 173 .R3 J Copy 1 , and Mental Disease Monograph Series No. 23 The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences By Dr. OTTO RANK AND Dr. HANNS SACHS of Vienna Authorized English Translation by DR. CHARLES R. PAYNE New York Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company 1916 Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series Edited by SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, M.D. WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D. No. i. Outlines of Psychiatry. (Fifth Edition, 1915.) By WM. A. WHITE, M.D., Price $3.00. A clearly written and concise presentation of psychiatry, especially adtpted for use in teaching and in public institutions for mental diseases. No. 4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses. (Second Edi- tion, 1912.) By PROF. SIGMUND FREUD, M.D., Price $2.50. A selection of some of the more important of Freud's writings. No. 5. Wassermann Serum Reaction in Psychiatry. By FELIX PLAUT, M.D., Price $2.00. 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By Alfred Adler. ft 3 CI.A446115 Copyright, 1916, by Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company PRESS OF The new era printing company OCT 27 tW PREFACE In the following pages, which take up the applicability and significance of psychoanalysis for the mental sciences, the subject can be treated in only the briefest form : neither its evolution nor the extensive body of facts on which its conclusive force rests, can be considered. The degree, however, in which the particular mental sciences are treated by us bears no relation whatever to the cultural importance of these but only to the number of points of contact with psychoanalysis which have thus far been demon- strated. This is determined on the one hand by the share which the unconscious has in the mental products of humanity, on the other hand, by the comparative youth of our science and further by external and accidental influences. Thus, our attention was directed principally to the outlook for the future in which the question of method which will be applicable to the stating and solution of the problems seemed the most important. In the endeavor to carry out this principal object, we sought to supplement our study of the individual problems, the elaboration of which we have striven to further in the magazine Imago edited by us under the direction of Professor Freud. Instead of interrupting the text by particular citations and references to the literature, we refer here once and for all to the fundamental writings of Freud (ten volumes have appeared from F. Deuticke in Vienna and S. Karger in Berlin) as well as to the compilations and periodicals edited under his direction, in which the articles belonging to our subject and the other psychoanalytic literature are to be found. The Authors Vienna, Easter, 1913 " Car tous les hommes desirent d'etre heureux, cela sans exception. Quelques differents moyens qu'ils y emploient, ils tendent tous a ce but. Ce qui fait que l'un va a la guerre, et que l'autre n'y va pas, c'est ce meme desir qui est dans tous les deux accompagne de differentes vues. La volonte ne fait jamais la moindre demarche que vers cet objet. C'est le motif de toutes les action, de tous les hommes, jusqu'a ceux qui se tuent et qui se pendent." — Pascal : Pensees sur L'Homme. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. The Unconscious and its Forms of Expression I II. Investigation of Myths and Legends 27 III. Theory of Religion 67 IV. Ethnology and Linguistics 79 V. Esthetics and Psychology of Artists 93 VI. Philosophy, Ethics and Law 108 VII. Pedagogy and Characterology 120 CHAPTER I The Unconscious and its Forms of Expression The foundation on which the whole of psychoanalysis rests is the theory of the unconscious. Under this, however, is not to be understood a term derived from abstract thought nor merely an hypothesis created with the aim of establishing a philosophic system ; with the significance, for example, which Eduard von Hartmann has given the word, psychoanalysis possesses no con- nection at all. The negative peculiarity of the phenomenon ap- pearing in the term, namely, the absence of the quality of con- sciousness, is indeed the most essential and most characteristic one, but not, however, the only one. We are already familiar with a whole series of positive distinguishing features which differentiate the unconscious psychic material from the rest, the conscious and foreconscious. An idea which at a given moment belongs to the content of consciousness of an individual, can in the next moment have disappeared; others, emerging later, have appeared in its place. Nevertheless, the idea still retains a permanent relation to the conscious mental life, for it can be brought back again by some kind of connected association chain without the necessity of a new sense perception ; that is to say, in the interim, the idea was removed from the conscious mental life but still remained ac- cessible to the mental processes. Such ideas, which indeed lack the quality of consciousness, the latter being every time recover- able however, we call the foreconscious and distinguish this most explicitly from the real unconscious. The real unconscious ideas are not, like the foreconscious ideas, temporarily separated from the conscious mental life, but are permanently excluded from it ; the power to reenter con- sciousness, or stated more exactly, the normal waking conscious- ness of the subject, these ideas lack completely. As the state of consciousness changes, so also does its condition of receptivity. 2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS After such transformations as are brought about, for example, by the condition known to neurologists as "condition seconde" and also by hypnosis and to a certain extent also by sleep, there becomes accessible to the subject a flood of psychic material, phantasies, memories, wishes, etc., which was until that moment unknown to him. That these products are occasioned by the change in consciousness is with some of these, for example memories, excluded a priori. With others, the conclusion may be reached from observing their effects that they must have been previously present in the unconscious. In everything which comes to view from the unconscious on such occasions, experience has shown the constant repetition of certain common characteristics. To these characteristics, belong in the first place a world of affect of uncommonly high intensity and further a persistent attempt to encroach on the conscious mental life; this encroachment is explained by the principle that every affect and the idea invested by it has a natural tendency to appropriate as great a part of the mental life as possible as a consequence of those affective forces. If to every state of con- sciousness, there corresponds a definite condition for the admis- sion or rejection of ideas, then this condition can be imposed and executed by nothing else than an energy acting in psychic affairs which excludes from consciousness the ideas which dis- please it or represses those ideas already there. The effect of a force is counteracted only by another equally strong or superior force opposed to it ; the psychic processes which we can observe are thus the results of dynamic relations which are to be inferred from them. We have before us the picture of a strict gate- / keeper who slams the door in the faces of uninvited guests. Since an affect which is present exercises not a momentary but a lasting activity, it is also not destroyed by a single repulse. Rather, there must be established a perpetual frontier guard; that is, in other words, a permanent interaction of forces, as a result of which, a certain psychic tension becomes inseparable from our mental life. That energy, the function of which is to protect consciousness from the invasion of the unconscious, we call, according as it appears in aggressive or defensive form, repression or resistance. rp ^/:.\v< THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 3 We have witnessed a conflict between two psychic forces and must now ask ourselves whence the hostility between these forces arises. To what peculiarities, do the unconscious ideas owe the fact that the quality of consciousness is withheld from them with such stubbornness? Wherein rests their incompatibility with the other psychic forces? It might at first be open to question whether there are such general characteristics. The exclusion from conscious mental life depends, as we have seen, upon the attitude of consciousness present in such a case and as this attitude varies, the unconscious must likewise change too, quite apart from the individual differ- ence of the content of consciousness conditioned upon differences of experience. On the contrary, we may refer to the fact that the fundamental tendencies belonging to the conscious mental life are as a whole constant and change only slowly and unnotice- ably from epoch to epoch. In their conception of the external world, the members of a civilized society hold the essentials in common, no matter whether this conception ultimately centers in a religious, moral or philosophical view of the world. In spite of all the progress in the control of nature, the human race has developed so little in regard to mind during thousands of years that we may consider the whole of civilized humanity and also that of antiquity as a great unit. The important transformations we will become acquainted with in the individual investigations; in the collective picture, these transformations recede, especially if we compare the picture with that of those who stand outside of civilized society. The position of primitive man, of the so- called savage, toward the external world is fundamentally dif- ferent from ours ; further, in the relation between conscious and unconscious which exists in his mental life, important deviations may be conjectured. Thus in spite of the great individual variety of the uncon- scious, it is not arbitrary and lawless but definitely established with regular, constantly recurring characteristics which we must learn to recognize so far as they have already been investigated. Our first question will naturally concern the origin of the unconscious. Since the unconscious stands completely foreign and unknown to the conscious personality, the first impulse would V ■■ 4 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS be to deny connection with consciousness in general. This is the manner in which the folk-belief has ever treated it. The bits of the unconscious which were visible in abnormal mental states passed as proof of "being possessed," that is, they were con- ceived as expressions of a strange individual, of a demon, who had taken possession of the patient. We, who can no longer rely on such supernatural influences, must seek to explain the facts psychologically. The hypothesis that a primary division of the psychic life exists from birth, contradicts the experience of the continual conflict between the two groups of forces, since if the separation were present from the beginning, the danger of a shifting of boundaries would not exist. The only possible as- sumption, which is further confirmed by experience, is that the separation does not exist a priori but originates only in the course of time. This demarcation of the boundary line must be a process which ends before the complete attainment of the normal level of culture; thus, we may say it begins in earliest childhood and has found a temporary termination about the tjme^of puberty. The unconscious originates in the childhood of man,, which circumstance affords the explanation for most of its pecu-^ k liarities. ty£$($&>kl PX t^JL |vw^«|$&^ ^-V*-^ We recognize in childhood a' forerunner of the age which is ' capable of reason and this of course is a right view in many re- lations. Besides that part of the mental life which we carry over from childhood into later life, there remains however another part, the real childish, with which we afterwards have nothing more to do and which we therefore forget. Only thus are explained the great discrepancies which every person displays in his childhood memories and these exactly at a time in which he knew quite well how to consider and estimate events. Almost everyone remembers of his earliest years of childhood only isolated details of in- different scenes while he has totally forgotten those incidents which were the most important at the time. The purely infantile mental powers which are not embodied in the consciousness of the adult cannot however be lost. In psychic affairs as in the physical world, the law of conservation of energy holds good ; the infantile, which was repressed from the conscious mental life, did not disappear but formed the nucleus about which the un- conscious mental life crystallized. 1 \ THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 5 In what point does the adult differ so fundamentally from the child that the mental states of those developmental epochs have become quite useless for him? That this point is the sexuality will probably awaken universal contradiction, for sexuality normally begins, we are assured, with puberty and can thus create no typical infantile psychic phenomena. The fact of normal childish sexuality, among forms of ac- tivity of which, only the onanism of the suckling may be men- tioned here, is so easily demonstrable by everyone who comes into close contact with children, such as physicians, nurses and parents, that their stubborn denial of this phenomenon cannot be considered as an objective opinion but only as the result of just \ that repression process which will not allow to be brought again | before consciousness the elements of the ego which have become first worthless and then obstructive to its own development. It would be very surprising if so important a source of affect as the instincts belonging to the domain of sexuality, which we class together under the general term " libido," first made their ap- pearance suddenly, upon the attainment of a certain age. As a matter of fact, the libido has been present from the very begin- ning, only before puberty the phenomena of the instincts belong- ing to it find outlet neither in the form of sexual expression of the adult nor in a simple unified direction ; rather, each com- ponent instinct strives toward its own goal independently of the others ; this aim has no similarity to the later sexual aim, the sexual act. Also, during childhood, we distinguish different phases of development, but of these, only the most important can be men- tioned here. The first phase embraces that period when the child, in its knowledge of the external world, has not yet acquired the conception of its own personality as something differentiated from the world. In this period, the child seeks to gain sexual pleasure on its own body (autoerotism). Besides the genitals, all possible parts of the body are taken into consideration, espe- cially the lip zone, which can be stimulated by "pleasure suck- ing" and the anal zone which can be stimulated by the retention of fecal masses. The decisive transition point is formed by a stage which is O SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS normally interposed between the period of autoerotic activity and that of love of an object; out of consideration for the patho- logical fixation of this transition stage to be observed later, we designate it as " narcissism." Narcissism is characterized by the fact that the libido, which, in contrast to the ego instincts, finds from the very beginning its autoerotic gratification on various parts of the body, having now become unified, has for the time found its object in its own self considered as a whole. In a cer- tain measure, the man is narcissistic even if he has found ex- ternal objects for his libido; the degree of this attitude is of tremendous significance for the development of the character and personality. The next phase shows the "love of an object" but this love develops under peculiar conditions. The significance of an ex- clusively sexual organ comes to the genitals only with the later evolution which concludes with puberty. The exclusive sexual aim of normal, sexually mature persons connected with this sexual evolution does not yet come into consideration ; in its place, there appear according to the instinctive tendencies, various forms of gratification : sexual curiosity and pleasure from un- dressing, the infliction and endurance of pain, etc. Thus, that condition, which, occuring in unchanged persistence in an adult would constitute a perversion (exhibitionism, peeping, sadism, masochism) forms an expression of the normal sexuality of childhood. Also, the sexual objects appearing in this second phase of infantilism are essentially different from those of the adult. The relatively minor importance of the genitals for the sexual rela- tion directed toward other persons and the ignorance of the differences in structure and function of the male and female sexual apparatus, render it impossible for the child to take into consideration the distinction of sex in the consummation of his erotic relations. Further, apart from this fact, the child's love is most frequently directed toward those persons who would not be so thought of by mature cultured people, namely, the members of his own family, especially the parents and also the nurses as substitutes for the parents. He who takes offence at the statement that the first inclina- THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 7 tions of a person are regularly incestuous, should be reminded that the childish eroticism, even if it is ever so strong in affect, is accustomed to express itself only with limited aim in the harm- less form of affection. For the child growing up in the bosom of the family, other relations of the same intimacy are inconceivable and also for the parents, it has ever been considered the most .beautiful privilege that the first affection of their children should be directed toward them. Soon, the child begins to show a pref- erence for one of the parents and indeed usually, since the attraction of the sexes applies also to the relation between parents and children, for that parent of the opposite sex, by whom it is itself considered with especial tenderness. With the other parent, often also with the brothers and sisters, the child easily comes into a relation of rivalry, since it wishes to share with no one; besides love, there then appears hostility and the fer- vent wish for the elimination of the rival. Then, in the period of puberty, the genital zone attains its primacy, the individual instincts lose their independence and arrange themselves for the purpose of attaining the normal sexual aim. Certain ones, as the instinct for mastery in the male, find their gratification in the sexual act itself; others, for example, the instinct for looking (Schautrieb), by affording the forepleasure, serve the purpose of creating the tension which prepares for the sexual act and brings about the end-pleasure. In addition to the renunciation of the isolated gratification of these partial instincts, the erotic inclination toward the members of the family must also be abandoned ; sexuality adapted to a new aim is demanded ; further, another object outside the family must be found, all of which transformations normally come to successful accomplishment after some groping attempts. Thus, for him who has puberty behind him, sexuality is noth- ing new ; further, he must also forego some of the hitherto customary modes of gratification, in particular the sexual pleasure derived from his own body as object and the incestuous fixa- tion on his nearest relatives. If one of the component instincts was especially strongly developed, it will not receive sufficient satisfaction under the new regime. Just as little as the libido appears in the mental life as some- 8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS thing new, even so little can it again disappear from the same. Every striving toward the attainment of pleasure is indestruct- ible. The libido can change its form under the influence of internal or external forces but the instinct will constantly be nourished from its old sources. If, under such a change, a gain of pleasure is sacrificed in part or in whole, because in the changed form, the instinct no longer finds adequate possibility for gratification, this instinct nevertheless still continues its exist- ence and with its impetuous demands for the old pleasure, be- comes a dangerous enemy of the new order of things. The result of this relation would be a never-ending conflict; consciousness, which in the service of the control of reality, should be directed toward impressions coming from the external world, might be completely engrossed in the endopsychic per- ception of this struggle and the psychic economy permanently disturbed. Only the repression of the overpowering forms of gratification of instinct from the visual field of consciousness makes it possible to keep consciousness open for sense percep- tions and the mind in equilibrium. The mechanisms employed in this task we shall soon examine. The phenomena which we have thus far recognized form only the nucleus of the unconscious, not in any way its whole extent. Indeed, in no field is so much renunciation expected of a man in the course of his development as in his sexuality and scarcely anywhere is this renunciation harder to carry through ; in addition, still other wishes left permanently unfulfilled, even though arising from the pure ego instincts, reinforce and interact with this material to form the content of the unconscious. Often we are confronted with the necessity of recognizing an unpleasant reality in which our wishfulfillment finds no place and with the further necessity of making our peace with this stern reality. Now that is a task which the normal person is regularly able to accomplish in his consciousness. But with the appearance of the need to escape an especially painful conflict, the attractive force of that first repression process may work so enticingly that this recent denial finds its solution in the same manner, through repression. With the exception of those cases where the original repression process had not proceeded smoothly, this later repres- THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 9 sion also succeeds. As a result of failure in this repression, the neurosis makes its appearance. But also with healthy indi- viduals, under the favoring cooperation of the sleeping state, the unfulfilled wishes of the present find connection with those of childhood and from this union arises the structure of the dream. Since every person is not only a dreamer but also in ^ some one part, at least, closely related.to the neurotic, perhaps in the anxiety-affects which he suffers, perhaps only in the pro- duction of the little mistakes of daily life, the assumption is justified that the normal individual also removes by repression a part of his mental conflicts, especially those which invite this fate by their resemblance to the conflicts of childhood. We turn now to that group of forces which cause the repres- sion. One of these forces, we have already recognized, namely, the demand arising from the organic changes occurring before and during puberty, as a result of which, the psychic primacy of the genitals corresponding to the bodily development and the unification of the component instincts directed toward the activity of these organs, became necessary. The weightiest factor, how-, ever, is the demand which the cultural environment imposes on) the growing individual, to which he cannot submit himself with--' out giving up his infantile wish-goals. The repression indicates the measure of the sacrifice which the cultural development of a community enjoins on its members. The means by which the cultural demands make themselves evident to the adolescent are manifold. By far the most important is the influence of the objects of the infantile love-choice, the education by the parents or their representatives. Here must be mentioned some of the instinct-mechanisms by which the successful division between conscious and unconscious is first rendered possible. Where love and hate, both directed toward the same object, are opposed to each other, the weaker one must sink into the unconscious. This ambivalent relation may also be shown with certain instincts which are composed of a pair of component opposites (for example, sadism and maso- chism). Since the two contrary instincts cannot exist side by side, the stronger assumes the initiative and crowds the weaker into the unconscious. 10 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS In all cases, the effect of the ambivalence is to cause the victorious member, in order to assure its supremacy, to show an unusual intensity in the conscious mental life (reaction forma- tion) ; to this reaction formation the instinct under subjection also affords a contribution of energy since the possibility of direct expression was taken from it by the repression. Still more im- portant for the purposes of civilization is the ability of many instincts to change their modes of gratification by accepting another aim for winning of pleasure in place of the one previ- ously enjoyed; the two modes of gratification must be similar and between the old and new aims there must be an associative connection. In this way, it is possible to divert at least a portion of the gross sexual instincts of the child to higher cultural aims (sublimation). The portion not divertible, so far as it may not be directly gratified, falls under the repression. Because certain desires are repressed, it does not follow that a wish which is unconscious and cut off from direct affect-expres- sion, can develop no further activity; on the contrary, the re- pressed wish exercises a determining influence on the most im- portant processes of the mental life as far as this is possible during the condition of being excluded from consciousness. In this matter, there are two points which need a further elucidation : first, by what mechanisms does the unconscious succeed in becom- ing active without offending against the condition imposed by the repression? Second, in what psychical products do unconscious processes or those which are directed by the unconscious, have an especially large share? The mechanisms by which the repressed instinctive impulses and unconscious wishes succeed in breaking through the repres- sion and influencing the actions and thought of the civilized man in his relation to reality serve collectively, as the nature of the conflict with the unconscious demands, for the distortion of the unconscious and its compromise with consciousness. This dis- tortion becomes developed to various degrees according to the stage of repression, the mental status of the individual and the degree of civilization of the race; in short, corresponding to the prevailing relation of consciousness to the unconscious ; while this conflict between consciousness and the unconscious is going THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION II on, it produces various valuable compromise products in social relations. As psychoanalysis learns to consider the ideational life, in general, as counterplay of the instinctive life, so the indi- vidual mental mechanisms of distortion and compromise forma- tion correspond to the different possibilities of the fate of instinct ; among these possible results, we recognize besides the repression, still others, especially tranformations of instincts (such as the inversion into the opposite). We have now to devote special attention to those processes which, unlike the repression, do not find an end with the banishment into the unconscious, but send substitute structures into consciousness which are derived from the original sources of affect. This fate may befall both the instinct in question and its sublimated representative. For example, we recognize in the mental field the mechanism of biased projection, by means of which an inner, unbearable per- ception is projected outward; another example is the mechanism of "splitting into parts" (dissociation) which separates into the constituent parts the elements usually united in the unconscious, especially contradictions (of ambivalence, contrary meaning, etc.) ; this mechanism of splitting makes contrasts in order to render possible the conscious acceptation of the separate im- pulses which have become unbearable to one another. On the other hand, we have what you might call the introacting mech- anisms of the real repression and the condensation (contamina- tion) which seek to save or blend the elements which have be- come unbearable to consciousness, especially contrasts. Finally, there corresponds to the inversion of instinct, the representation by the opposite, in which a shocking unconscious element is usually represented by its opposite excessively emphasized in consciousness. Other mechanisms exercise a distorting and com- promise-forming influence by the inversion of affect, by the dis- placement of the affect from the important to the non-essential, and lastly by the shifting of sensations or the perception of these from shocking to innocent places (displacement from below upward) . While the mechanisms named, even if acting under the biased, distorting compulsion of the conscious censor, nevertheless, work according to their own laws which are inherent in the uncon- 12 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS scious because of its close relation to the instinctive life, still there are other influences, proceeding from the logical and formal demands of consciousness, which compel still further modifica- tions of the unconscious material. In this group belongs, first of all, the so-called secondary elaboration of the dream, which seeks to adapt to the demands of the fully conscious psychic judgment the unconscious material which is in certain parts too much dis- torted, in other parts too little distorted, and therefore at first, unintelligible, defective or too shocking. In this over-elabora- tion and arrangement, isolated elements of the unconscious, which are no longer intelligible, are afterwards given a logical motive in favor of the connection striven after; in the course of develop- ment, these elements often, indeed usually, receive a new, as one might say, systematized sense. This kind of secondary elabora- tion, namely, the mechanism of rationalization or systematiza- tion proceeding from consciousness, which is of far reaching im- portance for the origin of the psychoanalytic understanding, especially of the great achievements of civilization, represents an appropriate supplement to the mechanisms of the unconscious by arranging and elaborating the biased, distorted unconscious con- tributions of the phantasy and mental activity to new, useful con- nections. The knowledge of this process (rationalization) and the possibility of its reduction to the impelling forces of the un- conscious, permit psychoanalysis to hold fast to the principle of over-determination of all psychic phenomena, so far as the uncon- scious shares in them, even where a logical, satisfactory meaning and a fully conscious understanding seems to render any further explanation of a phenomenon superfluous and excluded. So little, however, as the knowledge of the conscious part in itself alone, affords the full understanding of a mental performance, even so little may the consideration of the unconscious motives by themselves alone exhaust the full significance ; still, the uncon- scious motives alone render intelligible the genesis of the mental production and also the process of rationalization itself in its rela- tion to the denial of the repressed material. A further, formal factor, to which the unconscious must con- form in its sometime entrance into consciousness, is the attempt at dramatic form which appears in the culturally valuable per- THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 3 f ormances, especially the artistic ones, not less plainly than in the dream life. It is conceivable without further discussion, that the material in which an unconscious impulse manifests itself, must not only influence the definite form but also the content in a cer- tain sense, that thus, for example, the poet must bring the same feeling to expression differently from the painter; the phi- losopher, the same thoughts differently from the writer of myths. And further, the temporary state of mind will make itself evident in the representation so that the inspired religious writer will afford different expression to the same emotions than the matter- of-fact expositor; and the lunatic represent the same impulse differently from the dreamer. A final means of expression of the repressed material, which, on account of its especial suitability for disguising the uncon- scious material and its adaptability (compromise formation) to new contents of consciousness, finds great favor, is the symbol. We understand under this term, a special kind of indirect repre- sentation which is distinguished by certain peculiarities from the closely related figures of speech, such as simile, metaphor, alle- gory, allusion and other forms of pictorial representation of thought material (after. the manner of the rebus). In a measure, the symbol represents an ideal union of all these means of ex- pression : it is a representative pictorial substitute expression for something hidden, with which it has perceptible characteristics in common or is associatively joined by internal connections. Its essence consists in the possession of two or more meanings, as it has itself also arisen by a kind of condensation, an amalgamation of individual characteristic elements. The tendency of the symbol from the ideal toward the evident puts it close to primi- tive thought ; by this relationship, symbolization belongs essen- tially to the unconscious but, as compromise formation, lacks in no way the conscious determinants which condition in various degrees symbol formation and symbol interpretation. If one wishes to understand the many-layered strata and arrangement of symbol interpretations and gain a knowledge of symbols, he must apply himself to a genetic consideration of the same. He will thereby learn that the symbol formation is not, as its multiplicity would lead one to expect, arbitrary and de- v i - : ns7 14 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS pendent on individual differences, but that it follows definite laws and leads to widely distributed, universal, human structures which are typical as regards time, place, sex and race distinctions, and indeed the great languages. Concerning the typical, general human significance, the esthetician Dilthey says : " If one under- stands under a natural symbol, the pictorial material which stands in close and constant relation to an inner state, then the compara- tive consideration shows, that on the basis of our psychological nature, a circle of natural symbols exists for dream and delusion, as for speech and poetry. Since the most important relations of reality, in general, are related and the heart of man in general the same, fundamental myths pervade humanity. Such symbols are: the relation of the father to his children, the relation of the sexes, war, robbery and victory." The investigation of typical symbol forms and the restoration of the forgotten meanings of these by the collaboration of various assisting sciences (as history of civilization, linguistics, ethnog- raphy, investigation of myths, etc.) has scarcely been attempted as yet. The best studied psychoanalytically and also the first to be verified by the history of civilization is that great and highly important group of symbols which serve to represent sexual ma- terial and erotic relations, the sexual symbols as we are ac- customed to call them. The prevalence of sexual symbolic mean- ings is, however, not explained merely by the individual experi- ence that no instinct is subjected to the cultural suppression to the same extent and so withdrawn from direct gratification as the sexual instinct built up from the most diverse "perverse" com- ponents, the mental domain of which, the erotic, is therefore sus- ceptible of, and in need of, extensive indirect representation. A far greater importance for the genesis of symbolism is afforded by the fact that to the sexual organs and functions, in primitive civilizations, an importance which is quite inconceivable to our minds, was attributed ; of this difference, we can gain a closer idea from the results of ethnographic investigation and the remains saved in cult and myth. 1 To this sexual exaggeration of primi- 1 Compare R. Payne Knight, Le culte du Priape, Brussels, 1883, and Dulaure, Die Zeugung in Glauben, Sitten und Brauchen der Volker, Ger- man translation and amplification by Krauss, Reiskel und Ihm. / THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION IS tive man and to the limitation which at some time became neces- sary, we owe the foundations of civilization, just as we are in- debted for its further improvement to the continued sublimation of individual component instincts which have been ungratified and become repressed. As an example, when we to-day find ploughing and creation of fire applied by a dreamer as a com- pletely unconscious symbol of the sexual act, the study of the history of civilization teaches that these performances have originally really represented the sexual act, that is, were invested with the same libidinous energies, eventually also with the same accompanying ideas as these. A classical example of this is afforded by the fire creation in India, which is there represented under the picture of coition. In the Rig Veda (III, 29, 1), we read: "This is the fire-drill; the generator (the male rubbing stick) is prepared ! Bring the generatrix (the female rubbing stick) ; we will twirl the fire after the old style. In the two rubbing sticks dwells the judge of nature (Agni) like the fruit of love which has been introduced into the pregnant women. ... In her who has spread out her legs enters as a herald (the male stick)." (After L. v. Schroder's translation in " Mysterium und Mimus im Rig Veda," page 260). When the Indian lights a fire, he offers ^^ a holy prayer which refers to a myth. He seizes a stick of wood with the words : 2 " You are the birthplace of fire," lays thereon two blades of grass. " You are the two testicles," thereupon, he seizes the wood lying underneath : " You are Urvaci." He then smears the wood with butter, saying, " You are strength," places it then on the wood lying on the ground and says : " You are Pururavas," etc. Thus, he considers the wood lying on the ground with its little hollow as the representation of the con- ceiving goddess and the upright stick as the sexual member of the impregnating god. Concerning the diffusion of this idea, the well known ethnologist, Leo Frobenius, says: "The fire-drilling as it is to be found among most peoples represents thus among the ancient Indians the sexual act. I may be permitted to point out in this connection that the ancient Indians were not alone in this 2 According to Schroder, the oldest ritual texts, the Jajurweden, already introduce this formula. 1 6 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS conception. The South Africans have exactly the same view. The wood lying on the ground is called by them ' female shame,' the upright piece, ' the male.' 3 Schinz has explained this in his time for some races and since then the wide diffusion of this view in South Africa, and for example among the races living in the East, has been found." (Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, Berlin, 1904, page 338 ff.) Between the two extreme stages, that of actual identification (in custom) and that of unconscious application in symbol (in dream), lie other, more or less conscious, symbolic meanings, which, in the degree in which they have become unrecognizable, have been precipitated in speech. Further plain reference to the sexual symbolic significance of fire-lighting, we find in the myth of the stealing of fire by Prometheus, the sexual symbolic founda- tion of which, the mythologist, Kuhn (1859) has recognized. Like the Prometheus saga, other traditions also bring into con- nection the creation by the heavenly fire, the lightning. Thus, O. Gruppe 4 says concerning the saga of Semele, out of whose burning body, Dionysos was born, it is "probably a very scanty remnant of the old legendary type which had reference to the kindling of the sacrificial fire " and its name " perhaps originally meant the tablet or table, the under rubbing stick (compare Hesych, o-c/a&Vt; rpd-n-e^w . . .). In the soft wood of the latter, the spark ignited, in the birth of which the ' mother ' is burnt up." Further, in the mythically adorned story of the birth of Alexander the Great, we read that his mother Olympia, in the night before her wedding, dreamed that a mighty thunderstorm enveloped her and the lightning penetrated her womb in a flame, from which, a furious fire burst out and disappeared in farther and farther consuming flames 5 (Droysen, History of Alexander the Great, page 69) . Here belong further the famous fable of the magician, Virgil, who took vengeance on a prudish beauty by extinguishing 3 In Hebrew, the expressions for male and female signify: the borer and the hollowed. 4 Griech. Mythol. u. Relig. Gesch., Vol. II (Munich, 1906), p. 1415 if. 5 Similarly, Hecuba, pregnant with Paris, dreamed that she brought a burning brand into the world which set the whole city on fire. (Com- pare in this connection the burning of the Temple of Ephesus in the night of the birth of Alexander.) THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 7 all the fire of the city and allowing the citizens to light their new fire only on the genitals of the woman exposed naked to view ; opposed to this commandment for fire-lighting, stand other traditions in the sense of the Prometheus saga as prohibitions of the same, as the legend of Amor and Psyche, which forbids the inquisitive wife scaring away the nocturnal lover by striking a light or the tale of Periander whom his mother visited by night under the same conditions as unrecognized beloved. Our present-day speech has also preserved much of this symbolism: we speak of the " light of life," of " glowing with love," of " being infatuated " in the sense of being in love and call the beloved, " flame." Corresponding to the lower rubbing stick then, every fireplace, altar, hearth, oven, lamp, etc., is a female symbol. Thus, for example, in the Satan's mass, the genitals of an undressed re- cumbent woman serve as an altar. To the Greek Periander, was sent according to Herodotus (V, 92) by his dead wife Melissa, a divination with the averment, he has put the bread in a cold oven, which was a sure omen to him " since he slept upon the corpse of Melissa." The bread is here compared to the phallus ; according to the interesting works of Hofler, namely, that con- cerning bread images (" Gebildbrote "), our present-day rolls and pretzels imitate the phallus (compare Zentralblatt fiir An- thropologic, etc., 1905, p. 78). But the substance produced in the bake-oven, the bread, is also compared with that created in the mother's body, the child, as the name, body (" Leib ") (only later differentiated into "Laib"), and the form with the navel in the middle, allow to be recognized. On the other hand, one still describes birth in the Tyrol by the expression: "the oven has fallen in," as also Franz Moor in Schiller's " Rauber " sees the only brotherly relation to Karl in the fact that " they were both out of the same oven." But the sexual meaning extends to every- thing which comes into contact with the original symbol. The eating, by which the stork lets the child fall, becomes the female symbol, the chimney-sweeper the phallic symbol, as one may still recognize in its present significance of good luck; for most of our good luck symbols were originally symbols of f ruitfulness, as the horseshoe, the clover leaf, the mandrake and others, and 1 8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS here, again, the sexual life seems closely united to vegetation and agriculture. For the original sexual meaning of ploughing, outside of the phallic significance of almost all kinds of implements, 6 the con- ception of the earth as the "old mother" (Urmutter) was the determining factor (compare the splendid book of von Dieterich, Mutter Erde (Mother Earth), 2d edition, 1913). To antiquity, this idea was so common that even dreams, as for example, that reported of Julius Caesar and Hippias, of sexual intercourse with the mother, were interpreted to mean the mother earth and taking possession of it. Also in Sophocles' Oedipus the hero speaks repeatedly of the " mother field from which he had sprouted." And even Shakespeare in Pericles has Boult, who would de- florate the refractory Marina, use a symbol from the fields (IV, 5) : "And if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she shall be ploughed." Too well known to be mentioned here, are the names for the male creative processes derived from the domain of agriculture (semen, fructification, etc.). The iden- tification of human and vegetative fructification underlying these speech relations is easily to be recognized in the fructifying magic retained until very recent times, which consists in a naked couple performing the sexual act in the field, as it were to arouse the ground to imitation. Noteworthy in this connection is the fact that both in Greek and Latin as well as in Oriental languages, " ploughing " is commonly used in the sense of practicing coitus (Kleinpaul, Ratsel d. Sprache, p. 136) and that according to Winckelmann (Alte Denkmaler der Kunst) the expressions " garden," " meadow," " field " in the Greek denoted the female 6 Knife, hammer, nail, etc. Thor's hammer, with which, especially, the marriage was consecrated, is recognized by Cox (Myth, of the Aryan Nations, 1870, Vol. II, p. 115), Meyer (Germ. Myth., 1891, p. 212) and others in its phallic significance and the corresponding thunderbolt of Indra is his phallus (Schlesinger, Gesch. d. Symbols, 1912, p. 438). Con- cerning the nail, Hugo Winckler says : " The nail is the tool of fruitful- ness, the penis ; hence its figure in the old Babylonian cones is still to be recognized, which represent the driven clavus of the Romans ; compare Arabic na'al = copulate ('Arabic, Semitic, Oriental')." Mitt. d. Vordera- siast. Ges., 1901, 4/5. Still in present-day folk life of Bavaria, Suabia, Switzerland, the iron nail plays a role as symbol of the phallus and fruit- fulness (Arch. f. Kriminalanthrop., Vol. 20, p. 122). THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 9 genital organ in jokes, which in Solomon's Song is called vine- yard. The neurotic counterpart to this symbolizing personifica- tion of the earth is found among the North American Indians whose resistance against cultivation by ploughing is explained by Ehrenreich that they are afraid to injure the skin of the earth- mother; here, the identification has succeeded too well, as one might say. Other symbols of apparently individual significance allow their typical form and application to be deciphered from the connections with the history of development, as, for example, the symbolization of the father as emperor or one of the persons of high authority. Here too, the history of civilization shows the original real significance of the relation which later continues only in the symbol, namely, that the father in the primitive rela- tions of his " family " was actually invested with the highest degree of power and could dispose of the bodies and lives of his "subjects." Concerning the derivation of kingdom from the patriarchy in the family, the philologist Max Mttller expresses himself as follows : " When the family began to develop into the state, then the king in the midst of his people became what the father and husband had been in the house: the master, the strong protector. 7 Among the manifold terms for king and queen, in the Sanscrit, there is simply father and mother. Ganaka in Sanscrit means father, from GAN, to beget ; it also appears in the Veda as the name of a well-known king. This is the old German chuning, English king. Mother in Sanscrit is gani or gani, the Greek yvvrj, Gothic quino, Slavic zena, English queen. Thus queen (Konigin) originally signifies mother or mistress and we see repeatedly how the speech of the family life gradually grew to the political speech of the oldest Aryan state." Even at the present, this conception of the kingly ruler and of divine and spiritual superiority is still alive as " father " in the speech usage. Smaller states, in which the relations of the prince to his sub- jects are still closer, call their ruler, "Landfather" (Landes- 7 Father (Vater) is derived from a root PA which means, not beget, but protect, maintain, nourish. The father, as procreator, is called in Sanscrit, ganitor (genitor). Max Miiller, Essays, Vol. II, Leipsic, 1S69, German edition, p. 20. 20 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS vater) ; for the people of the mighty Russian empire, their czar is the " Little Father " as in his time was Attila for the powerful Huns (diminutive of Gothic, atta= father). The supreme ruling head of the Catholic Church is called by the believers, as repre- sentative on earth of God, the Father, "Holy Father" which forms in Latin the name "papa" (pope), a term by which our children still denote the father. These few examples may suffice to characterize the great age, the rich content, the extensive and typical field of application, the cultural historical as well as individual importance of symbolism and to show the continuance of the symbol-forming forces in the mental life of present-day civilized people. Psychologically considered, the symbol formation remains a regressive phenomenon, a reversion to a certain stage of pictorial thinking which exists among highly cultured people in clearest shape in those exceptional states, in which the conscious adapta- tion to reality, is either partially limited, as in the religious and artistic ecstasy, or seems totally annulled, as in the dream and mental disturbances. Corresponding to this psychological con- ception, is the original function of identification underlying sym- bolization ; this identification is demonstrable in the history of civilization as a means of adaptation to reality which becomes superfluous and sinks to the mere significance of a symbol as soon as this task of adaptation has been accomplished. Thus, symbol- ism seems to be the unconscious precipitate of primitive means of adaptation to reality which has become superfluous and un- suitable, a sort of lumber-room of culture to which the adult person in conditions of reduced or deficient capability of adapting to reality, gladly flees, in order to regain his old, long-forgotten playthings of childhood. That which later generations know and consider only as symbol had in an earlier stage of mental develop- ment complete real meaning and value. In the course of develop- ment, the original significance fades more and more, or even changes, so that speech, folklore, wit, etc., have often preserved remnants of the original connection in more or less clear con- sciousness. By far the most comprehensive and important group of primi- tive symbols, which seem quite far-fetched to conscious thought, THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 21 is composed of those which originally sexualized phenomena and processes of the external world in the service of adaptation, in order in later stages, to apply these anthropomorphisms, which were again separated from this original meaning, as " symbols " of sexual affairs. Besides these symbols, there seem to be still other forms and mechanisms of symbol formation which, in- verted, symbolize the human body, its organic processes and mental states by harmless or apparently easily representable things of the external world. To this group, belongs the category of somatic symbols, best known from the dream investigations of Schemer; these somatic symbols represent parts of the body or the functions of these in pictorial fashion (for example, sets of teeth as rows of houses, pressure of urine as a flood, etc.) ; another similar category is that of the so-called (H. Silberer) functional symbols which represent plastically, conditions and processes of the individual mental life perceived endopsychically (the constant functioning of the mind), such as the sad mood, by the picture of a dismal landscape, the following of difficult trains of thought, by the difficult mounting on a horse which is all the time getting farther away, and others. Both these kinds of " introjecting" symbol formation, which are apparently con- trasted to the first described "projecting" variety of the material category which symbolizes the psychic content, might perhaps better be considered, not as special kinds of symbol formation, but rather as kinds of pictorial representation of physical and mental processes occurring regularly, to a certain extent, in the real symbol formation. Thus, for example, in the phallic symbol of the serpent, besides the form, the ability to rise up, the smooth- ness and suppleness of the phallus, especially its dangerousness and uncanniness are represented, that is, not essential components of the same, but definite mental relationships thereto (anxiety, abhorrence), from which relationships, others actually lead to other symbolizations of the male member (for example, as bird, etc.), while in many symbols, certain somatic attributes and condi- tions find representations (cane = erection, syringe =ejaculation, empty balloon envelope = flaccidity). To sum up, we may specify the following characteristics for the real symbol in the psychoanalytic sense, as we recognize it 2 2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS best in the speech of the dream and also in a series of other mental productions : Representation for the unconscious, constant meaning, inde- pendence of individual conditions, evolutionary foundations, speech relationships, phylogenetic parallels (in myths, cult, re- ligion, etc.). The occurrence of these conditions under which we speak of a symbol and of which, now some, now others are demonstrable beyond dispute, affords us at the same time the possibility of verifying the symbolic meanings recognized in the mental life of the individual and of attaining most valuable cer- „tainty in this vague and obscure field. Further corroboration for the symbol investigation is afforded by the rich material in folklore and wit, which often enough may apply to other fields only unconsciously; especially do folklore and wit use sexual symbols so that they must be familiar to everyone. 8 Our knowl- edge of the symbol receives a further very noteworthy confirma- tion and partial enrichment from the psychoanalytic study of certain insane patients, among whom, one type, the so-called schizo- or paraphrenic has the peculiarity of disclosing to us openly the secret symbolic meanings. Finally, we have recently gained an experimental method which affords the verification of known symbols and the discovery of new individual ones in a manner free from all objections, thus destroying every doubt of the existence of a sexual dream-symbolism. 9 Likewise, what 8 Certain forms of wit, closely related to the obscene riddles, were in their preponderating number, according to Schultz (Ratsel aus dem hel- lenischen Kulturkreise, 1912, II part), "originally no riddles, but symbolic, in part, indeed dialogical descriptions of ritualistic processes of the crea- tion of fire, gaining of intoxication," which in union with sexual creation " stood in the central point of the old Aryan ritual." " If they were sung along with the action in question, no hearer could be in doubt of the meaning of such a verse." " Only later, when, with the religious practice, this understanding faded, did they become riddles and had to be adapted to various traditional solutions" (page 117 ff.). 9 The subject of the experiment is given the hypnotic command to dream something definite, some sexual situation. She dreams this but not in direct representation as is the case with harmless commands, but in symbolical guise, which corresponds completely with that disclosed by psychoanalysis in the ordinary dream life. Compare Dr. Karl Scrotter : Experimented Traume (Experimental dreams), Zentralblatt fur Psycho- analyse, II, 1912. THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 23 may be considered as such an experiment arranged by nature, is afforded by certain dreams in which a bodily need of sexual or other nature attempts to gratify itself in definite typical sym- bols, before the irritation leads to awakening and therewith to the appreciation of the symbolic meanings (waking-dream). One principle of the symbol investigation which is not to be under- estimated is the result which allows us to gain a good meaning and deep significance for unintelligible expressions of the mental life. This kind of scientific proof in the field of symbol interpreta- tion, we share completely with the conception of the investigator of speech and myth, Wilhelm Muller, which he has represented against his colleagues for more than a half century : " As we ascertain the meaning of unknown words by assigning them a place, at first according to the context, and consider these mean- ings correct if they are suitable in all places where the word recurs, so it is with the explanation of a symbol, aside from other standpoints, to consider it correct, if it permits of the same ex- planation everywhere it occurs, or in a great number of cases, arid agrees with the connection of the myth." The knowledge of the real unconscious meaning and its com- prehension, is neither alike with all symbols nor does it remain constant during the course of development and change of signifi- cance of the same symbol. Further, the comprehension of the symbol is different within a circle of culture holding about the same content of consciousness, according to the fields of applica- tion, the stratum of population in which it appears and the mental condition of the person using it. It shows that the conditions for the comprehension of the symbol stand in a contrasting cor- relation to the tendencies of the symbol formation. While the symbolic representation appears in the service of the unconscious desires, in order to smuggle the shocking material in disguised form into consciousness, a certain indefiniteness must adhere to the symbol which can shade from easily transparent ambiguity (in obscene joke and wit) to complete incomprehensibility (in dream and neurosis). Between these two possible extreme atti- tudes of consciousness to the symbol and its comprehension, lies a series of what might be called complete symbolizations, such as are shown in religion, myth and art ; these symbolizations on the 24 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS one hand render possible an intelligible representation and con- ception but on the other hand are not without a deep uncon- scious meaning. At this point we come to the second of the questions pro- pounded above, namely, in what psychic products, unconscious processes or those processes derived from the unconcious, assert themselves most plainly by means of the mechanisms described. We have already mentioned some formations which signify a disturbance of normal mental activity and could not deny their close relationship to the unconscious. It is just these cases, where the unsatisfying outcome of the conflict between uncon- cious and repression, supported by other circumstances, causes illness ; such maladies, resulting from unsuccessful repression or that repression which has again become regressive, we number among the psychoses, if they permanently destroy the normal relation to reality; we call them psychoneuroses, if in spite of the partial regression to the infantile attitude, the essential traits of cultural personality have remained intact. A related case is that of hypnosis and suggestion, of which normal and healthy individuals are also susceptible. A temporary loss of the func- tion of reality appears in sleep, during which a mental activity comes before consciousness as the dream which is dominated chiefly by the unconscious. Finally, there belong in this category, the errors of execution, such as errors of speech and writing, forgetting of names, mistakes and the like, which point plainly to the working of a psychic force opposed to the conscious attitude. All these phenomena have the common characteristic that they seek to sever and weaken the relations to the fellow men. The isolating characteristic of the neuroses and psychoses and the tendency of these to take men from vocation and family is gen- erally recognized. In hypnosis, the hypnotized person is sub- jected to the influence of one particular person so that he seems cut off from all others. In sleep, this separation is carried out in the most complete manner imaginable, without the exception of even one person. The faulty performances of forgetting and the like, usually have the effect of influencing the ability of com- munication, even if in an insignificant manner; others, as for example, mistakes (of action) often lead to injury of the sur- roundings. THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 25 It would be conceivable that the unconscious, which does indeed arise essentially in the presocial time of humanity, might ex- press itself also preeminently in a social or antisocial phenomenon like those thus far enumerated. As a matter of fact, however, the unconscious is of such importance in the mental life that an important cultural progress against its resistance could have scarcely succeeded. It was necessary, on the contrary, to win the extraordinarily intense instinctive forces from this source for the social and cultural work, since without the immense energy afforded by them, no result would have been attainable. The useful activities favoring the prolongation of life and elevation of the standard of living were mostly uncomfortable and tiresome. If things could be so arranged that the repressed wishes would find a gratification, even if only a symbolic one, then these important acts would become pleasant and in this way, a real stimulus would be provided for their execution. For such a gaining of pleasure in symbolic activity, the sexual wishes were best suited, since with them, the aim can be displaced from reality to the hallucinatory gratification of phantasy easier than with the ego instincts, where the real gratification is necessary for the existence of the individual and which, as for example hunger, can endure no other form of gratification. We have seen that the unconscious is that part of the mental life which, bent upon immediate gain of pleasure, will not submit to adaptation to reality. So far, then, as the human mental activity had to deal exclusively with reality and its domination, nothing could be started with the unconscious. But in all those fields where a diversion from reality was allowed the mind, where phantasy might stir its wings, its field of application was assured. Hence, if we find in older stages of culture, activities, which for us have nothing to do with phantasy, as agriculture or administra- tion of justice, carried out with symbolic phantastic acts, this is explained by the fact that amid primitive relations the demands of the unconscious were far more strongly accentuated than with us. Other products of culture, in which the world of phantasy played an important role, have been able to preserve their char- acteristics pure, or to yield them to the developing function of 26 . SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS reality ; in this group belong religion and art with all their fore- runners and offshoots. Thus, we see before us a double series: on one side, the asocial, the forms of expression of the unconscious limited and accounted to the individual, especially the dream and the neurosis, which will not further engage our attention here; on the other side, the phenomena most important for the origin and develop- ment of civilized life, myth and religion, art and philosophy, ethics and law. The psychological share which must have been necessary for the mental sciences devoted to these structures can therefore never be elucidated with entire satisfaction if the psychology of the unconscious is not included. CHAPTER II Investigation of Myths and Legends The justification for utilizing the methods and results of psychoanalysis for the comprehension of the origin, variation and significance of mythical traditions is founded on the fact that in that kind of investigations, the boundaries of the true psycho- analytic domain are not in the least overstepped. Aside from the fact that the myth has always been considered as needing in- terpretation, it is scarcely to be denied that in the mythical and legendary tales of primitive and cultured peoples, independently of whatever meaning and content these may have, we are dealing with the products of pure phantasy; this conception affords us surety for the justified and necessary share of psychological con- sideration in the investigation of myths. It is in the illumination of the human phantasy life and its productions that psycho- analysis has accomplished its greatest achievement: namely, the discovery of the powerful unconscious instinctive forces which impel to phantasy formation, the elucidation of the mental mech- anisms which have shared in the origin of this phantasy life and in the comprehension of the predominant symbolic forms of expression which came to be employed. The first incitement to psychoanalytic labors in attempting to understand myth formation and myth significance proceeded from the insight into the origin and meaning of dreams, for which we are indebted to Freud. Of course, psychoanalysis was not the first to call attention to the relations between dream and myth ; the extraordinary importance of dream life for poetry and myth has been recognized at all times, as P. Ehrenreich 10 points out. Not only may dreams have been the only source of myth forma- tion among many peoples according to their own statements, but 10 Die allgemeine Mythologie und ihre ethnologischen Grundlagen (General Mythology and its Ethnological Foundations), Leipzic, 1910, page 149 (Mythol. Bibl., IV, 1). 27 28 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS further, well-known mythologists like Laistner, Mannhardt, Roscher and recently also Wundt, have deeply appreciated the significance of the dream life, especially of the anxiety dream, for the understanding of individual groups of myths, or at least groups of motives. If this point of view has, in recent times, been brought to some discredit by the " interpretation of nature " which has crowded to the foreground, still it nevertheless re- mains in the eyes of keen observers, as for example, Ehrenreich, undisputed as valuable knowledge. One understands, however, the brusque opposition of the purely internal psychological method of consideration which proceeds from the dream life and the conception which takes as a basis merely the real universe (proc- esses of nature), when one measures the narrow scope of appli- cation of a method of explanation which remains so much re- tricted to the type of the anxiety dream and hence clings to the incomprehensible dream event and dream content. Though the parallel consideration of dream and myth and therewith the psychological method of consideration was formerly recognized in its principal justification, still there was necessary to a deeper understanding of the dream life, a corresponding progress in the field of myth investigation. The first and at the same time, from many points of view, the most important step in this direction, we recognize in JEreiid/s.. ^interpretation of the ancient CEdipus myth, which he was able to explain on the basis of typical dreams of male individuals of the death of the father and sexual intercourse with the mother, as a general human ex- pression of these primitive wish impulses which had actually existed in past ages but have since been intensively repressed. The importance of this discovery deserves to be examined more closely and to be protected from misunderstanding; an explana- tion of it may introduce us quite a ways into the methods of psychoanalytic myth interpretation. As is seen, this progress leads far beyond the previous purely external parallelization to the common unconscious sources by which, not only the dream productions, in the same manner as the myth formations, were nourished, but all phantasy products in general as well. Psychoanalysis has thus, not only a definite interpretation to propose, but at the same time establishes the INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 29 necessity of myth interpretation in general, by means of the share which the unconscious has in myth formation. Further, it offers in place of the superficial comparison, a genetic method of con- sideration which allows myths to be conceived of as the distorted remnants of wish phantasies of whole nations, as you might say, the secular dreams of young humanity. As the dream in an individualistic sense, so the myth in a phylogenetic sense, repre- sents a piece of the past mental life of childhood; it is the most brilliant confirmation of the psychoanalytic method of considera- tion that it finds the experience of unconscious mental life gained from individual psychology again in the mythical traditions of past ages identical in content. In particular, the portentous con- flict of the child's mental life, the ambivalent attitude toward the parents and toward the family with all its many sided relations (sexual curiosity, etc.), has been shown to be the chief motive of myth formation and the essential content of mythical traditions. Indeed, it may be shown that the development of mythical ideas, in their widest extent, reflects just the cultural relations of the individual in the family and the latter in the tribal relationships. It is an especially good recommendation for the Freudian in- terpretation of the CEdipus saga that it interpolates nothing in the material and needs for its comprehension no auxiliary assump- tion, but points out the meaning of the myth directly in the ele- ments given. The only presupposition is the bit of unfrightened investigating spirit — as it is represented in CEdipus himself 11 — which places the psychoanalyst, schooled in the insight into the dream life, in a position to believe in the mental reality of the matter related. We have therewith formulated the most im- portant fundamental concept of the psychoanalytic myth concep- tion, 12 at the same time bearing in mind that the undisguised 11 One may compare the place in Schopenhauer's writings on Goethe (of Nov. 11, 1815) : "The courage to take no question to heart is what makes the philosopher. The latter must resemble the CEdipus of Sopho- cles, who, seeking explanation concerning his own horrible fate, seeks further without hesitation, even when he already perceives from the an- swers that the most terrible thing for him will result. But, then, most of us have within us the Jocasta who begs CEdipus, for the sake of all the gods, not to seek further : and we yield to her." (Ferenczi, Imago, I, p. 276 ff.) 12 This is also a fundamental concept of the psychoanalytic method of consideration in general. 3° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS naivete of the Greek fable of CEdipus, which admits of its ap- plication without commentary, represents only an exceptional case of especial clearness ; otherwise, the dream pictures drawn on for the comprehension of the CEdipus fable differ, in their trans- parency, from the regular type of dream structure strikingly enough. It is not necessary here to repeat the reason given by Freud for this; for us, it is certain that the majority of myths, as well as the majority of our nocturnal dreams, disclose their deeper meaning only after a more or less complicated work of interpretation. Further, this viewpoint, like the parallelization with the dream, has been in no way appreciated exclusively by psycho- analysis. The view that myths in addition to their manifest meaning — which is not always comprehensible without further study — must have another secret meaning, that only thus are they to be explained, is of great antiquity ; perhaps as old as the myths themselves, which, even when they appeared, just like dreams, may have aroused a strange incomprehension, so that it was con- cluded to attribute objective reality to the tale in order to believe it. It is now, according to various psychoanalytic results, very probable even if not unconditionally demonstrable, that the process, which in an early stage of rich development, is called myth formation and which later separates into cultistic, religious, artistic, philosophic endeavors, took its beginning at a period when man no longer dared confess openly his naive faith in the psychic reality of his wishes and appetites, thus, at a time which we recognize in the development of the individual as the beginning of the repression. With this insight, a second important principle of psycho- analytic investigation of myths is given. If the myth is, as we know from the dream and other mental performances, a product of powerful mental tendencies clamoring for expression and at the same time also of the counter impulses which keep these from complete achievement, then the activity of these tendencies must find expression in its content and a psychological interpretation will have to find its task in the elucidation of these distortions. Of course, in doing this, the aim and object of the investigation must always be kept in mind : by the exhibition of the unconscious INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 3* instinctive forces which participated in the myth formation to establish the secret psychological meaning of the myth ; in doing this neither the oldest form of the mythical tale nor the original conscious significance of the same is in any way reconstructed, the restoration of this being the special task of mythology. Although it is not to be denied that in many cases the more original tradition stands closer to the unconscious meaning, since, with the progress of the repression, farther reaching distortions are always joined, still the principle of the gradual return of the original repressed material should not be forgotten ; this principle permits us to discover, often in even highly complicated and late formations, as for example in legends, less disguised bits of the unconscious meaning. That far also, psychoanalysis will not be able to escape the comparative investigation of myths and legends ; of course not to the extent of making the ultimate aim, the constructing of the original formation of the myth, rather with a view of inferring the unconscious meaning which prob- ably will not have been fully apparent even in the earliest form. For the need for the construction and repetition of myths can have originated only with the renunciation of certain real sources of pleasure and the necessity for a compensatory substitute for this renunciation in gratification by phantasy. This real re- nunciation seems to be the phylogenetic counterpart of our psychic repression and compels the wish-phantasy to resemble distortions like those of the repression, even if not such refined ones. Naturally, there exists also in the psychological reduction of the distorted mythical tradition to its unconscious instinctive forces, the first mentioned fundamental principle of law, for there is demanded here, the same recognition of the inferred interpreta- tion as a psychic reality as that which, in the forms closely related to the CEdipus saga, had to sanction merely the manifest content as the real meaning. Thus, psychoanalysis reconstructs the wish- fulfillment which was formerly consciously tolerated, then for- bidden and allowed in consciousness only again distorted in the form of the myth, the giving up of which pleasure affords the impulse to myth formation. From this viewpoint, it is clear that in the ultimate end there is nothing else to prosecute except psychology, analysis of phantasy life which manifests itself just 32 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS as well in other forms. But the relation of mental content and processes to the phenomena of nature which is peculiar to the myth, perhaps characteristic of it, belongs in part to the pre- mythical period of " animistic view of the world," the considera- tion of which phenomena leads us back again to a psychological starting point for myth formation and myth investigation. If the mythology of the present-day may consider its task the tracing back of the mythical tales handed down in purely human dress (and the "myth" is nothing else than a "narrative") to the representation of processes of nature, as for instance it has " in- terpreted " the splendid sensual Song of Solomon as conversation between Christ and the Church, the task of the psychologists will remain just the reverse: to derive and comprehend from their psychological sources the phantasy products clothed in human dress even where they seem to transfer directly to other processes. This comes about by means of the knowledge of the processes of repression and substitute formation and the mental mech- anisms thereby involved as they have become known to us from the psychoanalytic study of human phantasy life. If one decides, in the manner indicated, to consider these dynamic factors as essential for the formation of myths, then one understands not only the early appearing need for an in- terpretation of the distorted and incomprehensible mythical product, but also the way by which one must seek this. If the myth is constituted as compensation for disowned psychic reali- ties and the justifiable projection of these upon superhuman gods and heroes to whom may still be permitted that which has become shocking to man, then the need of interpretation which rather belongs to the myth, will necessarily seek to substantiate and strengthen this defence. Thus, the interpretation will not apply itself to the underlying mental realities, but, on the contrary, to the phenomena of the external world which admit of a relation to the phantasy product which is only partially understood and re- fused by consciousness. That especially wonderful heroes and extraordinary men are suited to take upon themselves, in a cer- tain measure collectively, the impulses succumbing to the general repression and to carry them through as superhuman and heroic deeds, is indeed plain and will be sufficiently proven by the INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 33 bearers of the mythical tales as well as by the deeds ascribed to them. Less evident seems the relation of humanly conceived myths and legends to the processes of nature and the heavenly bodies as the nature-mythological method of interpretation pre- sents them. Still, for the present, one needs only to retain as psychological justification for this conception that the phantasy- gifted man of ancient times also attributed to the inanimate phe- nomena of nature, amid which he stood with wondering incom- prehension, according as they were suitable, certain of his own affects and thus wove them into his own mental life. The process of nature, in itself, of course did not furnish him with a motive but only provided him with material for the phantasy formation, just as the dreamer often cleverly weaves into his dream picture external irritations. One may perhaps estimate the importance of the phenomena of nature for myth formation as psychoanalysis does the actual material from daily life for the dream picture resulting from unconscious motives. It is prob- able, that for the myth-creating man, the projection of the denied gratification upon deified heroes and humanized gods did not suffice but that he further, in anthropomorphical manner, drew into the myth formation the natural processes as representing the will of the gods. The circumstance that the finished myth permits this share to be recognized up to a certain degree of varying clearness seems to speak for the fact that even at the time when the myths were forming, the humanized conception of the processes of nature was co-determining. Apparently in the manner that the phenomena had already at an earlier period been personified in the service of self-preservation (fear) and by way of self-representation (projection of the ego upon the external world), at the time when man sought after external objects of representation for his repressed impulses, these were utilized as material for myth formation, while the instinctive force for both processes arose from the unconscious affect life. With this view corresponds the fact that the nature-mythological interpretation which is not to be disputed in its justification — namely, for the fixed mythical calendar dates — is always able to show in a purely descriptive way what processes of nature may correspond to definite mythical motives, but not to lead to the dynamic under- 34 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS standing of the mental processes which guide to the anthropo- morphic apperception of external processes in general and further to the organization of these in the form of human narratives. When, in opposition to this view, the extreme representatives of the nature interpretation method hold firmly in unchangeable persistency to the belief that with the pointing out of atmospheric, lunar, astral and similar elements in the myth, which now and then can be read out of it only by means of artificial and alle- gorical juggling, the interpretation has been fully given, then there awakens beyond these statements a new interest for the psychologist. He gains the impression that the investigators who devote themselves to an exclusively nature-mythological method of interpretation — no matter in what sense — in their attempts to establish the meaning of the mythical tales, may find themselves in a position similar to that of the primitive creators of the myths in that they strive to disguise certain shocking motives by relation to nature, by projection of the offensiveness of these upon the external world and thus to deny the mental reality underlying the myth formation by the construction of an objective reality. This defence tendency has probably been one of the chief motives for the mythical projection of shocking thoughts upon cosmic processes and its possibility for reaction formation in the service of explanation of myths is naively con- sidered by the founders of the nature-mythological method of interpretation as an especial advantage of their method. Thus, Max Mtiller 13 avows that " by this method, not merely do mean- ingless saga attain a real significance and beauty but that one may thereby eliminate some of the most revolting traits of classical mythology and ascertain their true meaning." Against this naive confession, one is glad to recall the sharp words of Arnobius, who, as an adherent of early Christianity, had a personal interest in making out the heathen gods as coarse as possible and who therefore rejected the allegorical myth interpre- tations of his contemporaries (about 300 A. D.) with the fol- lowing words : " How far are you sure that you perceive and represent the same sense in the explanation and interpretation which those historians themselves had in their hidden thoughts, 13 Essays (Vol. II, German Trans., Leipsic, 1869, p. 143). Similarly, Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 35 which they have, however, represented not with the true expres- sions but in other words? There can be a second more sharp- sighted and more probable interpretation devised. . . . Since that is so, how can you derive something certain from ambiguous things and give a definite explanation to the word which you find conveyed by countless kinds of interpretation? For how will you know what part of the tale is composed in customary repre- sentation, what, on the contrary, is disguised by ambiguous and strange expressions, where the thing itself contains no mark which yields the distinction? Either everything must be con- sidered in allegorical fashion and so explained by us or nothing. . . . Formerly, it was customary to give allegorical speeches the modest meaning, to disguise dirty and ugly sounding things with the dress of proper nomenclature ; now should things be dressed in obscene and nasty fashion ! " These words written many centuries ago apply unchanged to certain excesses of modern nature-mythologists who, as for example, Siecke, explain the mythical motive of castration as representation of the waning of the moon, that of incest as a definite constellation of the moon to the sun. The psychoanalyst who knows the overdetermina- tion of all mental phenomena, is, a priori, clear concerning the share which a series of conscious factors of the mental life must necessarily have had in the myth formation and throughout does not deny the significance of the naive conception of nature for the formation of myths. How little the consideration of the unconscious instinctive forces excludes a consideration of the nature elements is best shown by the fact that the modern mythologists who devote themselves to comparative investigation agree in the essential points of the conception of myths with the results of the psychoanalytic investigation. Thus, Goldziher 14 declares, although in the confused naivete of the nature mythol- ogy, that "the murder of parents and killing of children, fratri- cide and strife between brothers and sisters, sexual love and union between children and parents, between brothers and sisters, furnish the chief motives of the myth " ; and Stucken, Jeremias and others call direct incest and castration the "motive of antiquity " that occurs everywhere in mythology. While, 14 Der Mythos bei den Hebraern (The Myth Among the Hebrews), Leipsic, 1876, p. 107. 36 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS however, psychoanalysis is able to recognize as mental reality these impulses, the significance of which it has learned to ap- praise from the actual life of the infant and the unconscious mental life of the adult, the nature interpretation still clings to its denial of these impulses by projecting them upon heaven. On the other hand, clearsighted investigators have emphasized the secondary role of the nature interpretation 15 and a psycho- logically oriented mythologist like Wundt 16 denies the standpoint firmly held by many mythologists, of a heavenly origin for myths as a psychologically impossible idea, while he conceives the hero to be the projection of human wishes and hopes. It is the problem of psychoanalytic myth investigation to dis- close the unconscious meaning of the phantasies underlying the myths which have become unrecognizable by relation to processes of nature and other distortions. This comes about by means of our insight into the content and mechanisms of the unconscious mental life which we study most clearly in the dream, but can also show in other expressions (as religion, art, wit, etc.). We therewith expressly oppose the misunderstanding which ascribes to us the conception of the old " dream theory " which derives certain mythical motives directly from the dream experience. Rather, we have recognized dream and myth as parallel produc- tions of the same mental forces which produce also other crea- tions of phantasy. At the same time, it should be emphasized that dream and myth are in no way identical for us. Precisely the circumstance that the dream is not intended, a priori, for comprehension, while the myth speaks for generality, excludes an identification of that kind. The condition of comprehensi- bility makes it easy to understand the difference between the poetic structure of a legend and the seeming absurdity of a 15 In this same direction, says Stucken (Mose, p. 432) : "The myth derived from experience was transferred to processes of nature and nat- uristically interpreted, not the reverse." " The nature interpretation itself is a myth" (page 633, footnote). Similarly, says Meyer (Gesch. d. Altert, Vol. V, p. 48) : " In numerous cases is the nature symbolism sought in the myths only apparently at hand or introduced into them secondarily, as very often, in the Vedic and Egyptian myths, it is a primitive attempt at interpretation, the same as the myth interpretations appearing among the Greeks since the fifth century." 16 Volkerpsychologie, Vol. II, Part 3, p. 282. INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 37 dream picture by taking into consideration the especially inten- sive share of those mental forces to which Freud ascribes the " secondary elaboration " of the dream content by the conscious mental forces. Therewith, the myths, without withdrawing entirely from the inner structure of the dream, approach better- known mental structures which assume, as it were — as the name indicates- — a middle position between the dream and those con- scious forces : namely, the day-dream. The ambitious and erotic phantasies of boyhood and puberty return in the myth structure as content of a series of similar tales which are many times inde- pendent of one another. Thus for example, the myth of the exposure of the newborn hero in a little basket in water, his rescue and nursing by poor people and his ultimate victory over his persecutor (usually the father) is familiar to us as an ambitious phantasy of boyhood lined by erotic wishes which recurs in the " family romance " of the neurotic and discloses itself in many relations with the pathological ideas of persecution and grandeur of certain insane persons. When we are able to interpret the exposure in basket and water, on a basis of our knowledge of symbolism, as representation of birth, then we have in hand the understanding of the saga and at the same time the key to the discovery of its secret instinctive force and tendency. Thereby is disclosed the fact that symbolization serves, in general, to carry out in disguised representation the wish-impulses existing under the pressure of the repression ; this symbolization can no longer be shocking to consciousness and yet affords the affects pressing from the unconscious for ex- pression an almost equal substitute gratification. This is the most general formulation under which the mechanisms of un- conscious phantasy formation and thus, also, those of myth crea- tion, can be arranged. They serve, generally speaking, for the retention and distorted attainment of the mental pleasure that is destined for renunciation; on the other hand, for recognition of the material clothed in the wish, that is, really the denial of the unpleasant and painful experience which is demanded of man by reality. The result of both these strivings, which represent the fundamental tendencies of the mind, may be comprised under the viewpoint of wishfulfillment which utilizes these mechanisms 3 8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS as compensation for denied gratification or for the avoidance of compulsory renunciation in ever new and more refined dis- guises which we will shortly present in detail. The mechanism of splitting of the personality into several figures representing its characteristics, also recognized in the dream life, recurs again in the form of the hero myth where the rebellious son gratifies his hostile impulses which belong against the father, on a tyrant who represents the hated side of the father-image (Vaterimago) while consideration is given to the cultural demands of piety by superlative acknowledgment of a beloved, revered, indeed even defended or avenged father-image. To this splitting of the mythical figures, there correspond openly in the hero himself, from whose standpoint the myth seems to be formed, similar " ambivalent " attitudes toward the persons in question, so that in the latest psychological solution, this mech- anism is reduced to what we might call a paranoid explanation of the matter contained in the mind and its projection upon the mythical figures. A whole series of complicated myths which are provided with a great array of persons may be traced back to the three-cornered family of parents and child and in ultimate analysis, may be recognized as a representation disguised in justifying manner of the egocentric attitude of the child. From the splitting, which is a means of representation founded on the very nature of the myth-forming phantasy activi- ties, should be distinguished the similar mechanism of duplication of whole mythical figures (not merely isolated impulses split off from these), which is already recognized by certain modern mythologists (Winckler, Stucken, Husing and others) and may be traced through the whole history of myths and legends. Further, the psychoanalytic penetration into the saga structure here affords us insight into the purpose of this mechanism as a means of wishfulfillment and gratification of instinct, which can never take place in reality on the original wish object, but only after corresponding compensations in the sense of a continued series. Just as many dreams seek to fulfill as adequately as possible always the same wish-motive in a series of successive situations in different disguise and distortion, so the myth also repeats one and the same mental constellation until it is exhausted INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 39 to a certain extent in all its wish tendencies. The case of duplication exists, for example, in a series of traditions which wish to portray»the tabooed incest with mother, daughter or sister by duplication of the male or female partner. Examples of duplication of the male partner are afforded by the numerous legends and saga in which a king in full consciousness of his sin, wishes to marry his own daughter, who escapes from him, however, by flight and, after manifold adventures, marries a king in whom one easily recognizes again a double of the orig- inally rejected father. A classical example of duplication of the female partner for the purpose of accomplishing incest is pre- sented in the Lohengrin saga, in the first part of which the son saves the beloved mother from the violence of the cruel father, the succeeding marriage with the rescued one is accomplished only in the second part after the whole saving episode has been played again with a strange lady, a double of the mother. These and many similar examples show that the duplication, often the multiplication, of individual mythical figures proceeds as a rule along with the duplication and multiplication of whole saga episodes which one has to bring to the covering, one might say to the condensation, which originally happened to them in the unconscious phantasy life. Thus with the splitting, duplica- tion, symbolic disguising and projection of these mental elements, the shocking, somewhat incestuous content of the tale is obliter- ated in the direction of the repressing tendency, at the same time, however, the original tendency toward gratification is retained in the disguised form. With these processes which become ever more complicated in the course of the progress of the repression, there appears also a gradual displacement of the affective accent from the originally important upon the unimportant, even to full inversion of affect or content of ideas as we know it from the dream structure. This is a necessary result of the incomprehensibility of the myths connected with the progress of the repression, upon which must always be put some kind of a conscious interpretation even if an incorrect one. The mental distortion of motives and mechanisms mentioned affords the mythologist as well as the investigator who is ac- 4° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS customed to fortifying himself with mythological material, help- ful hints that in the estimation of this material, more foresight is demanded than the comparative myth investigation already rightly exacts and that still other factors, more influential and more difficult to understand than the historical foundations and the external fates of the mythical traditions, demand considera- tion. As the scientific investigator of to-day no longer utilizes any mythical product without bearing in mind the viewpoints of comparative investigation, so a demand for scientific certainty will insist that no myth be employed for indisputable demonstration which cannot also be considered as interpreted psychologically. The myths, however, are not to be understood psychologically only by solution of the disguising symbolism and the representa- tion of opposites, by the elimination of the splitting and duplica- tion, by the tracing back of the arrangement and projection to the egocentric attitude of the unconscious which is shocking to con- sciousness. There is yet another factor to consider — aside from the mentioned dissection of myths lengthwise and crosswise — there is also a stratification in the dimension of depth which is peculiar to the myth in still higher degree than for example to the dream. Indeed, the myth is no individual product like the dream nor yet, as you might say, a fixed one like the work of art. Rather, the myth structure is constantly fluid, never completed, and is adapted by successive generations to their religious, cul- tural and ethical standards, that is, psychologically expressed, to the current stage of repression. This stratification according to generations may still be recognized to a large extent in certain formal peculiarities of the myth formation, wherein especially shocking outrages, which were originally ascribed only to the perpetrator of the mythical events, are gradually shared, in vari- ously weaker form within the tale itself, with his ancestors and descendants or are represented in separate versions of the myth. As originators, propagators and decorators of the so-called folk productions, we must think of solitary talented individuals on whom the progress of repression manifested itself most plainly and probably also earlier. Hence, the narrative, in course of its formation, apparently goes through a series of similarly con- stituted individual minds, among which, each worked, often for INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 4* a generation, in the same direction in the assertion of the general human motive and the rubbing off of many a disturbing acces- sory. In this way, it becomes possible in long periods of time and under changed conditions of culture, that late versions and those adapted in their whole plan to the degree of culture, ap- proach in individual points the unconscious meaning of the tale. How, on the other hand, the original religious myths established with real credibility, gradually lost their claim to earnest esteem in enlightened ages and finally lost it entirely, is shown plainly enough by the history of the Greek, Vedic and Eddaic tradi- tions. With the real depreciation of the myth, there must, how- ever, proceed also, since its mental reality in higher stages of culture can be still less acknowledged, a psychological deprecia- tion : it is pushed out of the field of socially valuable function into the domain of fable, and since, as already pointed out, the share of the unconscious phantasy life gradually breaks through again more plainly, so the myth which can be excluded from the world just as little as the myth forming agencies can be from the mental life, can reappear at a certain stage of culture as legend, and be relegated by the highly developed people of civili- zation with condescending superiority to the nursery where indeed, in a deep sense, as a regression product, it belongs and where alone it can be really understood. It is like the case of primitive weapons, for example, bows and arrows, which were replaced with other corresponding ones by civilized people, living on in the nursery as playthings. Just as little as these weapons were created for children, so with the legend, as the scientific investigation long ago made certain ; bows and arrows are kept by a number of peoples even to the present day ; the legend may rather represent a sunken form of myth as the comparative in- vestigation indicates. Psychologically considered, it is the last form in which the mythical product is admissible to the conscious- ness of adult cultured people. To the child with a gift for phantasy and filled with primitive affects, the legend, however, appears as objective reality because he stands in close relation to the time in which he must believe in the mental reality of his own similar impulses. The adults, on the other hand, already know that it is " only a legend," that is, a phantasy product. As 42 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS the legend thus leads us back to a psychological starting point for myth investigation, so at the same time, it discloses to us the human starting point of myth formation, because it reduces the gods and heroes to earthly proportions and causes them to play their humanized fates in the setting of the family. With this complete elaboration of the purely human characteristics under- lying the myth, the legend has prepared itself for the psycho- logical conception and interpretation and will be welcomed in the analysis of the myth as a valuable aid, which not only enlarges the mythical material but often affords a confirmation of the con- clusions drawn therefrom. The simple myth affords the ma- terial in relatively raw condition because it can relate to super- human relations ; the complicated legend reduces it to human pro- portions but in greatly distorted, in part ethically reduced form. Both forms considered as supplementary yield a complete under- standing in the sense of the psychoanalytic conception which shows the motive that is shocking to our sensibilities, as a com- mon human impulse among primitive peoples and present in the unconscious mental life of adult cultured persons and acknowl- edges its psychic reality. In order to explain the application of the fundamental prin- ciples methodically arranged, we will select as an example a widespread group of traditions, within which, the results of the psychoanalytic interpretation work may be substantiated by com- parative legend investigation from the mythological standpoint. It concerns the romance of the two brothers which appears among various peoples of ancient and modern times in manifold forms ; from the highly complicated version in Grimm's legends (No. 60), we will sift out the kernel of the tale in order to trace it back to the underlying basic psychological instinctive roots. In so doing, we will gain immediate insight, by comparison with less distorted or differently disguised versions of the story, into the proven mechanisms of myth formation. In abbreviated form, the Grimm's legend runs as follows : There were two brothers, one rich and bad, the other, poor and upright; the latter has two children who were twin brothers and were as near alike as two drops of water. Their father once INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 43 had the good fortune to stumble on a golden bird, for the feathers and eggs of which the rich brother pays well and by the enjoy- ment of the heart and liver of which he wishes to attain the attribute of laying gold. The costly morsels were, however, eaten unsuspectingly by the two hungry twin brothers, from which, each one now finds a gold piece under his pillow every morning. At the instigation of the envious uncle, the boys are exposed by their father in the forest. There, a hunter finds them, brings them up and instructs them in woodwork; when they are grown up, he sends them into the world richly endowed. He accompanies them a little ways and, on parting, gives them a bright knife, saying : " When you sepa- rate from each other, stick this knife in a tree at the parting of the ways, then the one who returns can see how it has fared with his brother, for the side toward which this is pulled out, rusts when he dies; so long as he lives, it remains bright." The brothers come to a great wood where they are compelled by hunger to hunt to acquire, by the forbearance of the sympathetic game, a few helpful animals. Finally, however, they have to separate, "promise brotherly love until death and stick the knife which the foster father gave them, into a tree; then one goes toward the east, the other toward the west." " The youngest, 17 however, came with his animals to a city which was entirely draped in black cloth." The reason for this he learned from an innkeeper to be that annually a pure virgin must be offered to a dragon which lived in front of the town and there was no one left except the king's daughter who, on the morrow, must meet the ignominious fate. Many knights had already attempted to match the dragon but all had lost their lives and the king had promised to the one who should conquer the dragon, his daughter as wife and the kingdom as inheritance. The next morning, the youth climbed the dragon's mountain, finds there in a chapel the power-giving drink which enables him to swing the mighty sword buried on the threshold and thus awaits the arrival of the monster. Then comes the virgin with a great retinue. " She saw from afar the hunter above on the dragon's mountain and thought the dragon stood there waiting for her, 17 Literal, in spite of the fact that they are twin brothers 44 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS and she would not go up." Finally, however, she had to ap- proach the hard way. The king and courtiers went home and only the marshal was to witness everything from a distance. The hunter receives her kindly, consoles her, promises to save her and shuts her in the church. Soon after, the seven-headed dragon comes forth and calls the hunter to account. A struggle ensues, in which the youth strikes off six heads of the fire-spitting monster with two strokes (hydra motive) . " The monster became faint and sank down and wished to be free again from the hunter but the latter, with his last strength, cut off his tail and because he could not fight longer he called his animals which tore it to pieces. When the battle was over, the hunter opened the church and found the king's daughter lying on the ground, be- cause her senses had left her during the combat from anxiety and horror" (death sleep). When she came to herself he told her that she was saved. She rejoiced and said : " Now you will be my beloved husband." Her coral necklace she divided among the animals as a reward, " her pocket handkerchief however, in which her name stood, she gave to the hunter who went out and cut the tongues from the seven dragon heads, wrapped them in the cloth and carefully kept them." The knight, weakened from the struggle, now lies down with the virgin to rest ; the animals also soon all fall asleep after one had committed the watch to another. When the marshal, after he had waited awhile, came to look and found all asleep, he cut off the hunter's head, carried the virgin down the mountain in his arms and compelled her to promise to declare him the slayer of the dragon. She stipulated with her father the favor that the wedding should not be celebrated until a year and a day had passed ; " for she thought in that time to hear something of her beloved hunter." On the dragon's mountain, in the meantime, the animals had awakened, saw that the virgin was gone and their master dead and blamed one another until finally it stuck on the hare. The latter withdrew from the strife and within twenty-four hours found a root which brought the master to life again. But in the haste, the head was put on reversed, " but he did not notice it, however, because of his sad thoughts about the king's daughter; only at midday when he wished to eat some- INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 45 thing, did he see that his head was on backwards, could not understand it and asked the animals what had occurred to him during sleep?" Now, they had to admit everything, the head was again put on correctly and the hunter went sadly forth into the world with his animals. After the course of a year, he comes again to the same city but this time on account of the marriage festival of the king's daughter, it was decorated in red. The hunter sent a message to the bride by his animals, at which, the king was surprised and sent for the owner. He entered as the seven dragon heads were placed on exhibition and brought the pretended dragon killer into difficulties by asking after the missing tongues ; upon the latter's evasion, by producing these trophies of victory as well as the handkerchief and the coral necklace, he proves himself the suitor for the hand of the princess. The faithless marshal was quar- tered, the king's daughter was given to the hunter and the latter named lieutenant governor of the kingdom. " The young king had his father and foster father brought and loaded them with treasures. The innkeeper too he did not forget." 18 The young king lives contentedly with his wife and goes hunting accom- panied by his animals. Once, while hunting a white doe in a neighboring magic forest, he lost his companions, finally the game and way both and must pass the night in the wood. A witch comes to him, who, under pretext of fearing his animals, throws a wand at him, by the touch of which, the animals and then the king himself are turned into stone (death sleep). At this time, the other brother who thus far had wandered about with his animals without service, comes into the kingdom, looks at the knife in the tree trunk and recognizes from that, that a great misfortune has befallen his brother, but that he may still save him. In the city, on account of the great likeness, he is taken for the missing king and joyfully received by the anxious queen as the missing husband. He plays the role in the hope of being able to save the brother quicker ; only evenings when he is brought to the royal bed, he lays a two-edged sword between himself and the young queen who does not venture to ask the meaning of this unusual ceremony (abstinence motive). 18 In striking manner, however, the brother altogether. 46 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS After some days, he goes to the magic forest, everything happens to him as to the brother, only he knows how to meet the old witch rightly and compels her to bring to life his brother and his animals (reincarnation). The twin brothers hereupon burn the witch, embrace each other joyfully and recount their experi- ences. When, however, the one learns that the brother has slept beside the queen, he strikes off his head in a fit of jealousy but is immediately sorry to have so rewarded his savior. Again, the hare brings the life root, with the help of which the dead is brought to life and the wound healed. Hereupon, the brothers separate again but decide to enter the city at the same time from different sides. The old king asks his daughter which is the real husband, but she cannot at first recog- nize him ; only the coral necklace which she had given to his animals gives her the right clue. At evening, when the young king goes to bed, his wife asks him why, in the previous nights, he has always laid a two-edged sword in bed. " Then he recog- nized how true his brother had been." If the naive hearer is asked the meaning of this legend, he will without much thought declare the representation of noble self-sacrificing brotherly love as the purpose of the narrative. It cannot, however, escape him that this chief content is joined to a series of adventures which stand in more or less loose con- nection, that further, the simple moral of the story is set in the scene with a disproportionately complicated apparatus and that finally, the fairly thick moral coat itself is pierced in more than one place by an ethical unscrupulousness, such as otherwise char- acterizes the legend as a product of antiquity and childhood. If one would now look at some of these peculiarities, such as the decking out with wonderful traits, the frequent repetition of detail, the fusion of different motives, etc., as meaningless results of that day-dreaming pleasure of fabulating which has a certain share in the spreading of the legendary material, still there always remains a series of typical basic motives which demonstrably arise from mythical times where the narrative often enough had a quite different sense and a purpose, foreign to us. In its present form, the legend is not original and further not a unit, hence it can also never be interpreted in its entirety, as sentence INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 47 for sentence traced back to its unconscious meaning; rather, it has become what it is from compulsion of circumstances and the tracing back of its course of development will also earliest afford us conclusion regarding its real meaning and the reason for this change in significance to which it has been subjected in the course of time. Because of this manifold complication of the mythical structure handed down to us, we can always undertake an interpretation only of individual motives and must therefore dissect the product in hand just as we do a dream for interpreta- tion, into individual elements which are at first to be treated inde- pendently ; to this, the comparative investigation affords us the quasi-associations which the myth-forming whole has contributed to the individual themes in course of their elaboration. In the foregoing legend, one easily distinguishes a narrative forced into the center of things : the liberation and marriage of a virgin destined for sacrifice to a monster, by a clever youth (savior motive) ; before this, a previous history, and after it, a related conclusion, both of which surrounding parts contain the real brother motive. The previous history of the twin brothers exposed by their father (exposure motive) has itself an introduction in a report of two entirely different brothers of the preceding generation, in which may be seen duplications of the real twin heroes carried out as a favorite decorative tendency. Deeper analysis reveals in them, however, according to the familiar scheme of the myth of the birth of the hero, splittings of the father image, by which the " bad father " is made responsible for the exposure, while the " good father " permits 19 it, though unwillingly, and appears again in course of the tale, as the helping hunter who lovingly rears the boys, but then likewise sends them forth into the world (ex- posure motive). The beginning of the legend would thus prove in direct and undisguised representation that a father, after he 19 With the motive of "gold laying" introduced at the foundation of the exposure from a foreign connection, we have nothing further to do here. In a certain closely related sense, the gold-giving bird represents both the father and the attribute of gold distributing among the sons for their material independence. 48 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS has lovingly reared and prepared his children for the world, pushes them out of the parental home. 20 With this actual exposure of the sons 21 to the rough reality of life, begins the real previous history of the hero's adventures: namely, the necessary separation of the brothers (separation mo- tive) and the mutual vows of faithfulness over the sign of the shining knife, which motive will only later become clear in its significance. There follows, now, an especial elaboration of the whole inde- pendent motive of dragon combat and the freeing of a virgin, which we recognize as typical constituents of the mythology of various peoples. We may, therefore, without reference to the brother motive, consider, so much the earlier since the brother does not appear at all there, the savior episode, in order to make us familiar with some of the peculiarities of myth formation. If one reads the detailed description of the sacrifice of the virgin in the legend, with a certain inclination toward psychological under- standing, then it is difficult to mistake the purely human content. The decoration of the city, the gay pageant which accompanies the pure virgin to the chapel and leaves her there to her inevitable fate, all that agrees so well, as if it referred in secret to the wedding of the princess who is anxious in maidenly fear of her 20 In the beginning of the legend, the ancient motive has found direct presentation in the exposure of the children by their father; in the rela- tion to their good foster father, it seems already inverted into its opposite, since the two brothers refuse the acceptance of food and drink until the hunter allows them departure into the world : Then spoke the old man with joy, "what is happening to you has been my own wish." 21 The secret meaning of the exposure we may leave out of consid- eration here, where the birth of the hero may not be followed further; we ma} r point out, however, that other versions of this widespread legend contain the typical exposure of the boys conceived by the drinking from an enchanted spring, preserved in chest and water and, further, that the helpful animals of the hero myth recur in our legend, and here as there, represent important representatives of the helpful parent images, who were spared by the child in pious manner after they have provided two young ones (twin motive) for the assistance of the heroes. To the watery birth point the names of the boys, who are sometimes called Water Peter and Water Paul, sometimes John and Caspar, sprung from the water, Wattuman and Wattusin, strong spring and lovely spring. As reverbera- tion from this, is to be noticed the reference in our legend that the two nameless boys resembled each other " like two drops of water." INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 49 future husband and sees in him, in expectation of impending mysterious events, only a monster that has aimed at her destruc- tion. That this conception has not been entirely foreign to the legend itself is betrayed by the place where the princess when she " saw the hunter from afar above on the dragon's mountain, thought the dragon was standing there awaiting her and she would not ascend." Thus, she identified the dragon directly with her later bridegroom and husband, though of course, only in transient and erroneous fashion, from which, however, we may read the echo of a deeper psychological significance of the motive. We can prove this view, however, directly from parallel traditions which utilize the same motive in the sense of our interpretation. In the old popular Milesian legend, which the Roman poet Apuleius has handed down under the title " Eros and Psyche," the oracle commands the royal father of Psyche to conduct his daughter with full wedding pomp and festal train to the top of the mountain and there to leave her to the son-in-law sprung from the dragon-race ; " so Psyche attends in tears not her wedding but her funeral celebration " (also in our legend, the city was dressed in black). 22 But here, too, the virgin did not fall to the expected dreadful dragon, which did not show itself at all, but becomes the wife of Eros, the god of love himself, who visits her every night as an invisible husband until the in- quisitive Psyche, goaded by her sisters, one night convinces her- self against the command of her beloved that, instead of the pretended monster, a handsome youth rests by her side who now leaves her as punishment. This legend shows with all desired clearness that, in the offering of the untouched virgin to the horrible dragon, we are dealing with a wedding which is hal- lucinated by the anxious virgin in unmistakable neurotic fashion as awful overpowering by a horrible monster. Thus, if the dragon represents in one stratum of the interpretation the feared and detested animal side of the husband, then there can be no doubt that it is the sexual side of the man which has first found expression in the dragon symbol. That to this dragon, here as 22 The affixed death motive naturally has its own significance which, nevertheless, must be passed over in this connection. It finds partial ex- planation in the later mentioned motive of reincarnation. 5° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS in other myths, in course of time, all the pure virgins of the land must be sacrificed, makes us all the more sure of its phallic significance; that it has other meanings besides, indeed must have, since this one discloses the sense of the legend only a little way, we shall have to show in other layers of the interpreta- tion ; nevertheless, we may even now assert that these different meanings (and also other meanings) do not in the least exclude one another, but rather, to a certain extent, converge toward one point. That the virginal anxiety preceding the carrying out of the sexual intercourse rules the dragon episode in this plain in- terpretation is shown also by the conclusion of the scene, which does not, as one would expect, end with the actual marriage, but with a one-year abstinence, which the bride stipulates or to which in many traditions the hero voluntarily agrees (motive of absti- nence) . Only after the expiration of this time does the wedding take place, which should logically, as in the legend of Eros and Psyche, follow immediately, so that it gains the appearance that the pleasantly and unpleasantly toned attitudes toward the sexual act were so unbearably opposed to each other here that they must be placed in two temporally separated scenes, which other- wise seem joined. The deeper significance of this character- istic, as well as of the whole interpolated episode of the faithless marshal, can only become intelligible when we have traced back to its unconscious foundations the real brother motive, to the analysis of which we will now apply ourselves. The final, especially contradictory part of the legend, with the fratricide so grossly opposing the tendency of the tale, most needs explanation, but promises also to lead deepest into the underlying mental strata. Before we proceed to prove this by comparison with less distorted versions of the same motive, we will seek to determine how much nearer the application of our fundamental principles to the material at hand brings us to the meaning of the narrative. In the conjugal substitution of one brother by the other, as well as in the jealous murder of the rival brother resulting therefrom, we recognize, in spite of sentimental amelioration which these motives have here undergone, primi- tive traits of primeval love and mental life, the grossness of which is artificially hidden by the " good ending " of the story. INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 5 1 The evil reward, which is apportioned to the savior for the rescue of the brother, lets us suspect that originally it must have dealt with an actually hostile relationship between the brothers throughout and a more fundamental jealousy. If we do not dodge recognizing the fact that these powerful affects of jealous brotherly hatred and the necessary renunciation of its satis- faction is, in reality, one of the instinctive forces of legend forma- tion, then, both the dragon combat, as well as the concluding episode of the faithless marshal, becomes clear, at the same time as the still further distorted duplication of the same primeval motive, which succeeded in breaking through in sentimental amelioration in the concluding episode. In all three scenes, we are dealing with the elimination of an opponent who seeks to rob the victorious brother of his life and bride in order to assume his place in the conjugal bed. If, however, the wicked dragon, as well as the wicked marshal, represents a personification of the hated brother image, which arouses sexual jealousy, then we understand also why the beloved brother image separated from the fraternal companion (separation motive) before the dragon combat and does not appear in the next two episodes : namely, it is represented by the two substitute figures of the dragon and the marshal, in whose killing the brother is also eliminated. There- fore, the young king, in his new happiness, allows all his relatives and even the innkeeper to come and rewards them, while the slain " brother " is consequently not mentioned. That the faith- less marshal personifies the hated side of the " loyal " brother is hinted at in the circumstance that both persons were brought into the same situations toward the successful brother, as, for ex- ample, in the duplicated recognition scene, where the hero, as possessor of the necklace, is proven the rightful husband both against the marshal and the brother. That the dragon should also represent the brother to be combated is nothing strange. We recognize a similar relation, for example, in the Siegfried saga, where the hero, at the instigation of his foster father, Regin, kills his brother, who is watching the treasure in the form of a dragon, and in further course of events, likewise wins for himself the virgin. Other relations of the Siegfried saga to our legend will be mentioned later. Striking only is the threefold 52 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS repetition of one and the same fundamental situation which varies — as in many dreams — in ever plainer representation of the opponent (dragon, marshal, brother), the motive of rivalry with the brother for the possession of the same wife and the elimina- tion of the rival. How much this motive originally stood in the central point of the narrative is plainly shown by another, in many points less dis- torted version of the same legend, which will also disclose to us the meaning of certain hitherto uninterpreted motives. This is the so-called oldest legend of world literature, which was fixed in literary form some 2,000 years ago, in the 'Egyptian story of the brothers Anup and Bata. " Now Anup had a house and a wife, while his younger brother lived with him like a son." One day, the elder brother's wife attempted to seduce her young brother- in-law. The latter, however, indignantly repulsed her without saying anything about it to his brother. She now slandered Bata by saying that he had done violence to her. " Then the elder brother became enraged like a panther, sharpened his knife and took it in hand " to kill his younger brother when he should come home at evening. The latter, however, was warned by the animals of his herd (motive of helpful animals) 23 and fled. " His elder brother ran after him with the knife in his hand." The younger brother appealed to Re; the god heard him and caused a great water to arise between them, on the shores of which, they pass the night separately. When the sun rises, Bata defends himself before its face, tells Anup the base proposals of his wife, swears his innocence and castrates himself as a sign of his purity. " He hereupon drew forth a sharp knife, cut off his phallus and threw it into the flood where it was swallowed by a fish." When Anup, now full of remorse, began to weep, Bata begged a favor. " I will take my heart and lay it on the flower of the cedar tree and when anyone shall give you a glass of beer and it foams, then it will be the time for you to come and search for my heart ! " (motive of true love). Anup went home, killed his wife and threw her body to the dogs ; then he sat down, put dust on his head and mourned for his brother. 23 The cow, which warns him first, represents the repentant wife her- self, as in general, most animals of the legend in the figure of helpful or harmful beings, represent closely associated people. INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 53 Meanwhile the latter lives in a cedar valley. The gods praise his chastity and give him a wish. He asks for a maiden and they jointly create one for him. He lives with her and confides to her the secret of the heart in the cedar blossoms. But her lighter mind, her curiosity and lustfulness cause her to disobey the only prohibition of her husband : she comes near the sea, the waves snatch off a curl which floats to the laundry of the king of Egypt. The king has the possessor sought out, finally makes her his wife and in order to avoid Bata's revenge, at her wish, has the cedar cut down. Bata drops down dead (death sleep). His brother notices the misfortune as was predicted, on the foam of his beer and hastens into the cedar valley. Three years he searches for the heart ; in the fourth, he finally finds it and gives a drink to the dead Bata. Then the latter awakens and embraces his brother (reincarnation). Then Bata changes into an Apis bull and has himsellf driven by his brother to the court of the king of Egypt. The bull allows himself to be recognized by the queen as Bata. The queen is frightened and brings it about in an hour of love that the king has the bull slain. Two drops of blood fall to the ground at the gate of the palace; two giant sycamores shoot up in a night (hydra motive). Again Bata allows himself to be recognized in them, again the queen brings about the cutting down of the trees. While this is being done, a splinter flies into her mouth, she becomes impregnated and bears Bata as her son (rebirth motive). The king dies, Bata becomes his heir and has the queen executed. After a thirty-years rule, dying, he leaves the crown to his brother Anup. Before we investigate the individual motives in their rela- tionship to the German brother legend, we will first seek to comprehend the whole content and structure of this noteworthy story, of which H. Schneider 24 says: "If one overlooks an his- torical or mythological nucleus and considers the story entirely isolated and for itself alone, then one may be tempted, at first, to see in it nothing except an external union of heterogeneous elements, a phantasy play of fleeting ideas. All unity and logic 24 Kultur und Denken der alten Agypter, 2d ed., Leipsic, 1909, p. 257. 54 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS seems lacking. . . . The figures change as in the dream . . . the stage is likewise indistinct . . . nevertheless, toward the poetic work, I am never free from the feeling of the most complete inner unity, most complete artistic control, most complete logical development. Only, unity and necessity do not lie in the gay pictures themselves but behind these." If we attempt, by means of our psychoanalytic basic principles, to derive this hidden meaning of the narrative, we recognize first in the different episodes of the Egyptian tale, likewise duplications of the one fundamental situation, the less disguised representation of which, in distinction from the German legend, here precedes, while the distorted variations finally carry out the longed for gratification of the tabooed wish. Thus, the king of the second part reveals himself as a socially elevated double of the elder brother, and the wicked queen is an equally plain double of the wicked wife of Anup, so that Schneider comes to the conclusion : " These two women are precisely one person" (p. 260). And, as in the German legend, the hated brother appears in continually new figures as dragon, marshal and finally in his real role, so also does Bata appear as bull, tree and finally in human form, as rebirth of himself, being brought forth by the mother as his own son. His nominal father would then be the king, in whom we recognize a double of the elder brother, who, according to the wording of the legend, really represents the father's place. Thus Bata strives from the beginning to seduce the " mother," whom he, in the second part, ever pursues in symbolical disguise, which plainly betrays that the slander by her at the beginning of the narrative is to be considered only as a projection of his incestuous wish. If the Egyptian version thus disguises the ground for the bitter rivalry of the brothers as inclination toward the same irreplaceable incestuous object, 25 it recognizes also the corre- 25 In an Albanian legend, which deals with the liberation of a king's daughter sacrificed to a monster (Lubia) (corresponding to the dragon combat of the German legend) the story runs, that the hero has saved his own mother (saving phantasy) and taken her to wife, while he acci- dentally kills the king, her father (= monster), and enters upon his inheri- tance (Hahn, Griech. u. alb. Marchen, Leipsic, 1864, No. 98). Here it may be pointed out that the heroes of the Greek saga, Perseus, Apollo, Bellerophon and others, always kill a monster (Gorgon, Minotaurus, etc.) as the sphinx-killer, Gidipus, his father. INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 55 sponding punishment for the forbidden realization of this desire : the castration. That this was originally caused by the jealous rival (brother, father) and not in a kind of confession of the forbidden wish, by his own hand, is shown, not only by the com- parative myth accounts, but also by the Egyptian legend itself, even if only in disguised and diminished form. From Bata, changed into an Apis bull, the symbol of masculine virility, the head is struck off at the command of the king and the sycamores, springing up from the drops of blood gifted with power of wonderful growth, the splinters from which have the power of masculine fructification, are likewise inexorably cut down. In both motives, because of numerous individual psychological ex- periences and mythological parallels, we must see symbolical representations of the castration, undertaken in the first part, which is the original vengeance of a jealous rival. Especially is the cutting off of the head, which here next interests us, already recognizable in an external detail, as substitute for castration, namely, in the fruitful drops of blood which elsewhere regularly flow from the severed phallus. 2S If however, the beheading of the Apis bull by the king is a symbolical (disguised) expression of the castration carried out on a rival, so we may also introduce this meaning into the German legend, and find, accordingly, that the young king struck off the brother's head when he received the information of the latter's taking his place in the conjugal 26 Thus, at the castration of Uranus, arises Aphrodite, like Bata's " artificial " god-maiden. Plain echoes of the Egyptian legend are shown in the tale of the hermaphrodite, Agdistis, at whose castration there sprang from his blood a pomegranate tree (== new phallus) ; the fruits of this stick Nana in her breast, from which she becomes pregnant and bears Attis, who is later made mad by his jealous mother and castrates himself under a pine tree (like Bata). From the blood sprout violets. On the spring festivals of the god-mother, a mighty pine was cut down as symbol of castration ; as in the Egyptian legend, the sycamores sprang from the blood. Agdistis himself sprang from the semen of Zeus spilled on the ground from Kybele struggling against his violence ; in same manner, arose Erichthonios and other beings from spilt semen, to which, at other times, the blood corresponds. That also, the fruits of this phallus tree, which stuck Nana in her breast, are to be interpreted purely sexually, is shown by the myth of Zagreus, who, under the pretext of castrating him- self, threw the testicles of a ram into the breast of the impregnated Deo. 56 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS bed. The reincarnation in the German legend corresponds to the rebirth in the Egyptian. But further, the previous beheading of the brother by the marshal we will consider in the same sense as the castration of the unwished for rival, as on the other hand, the cutting off of the dragon's heads 27 and still more plainly the cutting out of the dragon's tongues points to the revenge. In this connection, we think we recognize also in the motive of vowing faithfulness by the knife stuck in the tree the last remnant of the old castration motive which is already ethically disallowed. The knife corresponds to that with which Anup pursued his brother, but further to the two-edged sword which the intruder lays between himself and his brother's wife. The sticking it in the trunk seems thus a last echo of the cutting down of the tree (castration) and it becomes conceivable, how either of the two can recognize in this instrument, according to his wish, that the brother has died. As in the Egyptian legend, so we distinguish also in the Ger- man, a series of successive scenes, which ever more plainly repre- sent in variously clear guise, the rivalry with the brother, the mutual incestuous object of love and the castration of the hated rival. In how explicit manner these ancient motives originally rule the legendary material is shown in many points still plainer than in the Egyptian legend, by the myths of Isis and Osiris under- lying this legend, in the chief characteristics of which we will orient ourselves without taking into consideration in detail the distortions and complications adhering to them. The earth god Keb and the heaven goddess Nut have four children : two sons, Osiris and Seth, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Isis became the wife of her brother Osiris, Nephthys that of Seth ; Osiris, however, ruled the earth as king and became 27 Psyche, of whom it is characteristically said : " in the same being, she hates the monster and loves the husband," is informed by her sisters "that a horrible dragon twisted into many knots, with poison swollen, blood-engorged throat and hideous craw, sleeps with her nights." The sisters counsel her to steal to his couch at night, when he is asleep : " boldly raise the right hand and with all her power, sever with the two edged sword the knots of the dragon which bind the throat and head together." INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 57 hated unto death by his brother Seth, who enticed him by- stratagem into a chest and hurled this into the Nile. Plutarch's version gives as reason for this enmity of Seth against Osiris, that the latter had unwittingly had intercourse with the wife of Seth, thus his own sister, Nephthys. Isis starts in search of the corpse of her husband and finally finds it and brings it into the forest. Seth discovers the hiding place and dismembers the body of his brother. Isis collects the scattered members and puts them together again ; only the phallus is missing, it had been borne to sea and swallowed by a fish (as with Bata). She re- places the missing member of the dead by one made of wood of the sycamore (tree phallus) and founds, as a memorial, the phallus idol. With the help of her son, Horus, who, according to later traditions, had been begotten by Osiris after his death, Isis avenges the murder of her husband and brother. Between Horus and Seth, who were originally brothers themselves, arises a bitter struggle, in which the combatants tear off from each other certain parts as power-bestowing amulets ; Seth dug out an eye of his opponent's and swallowed it but lost at the same time however, his own genitals (castration) which — according to a remark of Schneider's — had originally certainly been swallowed by Horus. Finally, Seth is compelled to give the eye back, which Horus gives to the dead Osiris, and thereby brings him to life so that he can go to the kingdom of the dead as ruler. The Osiris myth, into the interpretation of which we cannot enter here, shows plainly that the rival had originally actually filled his brother's place in the conjugal bed and that his castra- tion followed from the jealous brother. Further, the phallic significance of the sycamore, as well as the conception of these being cut down as castration, is here substantiated, for Isis pre- pares a replica out of sycamore wood in place of the missing member, which, like that of Bata's, had been swallowed by a fish. Further, this motive, in symbolical dress, exists in the Osiris saga. On the place where the dead remains of Osiris rest, springs up (according to Plutarch, c. 15 ff.) a tamarisk, which the king orders cut down in order to have a column prepared from it. Isis, who serves at the court, claims the column and brings to life the dismembered corpse of Osiris by her kisses so 58 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS that he again possesses creative power ; she becomes the mother of a child with crooked, powerless legs (symbol of castration), a new incarnation of Osiris. Thus, we find here also the incestu- ous rebirth from the own mother as with Bata, Attis and many others, as powerful motive, and with this, a basis for under- standing also the motive of reincarnation in the legend. If the cutting off of the head is a symbol of castration, " displaced upward," so the replacement of this, signifies the compensation for the phallus, as in the Osiris saga ; as the reincarnation in the German legend results from the eating of a root, in the Egyptian from the delivery of the heart lying on the cedar tree, and in the Osiris saga, from the swallowing of a torn-out eye, a remnant of the original motive in the Horus-Seth combat betrays to us that it really deals with the incorporation, the reattainment of the lost genitals, which the rebirth from the own mother and the coin- cident overcoming of death, render possible. Thus, it becomes evident that the hero brings back to life, not only the dead brother (as his son, that is however as himself) but also snatches away the princess from the kingdom of the underworld (which the dragon also represents) . Now we know, however, from analytic experience and mythological evidence, that the saving phantasy regularly concerns the mother and we should, there- fore, also conceive the first reincarnation of the hero, resulting therefrom, as incestuous rebirth. This is so much the easier confirmed, since both the Osiris myth and also the legend of Bata, plainly attest the incestuous significance of the courted sexual object. If we transfer this interpretation into the German legend, then we understand that there can be absolutely no men- tion of the mother of the brothers, since she is hidden behind the other female persons of the narrative ; we comprehend also, the voluntary renunciation (motive of abstinence) of sexual inter- course, as it finds expression in the one year abstinence and in the motive of the laying down of the sword (symbolum cas- tratis), 28 on the one hand as refusal of incest, on the other hand, 28 The common practice of tracing back the motive of separation by a sword to the historical custom of match-maker and the marriage cere- mony symbolically completed with this, does not explain, especially the special symbolism applied therewith, and seems, therefore, to be compelled INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 59 as ambivalent penitential attitude for the accomplished murder of the rival (father, brother). Not only in the friendly figure of the giver of life and of the longed for sexual object, does the mother appear in the legend, but also in the figure of the fearful goddess of death, who will transfer one into eternal sleep (death- like condition of the conqueror of the dragon; petrification), and whom the hero must overcome like the other evil forces. There- fore, Bata has his mother and wife, after she has borne him again, executed, and in the German legend, the witch is burned after she has brought the petrified brother to life. We interrupt the interpretation here, which may be still further followed 20 in individual details, in order to gain a general viewpoint for the psychology of myth formation. To this end, we need only to proceed to the reduction of the mythical persons to the egocentric figure of the myth-maker. It must strike us that the two brothers are twins who resemble each other not only physically, " like two drops of water," but also in their char- acteristics and attributes (they have the same animals, same to yield to a mythical conception, the foundation of which, F. v. Reitzen- stein (Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., 1909, p. 644-683) has pointed out in the mar- riage customs of primitive peoples. According to this, the sword utilized in the traditions quoted, as symbolum castratis, serves originally for the fructification in form of a stick or staff, which the husband lays between himself and his young wife the first three nights, during which he abstains from coitus. From ignorance of the causal relationship between sexual intercourse and pregnancy, he yields in the first three nights, in a manner, to a god, the jus prima? noctis for miraculous fructification, only after whose pretended entrance may he first indulge in sexual pleasure. 29 Aside from further psychological interpretations, we forego also any natural mythological interpretation which might be possible. Thus, it is not excluded that the city at different times one year apart, now deco- rated in black, now in red, has reference to a definite sun-constellation (or moon phenomenon?) just as it remains striking that the production of the herb for the revivification of the sun hero took into consideration exactly twenty-four hours. If one takes notice of the reversed position of the head when he awoke and its reversal, at noon (as the sun changes to descent), then the interpretation of individual motives by projection upon nature processes becomes probable. Still, these interpretations in no way exclude the psychological sense of the narrative, but rather de- mand for comprehension the tale in human guise and the myth-forming forces of instinct which can scarcely be exhausted in the description of processes of nature. 60 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS clothing, etc.), and are also not distinguished by names, so that the queen recognizes her husband only by an artificial sign. Whenever there is anything suitable for a duplication, it is ap- plied to both brothers, of which the one is an exact stereotype of the other ; with this reduction of the two brothers to one person 30 would go, however, the chief sense of the narrative, the rivalry of the brothers for the mutual object of love, if we did not remember that originally one brother was an elder one and repre- sented the father to the younger, as is plainly stated in the legend of Bata. (As remnant of this older version, the German legend speaks in one place still of the "younger" brother, although it presupposes twins.) But also in the German legend, the dragon, who claims the princess, and the old king, who will not give her up, represent the father, as indeed the courted woman, according to our interpretation, stands for the mother. Both assumptions are abundantly confirmed by variants of the brother legend, which begin with the statement that a jealous king shuts up his daughter from the world, the latter, however, conceives in a miraculous manner (incest-fructification) and becomes the mother of twin brothers, whom she exposes ; one of the brothers then marries, as in the quoted legend of Lubia, page 453, note 25, in the king's daughter, his mother and after the death of the old king (the father), inherits the kingdom. Thus, in these legends, we are dealing with a displacement of the hostile and jealous impulses, which were originally directed toward the father, upon the elder, favorite brother (and upon the sister instead of upon the mother), which substitution may still be followed in the Osiris myth with its serially arranged generations. 31 This mythical displacement reflects a bit of primitive cultural achievement which, with the leveling of the previously so dissimilar enemy to a double of the 30 In certain legends of this group, appears as a matter of fact only one "brother." Compare for example in "Schwedische Volkssagen," trans, by Oberleitner, p. 58 ff. 31 The Osiris myth shows still further in course of its development how, from the original murderer of the brother, he becomes his avenger. Originally, Thoth besides Seth is the murderer of Osiris ; later, he appears in the struggle of Horus against Seth as physician and umpire. Finally, he has become directly partisan of Osiris and fights for him against Seth (compare Schneider, I. c, p. 445 ff.). INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 6 1 twin, has found an ethically satisfactory conclusion in the pious brother legend. But the development resting on the progressive repression of these primitive impulses, does not stop with this form of amelio- ration, but creates still further disguised forms of expression, which become comprehensible to us on the basis of the psycho- logical interpretation of the brother motive. The Grimm brothers have already called attention to the internal relations between the Siegfried saga and our legend. 32 Here may be mentioned only that Siegfried leaves the virgin, rescued from the dragon like the hero of the legend, that he, however, like the latter, attempted to assume the place of the rival in the conjugal bed, indeed is finally directly compelled by Gunther to subdue for him the too powerful maid. 33 Siegfried also lays a two-edged sword between himself and the woman, but the ignominious death which he suffers speaks still plainly for the fact that he originally must have been in reality the favored rival. Only here, the relation of rivals is weakened to blood brotherhood. 34 Still further goes the 32 W. Mannhardt (Germ. Mythen, p. 214 ff.) has shown the agree- ment of our group of legends with the Indian saga related in the Mahab- harata, " that Indra after the death of the dragon, Ahi (after the murder of Vritras), yields himself to banishment, another takes his place and wishes to marry the wife of the god, then Indra comes back and kills the intruder." Mannhardt thinks that " the other may be traced back to a figure as nearly related and brotherlike to Indra as Agni." Agni is called Indra's twin brother and a "grandson of the flood" (apam napat). Further, Mannhardt calls attention to similar traits in the myths of Freyr, Thor and Odin (pp. 221-223). 33 Her deathlike sleep corresponds to the motive of petrification in the legend and points to her maternal role toward the hero, which is also evident from other signs. 34 In this group of legends belong, according to Grimm's assertions, also the saga of the blood brothers, of whom one assumes the place of the other with the wife, but lays a sword between them and is finally struck with leprosy (according to Grimm, petrification), from which his true friend frees him by the blood of his own children. These are then brought to life again by the rescued one by a miracle. Likewise belongs here the legend of "True John" (No. 6) for whose rescue from petrifi- cation (revivification by blood), the king strikes off the heads of his own sons, which the true John again returns to them. In one version, this is the foster brother of the king. Also, the legend of life water (No. 97) and many another would become comprehensible in many points on the 62 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS amelioration of the shocking relation in one group of German saga, which are handed down to us only in late writings: the Ortnit-Wolfdietrich Epic. Ortnit, with the help of his father the dwarf king Alberich, wins the daughter of the heathen king Machorel, who is accessible to no suitor, and elopes with her to his home (Gardasee). The old heathen king, feigning recon- ciliation, sends rich presents, among them, two young dragons (twin motive) which, when they grow up, devastate the land. Ortnit allows the monster to exist in spite of the counsel of his wife and tells her, if he should fall, to offer her hand to his avenger. Without followers, he rides in the forest, sinks into so deep a sleep (petrification) that neither the approach of the monster nor the baying and snapping of his dog awakes him (helping animal). He is killed by the monster. In the saga handed down to us, the young hero, Wolfdietrich, avenges him, in the childhood story of which, the motive of the father, who shuts up his daughter, the slander of the wife by the rejected suitor, the exposure and other motives play their parts in familiar significance. In the combat with his brothers over the inheritance, Wolfdietrich flees to Ortnit for help. When he learns of his death, he does not hesitate to avenge him. Like the second brother in the legend, he encounters almost the same fate but is able, in the decisive moment, to save himself by Ortnit's sword. He conquers the dragon, as well as the rebellious vassals, and receives as reward the hand of Ortnit's widow, by whose help he conquers the brothers and gains his kingdom. We easily recognize the familiar characteristics of our legend again and must conclude that Wolfdietrich avenged the death of his brother and married his widow. That is now demonstrable of course, if not in the superficial historical strata, still, in the under- lying mythical layers of the narrative, and long known to in- vestigators. If we follow Jiriczek's comprehensive representa- basis of our interpretation. For the arrangement of all these traditions in the group of brother legends, Wundt (Volkerpsychol., Vol. II, Part 3, Leipsic, 1909, p. 271 ff.) takes accordingly the term of the twin legends in a broader sense, since he includes thereunder " all the legend or myth material in which two personalities, who belong to the same generation, appear by their actions in a friendly or hostile relation. . . ." INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 63 tion of German Hero Saga (Sammlung Goschen, No. 32), 35 we learn that in the tradition before us two saga of different origin, which have nothing to do with each other, are united : a mythical one of Ortnit, and the historical one of Wolfdietrich, in which the latter may stand in place of a mythical figure belonging to the Ortnit saga. A purer version of the Ortnit saga may be con- tained fragmentarily in the Thidrek saga, where King Hertnit falls in combat with a dragon, a hero (Thidrek of Bern) con- quers the dragon and marries the widow. " From the allusions and fragments of saga of Scandinavian tradition, an older form of the saga may be determined, in which the brother of the fallen assumes the role of avenger. This mythical pair of brothers are called in Northern terminology " Haddingjar," German "Har- tungen," compare the name "Hartnit" (Hertnit) from which Ortnit is distorted. Guided by these names, Mullenhoff has derived in clever manner the connection of the Hartungen saga with an east Germanic Dioscuri myth" (Jiriczek, p. 146 ff.). 86 If the original brotherly relation of the two heroes is here fixed by comparative myth investigation, then we recognize on the basis of our interpretation, behind the pious office of avenger, the real relation of rivalry, and know that in the deeper sense of a psychological interpretation, the prejudiced brother slays the favorite rival in the form of a dragon in order to possess his widow, quite like GEdipus in the Greek myth. The replacement of the brother by a monster represents therewith a special form of duel with the unknown father, which is reported in numerous traditions, also of Ortnit and his overpowering father, Alberich. 37 35 One compares also the most recent special work of H. Schneider : Die Gedichte und die Sage vom Wolfdietrich, Munich, 1913. 36 Also the Dioscuri motive itself, the avenging of the stolen and disgraced sister by a pair of brothers, which exists with various peoples, originally has as content the struggle of two (twin) brothers for the mutually loved sister (representing the mother), which may have ended with the castration of the opponent, of which, according to the keen sur- mise of the natural mythologist, Schwartz, an echo in meaning may still be contained in the name of the Greek Dioscuri, Castor (from castrare). 37 This shows prettily (communicated by R. Kohler, Kl. Schr., I, 21 ff.) in a Gaelic legend (variant of Grimm's legend No. 21), where two brothers court a knight's daughter and, unknown to each other, fight together. 64 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS This unrecognized duel itself is the counterpart of unrecognized (incestuous) sexual intercourse, which is represented in our group of legends by the motive of the exchange of husbands (weakened by the symbol of chastity). Thus, in ultimate analysis, the legend leads back to the primi- tive family conflict with the overpowerful father and represents for the prejudiced son or youngest, in disguised dress, a wish cor- rection of the unpleasant adaptation to reality. If we have noticed that the myth structure, with the progressive amelioration of ancient abomination to pious human esteem and love of rela- tives, reflects a piece of ethical cultural development, so too it should not remain unmentioned that in addition, inconceivably old remnants of primitive affect life continue to live in this legend. It shows, thus, of course the development of the ethical feeling but not in the form as it has really come to be, namely, with renunciation of earlier sources of pleasure and final adapation to the hard demands of reality, but always with the retention of the old primitive modes of gratification, which find symbolical ful- fillment in the form of disguised wish phantasies under the superficial moral layers. A typical example for the legend in this regard, that discloses at once the primitive human nucleus of the mythical dress, has been afforded us by the exhibition of the history of the legends of the brothers. In the ultimate analysis, there exists in almost all mythical structures, the old unlimited power of the pater familias, against which the son in the original strata of the phantasy forma- tion rebels. If there inheres in the father, as the primitive rela- tions presuppose, unlimited control over the life of the male members of the family (including the sons), and over the bodies of the female members (including the daughters), then it is con- ceivable that the struggle of the son aims to attain this preroga- tive of the " father " for himself, and indeed at first, by cor- responding acts, which challenge still more strongly the paternal development of power. The father may have made frequent use of the law to force out of the clan the sons, who have grown insubordinate to him, as rivals for power or castrate them as sexual rivals, and in this way he may have strengthened the corresponding revengeful thoughts of the son to intense longing for vengeance. This stage of the cultural development is re- INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 65 fleeted, according to an idea of Freud's, in the numerous legends in which the adult sons, as in our group, are driven out by the father, or elder brother (exposure), to attain fame and wife in foreign lands. While in early cultural development, however, reality has actually demanded this sacrifice and exertion by the son, he seeks, at the same time, to indemnify himself in phantasy formation, for he forms the new home after the model of the old one, which he has lost, endows the foreign king, in whose service he enters, with the traits of his own father (family romance), the desired and captured love object with the type of the incestuous one longed for in vain. Thus, the hero of the Egyptian brother legend, who wishes to seduce the mother, is driven out by the favored rival (father, brother) (pursuit with drawn knife) or castrated (self-castration) or killed (abode in the cedar valley). The picture of the mother, however, follows him everywhere ; he lives with the god-wife until she is taken from him by the king, in whom we recognize a father image. The hero follows her to the court, which represents nothing else than the wished-for return to the parental home (rendered un- recognizable), where the son can carry out in a cover picture of strange persons, the unallowed wish gratifications denied by reality. The same scheme of ruthless execution by the most prejudiced youngest son is shown by a series of legends, as well as by the majority of myths, in an original stratum, which, never- theless, in course of the progress of culture and the consequent arrangement and subjection of the individual under the govern- mental forces, is overlaid by the ambivalent counter impulses of regret and piety, in the sense of the paternal relationship. 38 In 38 Certainly there are, even though in limited degree, original phan- tasy formations proceeding from inhibited wish impulses of the father. Especially seem to belong here the numerous myths and legends which have for content the sexual persecution of the daughter by the father, the highly complicated wish mechanisms of which often bear witness to how hard these primitive renunciations fell on man. The scheme is, in similar manner as with the son myth, the compensation of the family : A king pursues his daughter with love proposals, she flees, and after many adven- tures, comes to a king, who marries her, in whom one recognizes, how- ever, a more or less plain duplication of the father. Also in reality, the daughter, who has escaped from the sexual violence of the father by flight, is seen to occupy toward the man who receives and protects her a childlike relation of dependence. 6 66 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS this stage of myth formation, there come into the foreground the ethically highly valuable, psychologically secondary, motives of paternal revenge, brotherly love, the defence of the mother or sister against troublesome assailants. So long as the heedless sexual and primitive egoistic motives can control the conscious action and thought of man, he has neither the necessity nor the ability for myth formation. The substitute gratification in phantasy formation runs parallel to the gradual renunciation of the real accomplishment of these impulses ; the sometime com- pensations render it possible for man, progressively and success- fully, to suppress certain impulses to a certain degree. The myth- ical narrative as it enters consciousness, is in every case no un- distorted expression of primitive impulses, otherwise, they could not become conscious ; on the other hand, for the same reason, they are not related of the human family, which would still be too shocking, but are imputed to superhuman beings, it may be, mysterious powerful heavenly bodies, or the gods, conceived as acting behind these, or heroes elevated to such. Thus, perhaps, may be explained the contradiction that the myths consciously represent naive knowledge of nature, and can mediate, while purely human elements finish the form of the mythical tale, the strongly affective damming up of which affords the real in- stinctive force for the myth formation. According to this viewpoint, the myth and legend formation should be considered rather as a negative of the cultural devel- opment, in a certain measure as fixations of the wish impulses which have become inapplicable in reality and unattainable grati- fications which the present-day child must learn to renounce in favor of culture even though with difficulty and displeasure, as the primitive man had to in his time. This function of admission and symbolically dressed gratification of socially inapplicable in- stinctive impulses, the myth shares, however, with religion, with which it long formed an inseparable unit. Only the few great religious systems of humanity, in the capability for transforma- tion and sublimation of these instincts, in the degree of disguising the gratification of these and in the ethical heights of mind thereby rendered possible, have attained a perfection, which lifts them far above the primitive myth and naive legend, with which they hold in common the essential instinctive forces and elements. CHAPTER III Theory of Religion Religion has not always been the inseparable companion of humanity; rather, in the history of development, a prereligious stage has assumed a large place and with this stage, we must deal first in order to gain an insight into the psychical genesis of religion. The attitude ruling men in this prereligious epoch was the ani- mistic, that is, the primitive races peopled the world with beings to whom they ascribed life and soul as with themselves ; the recog- nition of inanimate objects of the outer world was still lacking to them. In order to succeed in this conception, man had first to acquire the capability of sharply distinguishing between the proc- esses of the external world and the endopsychic perceptions. So long as the division into internal and external world, ego and non- ego, had not been fully elaborated, the knowledge that the psychic reality produced by hallucinatory means is different from objective reality perceived by the senses could not become fixed. Only by degrees, does reality, not only practically, but also theoretically, compel the recognition of its independent existence, so that the necessity is provided of controlling this with real means adapted to it, and not merely as result of reflection. With progressive adaptation to reality, the previous feeling of omnipotence, based on the mingling of objective with psychic reality, had to be in large part renounced and this feeling now saved itself in the field of endopsychic gratification in the phantasy life. Here is to be sought the starting point of all those structures which aim at guaranteeing to man in a mentally autonomous field withdrawn from reality, the pleasures which he had to sacrifice to the progress of culture. The phantasy gratification has at first no differentiated forms, gaining sharply outlined shape only grad- ually. The immediate precursors of religion are totemism and taboo. It is characteristic of both that the presupposition of the exist- 67 68 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS ence of a higher being does not inhere in them, but that the com- mands and prohibitions appear as self evident and founded in themselves. If we consider the limitations and prohibitions con- tained in them in their essential forms, we find that they serve the end of withdrawing the opportunity for realizing definite wishes. The assertion of these rules make evident, on one side, that one may assume the universal existence of these wishes, on the other side, that one would avoid every temptation toward power. They would assure a very important renunciation, brought about with great trouble and outlay of energy, for the good of the whole community. If the conception of psychoanalysis is correct, that the essential presupposition of culture consists in the repression of intense, pleasurably toned tendencies, which act, however, against all social development, then the material affected by the primitive prohibition must return as the deepest layer of the un- conscious. As a matter of fact, one of the most important func- tions of totemism consisted in preventing incest and the most important case of taboo of the ruler is plainly intended to render impossible the application of force against the chief, who origi- nally coincided with the head of the family. As a result of this prohibition and the constantly recurring resistance against it, a psychic tension is produced, which is felt by the individual as anxiety. As a means of psychic compensa- tion for this tension, there was formed the mechanism of pro- jection into the outer world, whereby the conflict is settled, and the previously indefinite anxiety can be thrown on imaginary ob- jects. This was just so much the more readily possible as the animistic view had prepared the way for the projection mechan- ism, so that the animate beings who arose on a basis of this view and peopled the outer world became demons, to whom one ascribed the will and the power to do harm. With the belief in demons, the first stage of religion was attained. Hand in hand with it goes the organization of magic and witchcraft as techniques which might influence the demons, partly with a view to scare them away, partly to submit to them or put them in good humor. Thereby, the belief in demons received a new direction, in that the spirits were placed in relation to impressive processes of nature and the heavenly bodies ; then began the building of myth- ology, while magic found its continuation in cult and rite. In all, THEORY OF RELIGION 69 however, even to the finest offshoots, the original totem and taboo views may be recognized. The needs, on the one hand, of bringing the processes of nature nearer by incarnating them, and on the other hand, of solving the human emotional conflicts by projecting them out into nature, unite in the tendency to myth formation. The hitherto indefi- nitely conceived demons assume the characteristic traits of the in- dividual phenomena of nature and are brought into relations with one another; these are copied after the human ones and at the same time represent the opposing influence of those processes of nature on one another. In this way, the demons one after another are raised to gods. Since the wishes, which are denied and later repressed, spur the phantasy to ever new results, so new figures and stories are continually attached to the same processes of nature, so long as the myth forming process is still fluid, and in this way are explained the many figures in the Pantheon of all ancient religions. Thus, the social function of mythology is to direct the injur- ious repressed instincts, as far as it can, to the way of phantasy gratification and to promote the elimination of these from reality. Since, however, a part of the original gratification in reality im- periously demands its rights in accordance with the principle of the return of the repressed material from the repressing, just those institutions are utilized which had been created for the prevention of the carrying through of this. Thus, the aspirations for which the myth-forming phantasy had opened an outlet, which should protect the whole community (tribe, race, people, state) from their realization, were redirected by the other parts of religion, namely, by cult and rite. Religion is, like every product of the conflict between unconscious and repression, a compromise struc- ture. The double phase which lies in it, that it opens the road to civilization and yet under certain conditions allows the things most hostile to the same, clings to it throughout its whole course of development. At times also, the compromise may fail entirely and religious fanaticism, which then succeeds to leadership, becomes an instrument of destruction for everything which renders possible the existence of human society. But already in the very earliest stage, we meet this inner double phase. Before there were religious myths or ritual, the 70 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS taboo of the rulers was utilized, not only to protect their persons, but also to torment them most profoundly by the strict ceremonial. The killing of the totem animal, which is commonly strictly for- bidden, is not only permitted on certain feast days but directly enjoined as a religious duty. From this custom developed the sacrifice, as motive for which it was established that the man should cede to god what he had to give up, in order later, on festal occasions, to be allowed it as servant and representative of god. 39 Thus, the sacrifice goes back to the presupposition of iden- tification with the godhead; quite in this sense speaks S. Reinach (Orpheus, p. 63) : " Si les legendes humanisent les dieux, les rites tendent a diviniser les hommes " (If the legends humanize the gods, the rites tend to deify the men). Thus at the feasts cele- brated in honor of the gods, the strictly forbidden incest could recur as holy orgy. This recurrence of the prohibited is no simple regression, which allows the antisocial to revive again, but for its accomplish- ment, the way is over conditions of phantasy ideas ; and if leaving the domain of the purely mental, they finally culminate in actions, then, these actions are carried out entirely with phantastic sym- bolic elements. For the facilitation of this compromise between phantasy and reality, the cultic performance in reference to time and place is taken from the everyday affairs and elevated above them. In this way, the encroachment on customary social rela- tions is prevented, so that in spite of the carrying out of the unallowed, no friction with the cultural demands threatens. All these religious practices, as compromise products, have a double face: their effect consists in the facilitation of the renuncia- tion of the gratification of socially hostile instincts, their essence lies in their allowing, partly, merely in the myth creating phantasy, partly, by cultistic and ritualistic practice, the forbidden acts represented in this phantasy. With the increasing demands of the repression, the limited festal manner of celebration is felt as improper and no longer permitted in undisguised form. In its place appears a series of ritualistic acts in symbolic circumlocution. Similarly, the relig- ious ceremonial undergoes in its development from the primitive 39 " What the man is not, but wishes to be, that he imagines himself as being in the gods" (Feuerbach). THEORY OF RELIGION 71 patterns, ever more extensive distortions, which may often attain the complete dissolution of the original meaning. Among these ceremonies, we emphasize one especially interesting group, which we meet everywhere, from the most primitive to the most highly developed relations. It is that which comprises the various purifi- cation measures for sins, and penitential acts which betray the subterranean feeling of guilt permeating all religion. This abso- lutely unfailing presence of the feeling of guilt shows us that the whole structure of religion is erected on a foundation of repres- sion of instinct. Another form of the religious act is connected with the previ- ously mentioned magic. The magic influence consists in the cir- cumstance that a wished-for effect is brought about by actions or words (formulas) which have some kind of an associative con- nection with it, but are in no way sufficient to cause it according to the laws of nature; for example, the injury of an enemy by injuring his picture. This exalting beyond the laws of nature is the remnant of the feeling of omnipotence, which had its origin in overestimation of mental reality and which man had to renounce as far as adaptation to reality compelled. Magic has, as a presup- position, the belief that the power of the wish alone is sufficient to accomplish difficult, often impossible changes in the external world. The belief in the omnipotence of thought centers in the overvaluation of the power of speech, which is so deep rooted that it is considered sufficient to speak aloud the name of a person in order to influence him in the desired direction. This idea of the magical effect of speech is the foundation of prayer; for, with the giving up of the idea of a direct influencing by speech, there appears in its place the petition directed toward a personally con- ceived supernatural being, which petition betrays itself in double manner, as direct continuation of the faith in the omnipotence of the wishes. On the one hand, the petitioner expects that the solemn voicing aloud of his wishes avails to cause the god to fulfill them, on the other hand, he has at the same time indirectly preserved the feeling of omnipotence which he had to renounce by resignation to the godhead, with which he unconsciously iden- tifies himself. The last step in the religious elaboration of prayer depreciates the significance of the word and renders mental the relation to god by placing faith in the central point and making the result of the prayer dependent on him. 72 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS To primitive humanity, it seemed self evident, that everything which was forbidden to itself, should be permitted to the godhead or the man in the service of the same. This exceptional freedom passed as an essential attribute of god and his chosen servants, kings and priests. In this way, these were enveloped in the glory of the supernatural, especially when incestuous marriage was allowed them or indeed commanded, as, for example, with the Persian priests and Egyptian sovereigns. With the rise from demons to god, goes a revolution in the attitude which rests on the ambivalence of instinctive forces which share in all religious formations. While, originally, only the hostil- ity against the father and the rivalry for his superior power, as well as the wish springing from this hostility to oust him, came to ex- pression, higher stages of development show ever more plainly the influence of love and reverence, which the son feels toward the father. For this reason, the gods are not, like the demons, merely hostile creatures, who are angry and punish, but also gracious ones who can protect and reward. In particular, since the incest barrier between mother and son had become fixed, from excessive fear of the transgression of this, not merely did the purely libidinous longings, but also the inseparably united impulses of affection, become unpermitted, as the numerous taboo prohibitions show ; this circumstance limited the association of mother and son, often to extreme degree. This affection, not finding realization in the love life, now seeks gratification in the religious phantasy life and creates the figure of the maternal godhead — Istar, Isis, Rhea, Mary — at the same time lessening the austere traits of the father god. To these beloved and revered figures could now no longer be ascribed all those attributes and actions which seemed horrible to consciousness. In this direction, a secondary elaboration sets in, which gathers the individual legends into a religious system adapted to the ethical and intellectual level of the epoch. This attempt, however, is never crowned with complete success, even though it may be continued with the greatest zeal for centuries, since the instinctive components at work have the tendency to be always harking back to the gross mythology of antiquity, as is still discernible in certain Christian sects of our day. Underlying the formation of a system, in process of time, there are also cult and ceremonial, which can thereby become so THEORY OF RELIGION 73 estranged from their origin that often scarcely a trace of their original significance is to be recognized. A series of commands and prohibitions, not suited to systematization, then drop out of the religious framework entirely and either disappear or, stripped of their religious content, live on as hygienic rules. The elab- oration of a religious system carried far in regard to myth and cult, no longer takes into consideration sex, age and independent attitude of the individuals, but imposes on every believer its whole content, although the instinctive share which was especially prom- inent can find gratification only in a particular part of the same. As a result, the individual, even when he accepts the religious system in toto, has an especially close relationship only to certain parts which harmonize with his particular individual instinctive tendency. Thus, that one in whose own mental life the pleasure of inflicting or enduring pain plays an important role, will receive the Passion with much greater ardor, and revere it more de- voutly, than any other piece of Christian belief. From him who has felt intensely the sexual rivalry with the father, will the figure of the Virgin Mother win especial adoration as image of the fulfillment of his own childish wishes. Thus, it becomes evi- dent that behind the apparent uniformity which the great re- ligious systems spread over their confessors, a personal variation has a place, which finds its expression in the more or less con- scious private religion of the individual. In the cases just mentioned, the religious phantasies serve for representing not only forbidden, but also repressed wish-im- pulses, which have become foreign to the individual. These can appear in consciousness only in distorted and disguised form ; re- ligion affords the socially recognized forms, by which the re- ligious ceremonial is explained to the believer. Where, how- ever, individual agencies crowd so strongly into the foreground that they have submitted neither to the normal repression nor to the social arrangement rendered possible by the religion, there, a more intensive form of defence begins, which represses not only the wishes, but also the distorted phantasies, and leaves to an independent existence only the ceremonial belonging thereto. That is the case of the obsessional neurosis, in which there ap- pears the unmotivated impulse to continued repetition of certain 74 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS ceremonies. The mechanism of the obsessional ceremonial is strikingly parallel to that of the religious ceremonial, with the exception that the obsessional acts seem absolutely meaningless to the patient and those around him, while with the acts of the re- ligious ceremonial, the general recognition supplies the lacking real aim and sense. The most extreme consequence of the system formation re- sulting from the secondary elaboration is dogmatism. This ra- tionalizing factor inserts itself by its overgrowth between the emotional life of the individual and the religious structures created for this. The result is that, from time to time, especially gifted religious natures feel this two-sidedness, avoid the cooling circumlocution of dogma and seek anew a personal way of direct discharge. Therewith they reproduce for themselves a bit of the old past-and-gone content of religion. If such inspired ones have the further ability to act suggestively upon their contem- poraries, there arises the type of founder of a religion or re- former, in whom a strong mythical quality is never lacking, as the figures of Christ, Mohammed and Luther bear witness. Even where it does not come to the founding of a new sect, a mythical emotional stream will flow unceasingly into the re- ligion. The fundamental idea of mysticism is the return to life of the ancient idea of identification with the godhead, which is already realized in the idea of sacrifice; in its highest and most intimate form, as immediate union of the soul with its creator. But further, in this late and highly sublimated figure, the claims of the original repressed material assert themselves, since this identification easily assumes the traits of a sexual union with the godhead ; this is detected in many mystics by the analytic in- vestigation of their confessions, even in the finest intellectual commentaries and has progressed in individuals, especially ecstatic women, even to conscious phantasies (Christ as bridegroom). In recognition of the female and passive attitude of the mystic, Ludwig Feuerbach (in the notes to Wesen des Christentums, Kroners Volksausgabe, p. 181) says of him: "He makes himself a god, with whom, in the gratification of his desire for knowledge, he immediately gratifies at the same time his sexual instinct, that is, the instinct for a personal being." The mystical ecstasy can THEORY OF RELIGION 75 increase to those forms of exaltation of which the history of re- ligion reports numerous examples. Thus, as previously animism in magic, so also the forms of mysticism tending to regression into the primitive, possess cer- tain techniques for the control of the supernatural world created from the projection of the unconscious, in spiritism, occultism and such like. In the foregoing presentation, we have sketched in the barest outlines the psychoanalytic position in the course of development of religious emotion. There remains for us an important prob- lem which has found no place in our discussions. As men- tioned, the primitive cults represent a partial breaking through of the forbidden wish-gratifications in a bit of reality extended beyond everyday life. It agrees well with the fundamental psychoanalytic principles that there meets us, as one of the most important and most frequent cultistic traditions, the incestuous union between the mother goddess and her husband-son, as in Istar and Tammuz in the Babylonian, to whom Astarte and Adonis correspond, further Isis and Osiris in regard to Horus in the Egyptian, Kybele and Attis in the Greek, Maja and Agni, Tanit and Mithra in the Indian, and finally, Izanami and Izanagi in the Japanese and many others. Also in the apocalypse of John, the queen of heaven is called the mother of the victor (12, 1), while in other places, she is celebrated as his bride (21, 9 ff.). Robertson (Evang. Myth., p. 36) directly expresses the surmise that the relation of Christ to Mary probably points to an old myth "where a Palestine god, perhaps by the name of Joshua, appears in the alternating relations of lover and son toward a mythical Mary." The practice of incest, in part undisguised, in part symbolically permitted under certain presuppositions, seems to have invested these cults with manifold mysterious halos, as we have it transmitted, for example, of the Attis cult by a notice in Clemens Alexandrinus (Protr., 2) : "The son becomes the lover, which seems to have been the content of the mys- teries of Attis and Kybele " (Roscher's Lexikon d. griech. u. rom. Myth.). This temporary survival of incest in festive and mystically symbolical manner underwent, with the depreciation and elab- 76 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS oration of the phantasy formations in course of development, various fates, of which we will here briefly follow one which has attained especial importance for the formation of religion. The tendency to repression against incest comes into force in the myths and cults cited, to the extent that the youthful son or- dinarily brought into sexual relation with the mother goddess, with the appearance of masculine maturity, immediately after this apogee of fructification, in the bloom of his years, succumbs to an early death. This sad fate is plainly shown in the tradi- tions, as punishment for the tabooed incest, where the husband- son suffers the fate of castration, it may be from sexual rivals, it may be at his own hand, as in the story of Uranus, who, with his mother Gaa, begot the children of the world, Attis, Adonis, Osiris and others. This tragic cutting off of the strong young god was joined to the corresponding impressive and important processes of nature, as setting of the sun and disappearance of vegetation, and thereby furnishes a motive for the psychic need for regular repetition of these cultistic acts, serving the gratification of instinct by appeal to the laws of nature. With this comparison of the indi- vidual fate with the cosmic processes, there came into account another wish impulse which dwells deep within all people, and is very important for the formation of religion and myths : namely, the tendency to deny the hard necessity of death and to avoid the recognition of it. Since this need fastens itself to the reverse of the processes of nature which are sad for men, thus, to the rising of the sun, to the recurrence of the fruitful seasons etc., there was afforded the god, sacrificed in the service of fruc- tification, the possibility of his resurrection, which, as a matter of fact, forms an essential element in all the traditions men- tioned. Here, a further phantasy comes in, at the bottom of which lies the symbolism of the earth as mother of living beings, and which, therefore, affords the individual incest phantasy a broader foundation and a new meaning. From the excised creative member of the husband-son, which the mother-wife carefully preserves (Isis, Kybele, Astarte, etc.), springs the new vegetation and thus arises to new life 40 also from the mother- 40 Feasts, at which various peoples worshiped the phallus, were in later time drawn over to the rebirth in the future (according to Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, 1879). THEORY OF RELIGION 77 earth, in which the sacrificed god or his essential attribute, the phallus, is buried, the resurrected god. This resurrection is joined to the incestuous wish by means of the old and typical phantasy of dying, as a return to the mother's womb, death as a continuation of the condition before birth. Hence the sacrificed god-saviors reside, before their resurrection, in a hole, often sur- rounded by water, which symbolizes the mother's womb and is already applied in this sense in the birth story of these god-men. In this way, the religious phantasy, by ever-increasing elabora- tion of the symbolism belonging to the mother libido, creates the typical figure of the sacrificed and resurrected god-savior, under whom lies the phantasy of the incestuous rebirth from the own mother (Jung). By the gradual recession of this incestuous significance of the mother godhead and the stronger emphasis of the wish for immortality, which ever increasingly rules the individual with the advancing knowledge of the necessity of death, there comes about the elaboration of the ideas of the future 41 which have already appeared early, to splendid phantasies which have as content the abode of the dead in an under- or overworld more or less closely related to the real world and promise man, after the lapse of a certain time, a new life on earth or a continued life in the future. Therewith is openly and expressly preserved the consolation which was originally possible to the individual only by way of unconscious identification with the god hero. The belief in immortality and resurrection, in which most philosophically expressed religious systems center, shows, if one traces it back to the incestuous rebirth, the most complete denial of the father conceivable, whose place the son replaces. This denial is — which is shown in the feeling of guilt discernible in every religion — a result of the infantile rivalry and hostility which persist in the unconscious and from there flow out into the religious life. The later dualism of many religions, in which, besides the creator, the destroyer appears, who were originally 41 Compare Edw. Spiess, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach Tode auf Grand vergl. Religionsforschung darstellt, Jena, 1877. (History of the development of the ideas of the condition after death presented on the basis of comparative investigation of religion.) 78 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS united in one figure, is a result of the splitting of emotion which satisfies the contradictions in the unconscious attitude toward the father, when they cease to be compatible, by separate represen- tations (separation into two or more figures, Ormuzd-Arhiman, God-Devil). The most extreme expression of the overcoming of the father is atheism, in which the individual relies entirely on himself and recognizes no creator or master. Furthermore, the ambivalent flow of emotions, which clings to the figure of the father and feels reverence as well as grati- tude toward him, as the first religious duty, never dries up. For the individual, the attitude which he has assumed toward the father in childhood remains a model of the attitude which he later assumes toward the creator of the world and the Father in Heaven. Even if he is compelled, as at the completion of the process of development, to be emancipated from the father or rebels against his authority, he can unconsciously retain the feelings of love and dependence on the father combined in his infantile attitude and bring them to expression in religion. Therewith, the circle is closed, since religion which has pro- ceeded from the relation of the child to its parents centers in a splendid compromise product of the ambivalent emotional im- pulses contained therein. CHAPTER IV Ethnology and Linguistics The facts important for the ethnological consideration can be brought to a folk-group both by physical and by psychical inter- action of definite factors, as origin, religion, economic relations, climate and the like ; the majority of these determinants disclose their influence simultaneously in both ways. Hence, a sharp separation is made difficult ; nevertheless, the method of investi- gation may not be a matter of no consequence, since the physical results of every influence must be explained by biology, the psychical by psychology. To put it differently, every interest- ing ethnological phenomenon needs investigation in both direc- tions, for a one-sided conception can afford no complete solution of the problem. It is obvious that psychoanalysis comes into consideration only in the psychological part, but for this, it gains a preemi- nent significance. We know that very much in the views and customs of a whole people, it may be in the field of customs and manners, it may be in that of religion and morality, cannot be traced back to processes in the conscious mental life of its mem- bers. If we would keep away from the mystical conception of a " folk-soul " hovering over them, which is not derived from the summation of individual minds, we are forced to the assump- tion that we are dealing with unconscious impulses. These must repeat themselves in typical form in almost all individuals of a civilized society, because otherwise the readiness of the members of the whole community to submit themselves to the influences proceeding from them would be inexplicable. The greatest serv- f ice of psychoanalysis consists in having helped us become ac- - . quainted with this typical unconscious mental content. When confronted by ethnological material we will ask ourselves just as in an individual psychological investigation, what bit of the un- conscious may be incorporated therein and by what mechanism, it may have come to expression, during which we will never 79 80 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS forget that after the conclusion of this investigation, still further information from other sides will be necessary. The promotion of ethnology by psychoanalysis belongs in greatest part to the future ; thus far, the facts that a series of community products stand in close relation to the unconscious mental life, have been utilized more in the reverse direction, that is to say, psychoanalysis has gained a valuable corroboration by finding its principles applicable in an entirely different field of knowledge and confirmed by the result of such application. In the manners and customs of various peoples there is repeated with absolute faithfulness the symbolism which had been de- termined in the interpretation of dreams. Thus, for example, the manifold ceremonies which accompany sowing and harvest, as well as the marriage festivities, are almost without exception only an accumulation of that symbolism by which in the dream, the acts or organs of fruitfulness and creation are represented. In this regard, the younger sister science of ethnology, the study of folk-lore, shows itself especially valuable, all the more so as it devotes itself intensively to the sexuality which ethnology has previously often passed by without noticing. The folk-lore ma- terial shows us not only the superstititions and the strange regu- lations which were so frequently joined to erotic activity but further than that, the influence which the more or less inhibited sexual life of a people can exercise on its other morality and thereby increases the psychoanalytic knowledge of the activity of the sexual repression on the mental life of the individual. If the symbolism of the folk manners and that of the customs handed down from the ancestors agrees in many cases with that in which the unconscious clothes itself in dreams and related forms of expression, then we must see in that fact much more than a mere example of chance. What has been said in the first chapter concerning the essential characteristics and origin of symbolism suffices to point out to us the way to a knowledge of the regu- larity of this phenomenon. Symbolism is the remnant of a one time identity between the symbol and that represented, which existed in the primitive mental life; this comes to view again, therefore, where simpler mental processes come into play which are subjected to the first principle of psychic phenomena, the ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 8l gaining of pleasure, and pay little or no attention to the compul- sion of adaptation to reality. Thus, the symbols of the folk customs should, like those of the dream language, be consid- ered as residuals of a departed age. In the dream, the analysis has verified this assumption, for its root is shown to be the re- gression toward the infantile, which is accomplished by the re- viving of childhood memories and also by the application of in- fantile forms of thinking to recent impressions (daily remnants). The past age, to which the ethnological material refers, cannot belong to the individual but only to the people as a whole, and ultimately, since the boundaries between peoples disappear in the remotest past, to humanity. This comparison between individual and folk past is indeed most strikingly plain in the symbolism but by no means limited to this. A searching investigation re- vealed sufficient grounds to justify the supposition that the col- lective primitive forms of mental life, as they exist in the child, and remain preserved in the unconscious of adults, are identical within certain limits with the processes of the mental life of the savage, so far as these may hold as reflections of primitive humanity ; likewise, that the further course of development, which the child passes through in order to attain the level of civilized people, can be considered as an extremely condensed repetition of the way which the whole of humanity has passed through to the civilization of the present. We have, at the beginning, called the repression the result of the culture of the community acting on the individual. Now, we see that its counterpart, the unconscious, also stretches out be- yond the bounds of the individual and represents the return of the first beginnings of our species, in which everyone must begin afresh as a child ; these early conditions are withdrawn from consciousness with the progressive adaptation to civilization but never destroyed or rendered of no effect. Hidden by the super- structure of the higher mental life, the unconscious nevertheless remains alive and represents, since it comprises within itself simultaneously the past of the individual and that of the species, the universal human of the personality, the connection which binds the most highly developed, as well as those who have lagged behind, to the whole. 82 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS This hypothesis, rendered possible by psychoanalysis, is noth- ing else than a transference of the socalled biogenetic principle put forward by Hackel, according to which, the individual re- peats in the mental life the mode of development of the species. The question is at hand, why psychoanalysis should be indis- pensable to such an hypothesis since the fundamental observation of the child's mental life seems to suffice for it. To this it may be replied that the stages, most important in this respect, have already been passed through when the child has become capable of clear expression and thereby become a suitable object for study. By far the most important facts can be confirmed only by inference from the remains of that early time, which have per- sisted in the unconscious ; that is, by the case given and tested by psychoanalysis by means of an observation of the child sharpened by this experience. Furthermore, the child's mental life is, in no way, thoroughly understood at later stages as yet, as the general error of judgment in the question of sexuality of children shows. Only with psychoanalysis has the unprejudiced observation of the child begun, since the investigator who is not familiar with his own repression is scarcely in a position to see in its true light the mental condition of the child, which is wholly or in part free from repression. An important support for the phylogenetic hypothesis here developed lies in the fact that the parallelism in certain cases does not limit itself merely to the inner life, but also makes its appearance in external things. We refer to some of the typical symptoms of the neurotic, especially the sufferer from the ob- sessional neurosis, which exactly repeat the superstitious cus- toms of primitive peoples. Both the regulations applying to the conduct of savages and the impulses underlying the symptoms were completely unintelligible, both to the persons who acted under the influence of these, and to the investigator studying them. Psychoanalysis traces both phenomena back to the same source, namely, the unconscious, under the sway of which the neurotic and the primitive man stand in far higher degree than the normal civilized man. Thus, there corresponds, for example, to the frequently ob- served neurotic fear of clear ringing sounds, pointed objects ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 83 and the like, a taboo command which forbids the keeping of weapons in inhabited places; the obsessional idea that the death of a man could be caused by his own evil wishes, is repeated in the belief in the possibility of injuring an enemy by magical for- mulae; the joy-destroying grief of the neurotic for a beloved person finds expression 42 in the anxiety of the savage lest the departed return as hostile demons ; as the relations of the neu- rotic to the persons important to him vary between immeasur- able love and immeasurable hate, so also the savage has an am- bivalent attitude toward certain persons who are especially im- portant for him, in particular toward his ruler and those of dif- ferent family, so that there is exhibited toward them, now, the most devoted reverence, now, the most pitiless hostility ; espe- cially, however, do the countless strict regulations which would prevent an undisturbed dwelling together of the family members of opposite sexes — mother and son, mother-in-law and son-in- law, brother and sister — make plain that there exists in the savage, the exaggerated anxiety over incest so important for the etiology of the neurosis, which is to be explained only by a most intense temptation to incest. Thus the complexes which disturb the family life of the neurotic also play a role in the primitive family, which fact is im- portant from the standpoint of the history of civilization. The parallel between psychic onto- and phylo-genesis is more than an interesting observation ; in numerous cases it can be demonstrated that what psychoanalysis has shown to be the im- portant factor of the individual development has also been of great importance for the cultural development, and therefore, if intelligently applied, can contribute to the solution of the most difficult ethnological problems. Of course, progress must be made cautiously and the diversity of the material given proper consideration. The greatest part of the development of hu- manity was occasioned from within outward, by the masses of energy gained from mental sources, somewhat like the establish- ment of the taboo-prohibition with its ethical, religious and esthetic results, together with the structures which were created as compensation for the renunciation imposed by this prohibi- 42 " Every dead person is a vampire, the unloved ones excepted." Friedrich Hebbel, Diary of Jan. 31, 1831. 84 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS tion. But this development, is extraordinarily strongly influenced by external circumstances, now hastened, now retarded, many times even directed into entirely different courses. The agencies determining the manner in which the external world exerts its influence are often fundamentally different, both in individual development and manner of development. Thus, for example, the creation of fire has been a most highly important act not only for the physical conditions of existence but also, indirectly, for the psychic conditions. We may assume — and the traces of memory preserved in ethnology also prove it — that this activity, eminently important for the primitive man, was suitable to set free in him great quantities of affects and resulted in corre- sponding displacements of his libido toward the outer world. After this new kind of discharge of affect had firmly established itself on the basis of the great practical advantage connected with it, the mental economy could be placed on a new basis. Likewise, the introduction of agriculture brought with itself a mental revolution. The right to plough up mother earth and fertilize her, brought about the downfall of countless taboo pro- hibitions which narrowed life, a proof that alongside and by means of this progress in external culture humanity knew how to gain a bit of internal freedom which had previously been with- held. The knowledge of the creation of fire and the practice of agriculture can scarcely exercise on the mental life of our chil- dren a similar revolutionary influence, hence these activities have significance for our unconscious only in their sexual symbolism which may represent a final remnant of their one-time phylo- genetic value. These circumstances which disturb the parallelism are to be taken into close consideration in the application of the psycho- analytic method and results to ethnology; whoever attempts, without giving them proper consideration, to make a smooth transference from the one series to the other, will be unable to make his accounts agree. It would be very unjust to blame psychoanalysis for this, or turning the tables, to assert that this or that fundamental principle of psychoanalysis was incorrect because it could not be applied immediately to the early history of humanity. For psychoanalysis, the investigations begun in ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 85 this field are of extraordinary value as a test of its validity and as substantiation of the much disputed theses enunciated by it. Its real conclusive force rests first and last on the individual psychological material in which it may never be contradicted. If its applicability in other sciences is thereby rendered difficult, still this is to be considered a necessary consequence of the different manner of arranging the material which demands a special method. An " Open Sesame " by which, without care or pains, all doors are opened, psychoanalysis is not. In close connection with the above deductions, stands the question, whether one has to so conceive of phylogenetic paral- lelism that, as a result of a law still unknown to us, all the stages of mental development of the race are contained in the indi- dual, from the beginning, as dispositions, from which disposi- tions, with the progress of organic development, as one might say automatically, the stages of mental development make their appearance, or whether, only for the reason that the same causes are working on the child as on primitive humanity — passage from pleasure to reality principle, animistic view of the world, incest limitations, etc. — the same results are brought about. It is evident that the answer to this question, which can be given with any certainty, only after the investigation of the whole problem has progressed quite far, cannot be demanded at the beginning of the inquiry. In any case, the first possibility, which goes still further and includes a series of other problems within itself, must for the present be laid aside as a working hypothesis. The traces of earlier mental life are preserved for us in an- other structure which exists in uninterrupted flow from the earliest times to our own day, and is of the highest, yes, most decisive value, for the mental life of humanity, namely, speech. Concerning the development of speech in the child, thus far, no investigation from the standpoint of psychoanalysis has been instituted. On the other hand, with reference to the great prob- lem of the origin of human speech, the philologist, Dr. Hans Sperber 43 has proposed an hypothesis which, without proceed- ing from psychoanalytic premises, completely agrees with the 43 Imago, Part 5, 1912. " titer den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf Entstehung u. Entwicklung der Sprache" (concerning the influence of sexual agencies in the origin and development of speech). 86 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS results of the psychoanalytic mode of thought. According to Sperber, for the discovery of the origin of speech, it is necessary to find those typical situations which earliest brought home to man the desire to influence another person in the direction of his wishes by voluntary sounds. Of such situations, there are only two : the child who lacks nourishment, and the sexually excited man ; these two persons will perceive that the cries emitted by them, at first in purely reflex manner, call to them a person, whose presence they wish, and will learn from that, to repeat these cries intentionally when they want the person in question near them. From the case of the child, who calls his mother, no way leads to speech formation ; easily, however, from the sexual call. The first activities of primitive man are really sub- stitutes for the sexual act for him, hence, he will utter the same call, for example, in lighting a fire, and when he has once learned the efficacy of this, he will invite to participation in this latter activity by it. Later, the same sequence of sounds is used in general, only in the derivative sense, since the younger genera- tion learns to use them before the reproductive instinct awakens in it. Then, if after the lapse of centuries, there came the dis- covery of a new activity, as digging or hammering, another sexual call which had become fixed in the meantime now passed over to the new discovery. Thus is explained the origin of many primitive verb-roots, with which the beginning of speech is filled. In reference to the substantives, it may only be pointed out in brief that the most important division which we make to-day, namely, according to gender, indicates how much in all things the relations to the sexual characteristics were con- sidered. 44 It agrees exceedingly well with Sperber's hypothesis that in most languages the roots for the names of the primitive forms of activity : to light a fire, to dig, to plough, etc., have the secondary meaning, to practice coitus. Since speech formation can be only so conceived that some few primitive forms (roots) assume a series of meanings and in the course of time become varied by 44 Erich Schmidt calls astonishing the instinct of children of nature for sexual distinctions, which is extended beyond man and animals, to sensual personification of all phenomena (Schlesinger, Geschichte des Symbols, p. 417). ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 87 addition of cultural forms, it may be considered as proven that those roots which were best adapted to the change in meaning were the most suitable for speech formation and these are, as we have seen, the sexual. Roots with originally non-sexual sig- nificance, which appear in later stages, will gain a great capa- bility for extension from the fact that they have passed through the sexual sphere of ideas. From a stem with the meaning vulva we find, for example, derivatives which serve to denote such slightly related ideas as baker's ware, ragged piece of clothing, vessel and others. Thus, middle high German " Kotze " for vulva, also means prostitute, and finally, coarse woolen goods, kotze, pack-basket. To this category belong Alsatian " Kutt," the posteriors, Bavarian "Kutz," intestines, Thuringian " Kuttel," sack (from which "Kutte," a piece of clothing of shape of sack), English "cod" cushion (Old Danish kodde) and the "Kutt" found in many German dialects, ditch. With this list, the derivatives are not by any means exhausted : Swiss " chutz," owl, then " Kotz," tuft of flowers, Swedish "Kotte," the round spike of flowers of the pine tree, Old High German "chutti," agmen, Dutch "kudde," grex. In addition, a large number of these words have also kept the old meaning of vulva. If the importance of a group of ideas for the speech forma- tion depends on the fact that derivatives from the expressions taken therefrom may easily come into use in other, very nu- merous and most widely separated fields, then theoretically, we are justified in saying that this field is sexuality. The uni- versal tendency to obtain a secondary gain of pleasure in every action directed toward a practical end, can be presupposed. This would be best brought about in every case when it succeeded in finding for such an activity a similarity with an activity not di- rected toward practical ends, but only toward pleasurable grati- fication ; if this result was attained, it would be retained and con- stantly emphasized anew, so that to the unpleasant practical ac- tivity would be fastened the name of another pleasant one, and thus sanction the substitution of the one for the other by name. Of such kind of pleasurably toned activities, there are only two for primitive men, namely the satisfying of the hunger and the 88 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS sexual instincts; while the satisfaction of the hunger instinct is an act which is carried out in a most simple and stereotyped manner, and scarcely affords the ground for numerous analogies, and which, in the beginning, completely lacked the social charac- teristic, the case with the sexual instinct is far more favorable. Another very important circumstance is the fact that to the hunger instinct which is served only by immediate real gratifi- cation, the world of phantasy stands immensely farther away than to the sexual instinct. Finally, the deeper reason for the preference of this latter lies in the repression which meets it the very first thing, adding a dynamic agency which is completely lacking to the hunger instinct. Since man, as a result of the erection of incest barriers and other cultural demands, had to renounce in great part the previously customary sexual gratifi- cation, there became disposable in him a considerable quantity of libido for which he no longer found use. The feeling of dis- comfort which arose from this damming back of libido caused him to utilize every opportunity for releasing it, that is, he sexualized his surrounding world and especially his own ac- tivities. While, thus, the creation of an analogy with the satis- faction of the hunger instinct, aside from its greater difficulty, afforded merely a positive premium of pleasure, the sexualiza- tion could act still more beneficently by lessening the discomfort from tension. The complete counterpart of this original manner of develop- ment may be observed in higher stages of civilization and with more intensive repression. When the frank designation of sexual matters begins to act as causing shame and therefore discom- fort, a substitution is interposed in its place, for example, in- stead of the word for vagina, one for the mouth or another harmless bodily opening, or for the reproductive act, some kind of work. This comparative method of designation often ac- quires in time by constant application for the same purpose the sexual meaning itself. Thus, by this process, words which were originally harmless, are changed into sexual ones, while the primitive development consists in an expression, customarily used for sexual things, expanding by change of meaning to the name for a culturally important business or implement. By the ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 89 changing power of attraction and repulsion of sexuality, a part of the development of speech is kept in constant flux. Also, aside from the relations to sexuality, the knowledge of the unconscious is of highest value for the comprehension of the origin and earliest development of speech, because therein are preserved those primitive forms of thinking which took part in the first attempts at speech formation. In the internal con- nection which exists between thought and speech, an hypothesis can scarcely be proposed concerning its genesis, if no definite idea has been formed of the manner of thought of primitive men, which was always very different from that of the present. The influence of some mental mechanisms belonging to the unconscious may be asserted to-day, although we stand only at the beginning of the investigations dealing with it. Thus, there belongs to the previously mentioned attributes of the uncon- scious the peculiarity that the feeling for the incompatibility of opposites starts from it; indeed that it delights to link these to- gether, even when they are diametrically opposed. Many dec- ades ago, this same peculiarity was maintained by an eminent philologist 45 as a constant peculiarity of the oldest languages ; these languages designate many contrasting pairs by the same expression, which only later divides into two different words with contrasting meanings. Thus, the word " taboo," used many times by us, and the Hebrew word of same meaning, " kodausch," as well as the Latin, " sacer," have the simultaneous meanings of " sacred " and " uncanny," " accursed." The capability for abstract and conceptual thinking developed only slowly and was certainly present in the early stages of the development of speech only in rudimentary form. To the ques- tion, with what forms of thought the primitive men may have worked, where the terms were lacking to them, analogy with the unconscious likewise affords us a conclusion. The unconscious is also unfamiliar with the formulation of a concept, hence it utilizes to wide extent another more obvious means, in order to establish mentally, at least in some measure, the peculiarity and connection of things, namely, symbolism. Thus, two ideas widely separated in our thought may be very closely joined in the un- conscious mental life, and in that of primitive people, by the 45 Karl Abel, tiber den Gegensinn der Urworte, Leipsic, 1884. 90 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS fact that both are used as symbol for the same represented ob- ject, or that one of the two corresponded to the represented ob- ject itself, the other to the representing symbol. 46 This possi- bility, etymology, in investigating the oldest derivatives, should constantly take into consideration. Numerous symbols are uni- versally familiar from their application in folklore and art. Etymology already makes use of these and psychoanalysis need only call attention to their especial significance in the uncon- scious mental life as a hitherto unknown factor. Other symbols, and just those which are most characteristic of the primitive mental life, lost their relations to conscious comprehension and disappeared almost completely from those forms of symbolic application which are calculated for reception by another one. They withdrew to those kinds of expression of the unconscious which are glad to escape comprehension, as is the case especially in the dream. The symbols of this group may, in general, only be comprehended by deep investigation of the unconscious, and hence, for the etymological estimation of them, a knowledge of psychoanalysis is an indispensable condition. We must cast a hasty glance over the material of speech, the sound formation. For the child, the joining together of articu- lated sounds, which it little by little learns to control, is some- thing independent, which the child prefers to distinguish from the things denoted, since he may much easier subject these sounds to his own will than the things themselves. The child is, therefore, inclined to misunderstand the connection between a thing and its name, which it cannot quite grasp intellectually, so that he takes the name for the thing, regarding it as a substitute for the thing itself. Something similar we find among primitive men, who are of the opinion that one has a certain power over a thing if one knows its name. On this rests the inclination to euphemism, namely, among names of people and names of places ; numerous remains of this belief occur in myths and legends. It is a result of this error that in childish and also in primi- tive thought the assumption prevails that to the similarity of name a material connection must also correspond. The clang association, in this stage of mentality, easily takes the place of 46 According to Gerber (Die Sprache der Kunst, 1885) the roots were created in the stage of unconscious symbolism. ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 91 the actual relation ; also, in the unconscious, the same is the case ; This is very plain in the dream work, which delights in deriving connections from clang associations, with disregard of the con- nection in content. For the origin of speech, the tendency, which appears in dreams, of bringing into connection the simi- larity of the thing with the similarity of the sound of the name, is of preeminent importance. 47 An analogy to this mechanism is afforded us by the origin of writing. Of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, we at least know definitely that the gradual transformation from a consecutive series of pictures to a sound writing took its origin from the circumstance that one applied definite signs, not only for the ob- jects which they represented, but also for other objects with which they possessed absolutely no internal or external relation- ship, except that the names of these had the same or similar wording. Thus, they utilized not the basis of the material as- sociation but that of the clang association. For example, son is represented by the picture of the goose, because both words sound somewhat alike; judge, one writes as wolf, because both bore the name " seb." 4S The interpretation of Horapollon, who sought to represent, at any cost, relations of content as the underlying ones, led to the same nonsense as would result from a dream interpre- tation which should make use of the same technique. Obviously, psychoanalysis comes into consideration only for the origin of language and etymology. In this, there is no over- looking of the importance of the higher development and still less depreciation of philology devoted to its study. From the standpoint of our consideration, nevertheless, these stages come 47 " Between the word and its object comes the picture and, by chance, signifies like-sounding objects between which no other connection than a phonetic and sound symbolism exists. Where different words agree in sound, they deceive the people, so that it assumes a like relation. This belief in the relationship of sounds and their double meaning has a share in the formation of the Greek religion." Welcker (Griech. Gotterlehre, 1857). 48 Die Hierglyphen, by Prof. Dr. A. Ermann, Sammlung Goschen, No. 608. According to Conrady, this naming by means of the " sound rebus " was also the rule in other related picture writings, like the Chinese and Sumerian (Veroffentlichungen des stadt. Museums fur Volkerkunde in Leipsig, 1907, Pt. 1, Introduction). 92 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS into consideration only as secondary elaboration of the primitive mental material, for our task is limited to explaining the in- fluence of the unconscious on speech formation in the funda- mental characteristics and calling attention to how much is to be gained for the science of language by the attainment of a better insight into this problem. CHAPTER V Esthetics and Psychology of the Artist The possibility of a psychological understanding is always ^.easier in poetry than in any other field of art. We would, there- fore, keep this constantly in mind with our esthetic considerations and only occasionally touch upon other kinds of art. If we propose two fundamental esthetic questions, namely, what kind of enjoyment a work of the art of poetry affords, and in what way it accomplishes this, the first deliberation shows con- tradictions, which can scarcely be solved so long as the considera- tion remains limited to the processes of consciousness. For to the first question, we must answer that the content of poems is in great part suited to arouse in us painful affects : calamity and sor- row, the suffering and downfall of noble men are, for tragedy, the only themes, for the epic, the romance, the novel, the most frequent ones; also, where cheerfulness should be awakened, that is only possible when misunderstandings or accidents bring the persons for awhile into difficult and unpleasant situations. But we find the acme of the pleasure from art, where a work almost takes our breath away, and causes the hair to stand on end from fear, so as finally to call forth tears of deepest suffering and sympathy. All these are feelings from which we flee in life and strangely enough seek in art. The effects of these affects are plainly of quite a different character when they proceed from a work of art than otherwise, although they are received by con- sciousness as the same; hence, this esthetic alteration of the affective effect, from painful to pleasurable, is a problem in which we may expect assistance from the knowledge of the un- conscious mental life. This changed relationship in our affects can in no way be explained by the mere fact that the observer or auditor knows that not reality but only make-believe stands before him. In this way, we may understand why facts which would affect us painfully if they were true, happening in this make-believe world, 93 94 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS make us cheerful, as was mentioned for comedy and related forms ; in the most essential cases however, we are dealing with some- thing quite different. The normal effects of these facts on our feelings are not altered by this failure of reality ; rather, they excite exactly the same affects, as fear, terror, horror, sympathy, etc., and are thus, at least at the moment of their activity, received entirely in earnest and placed on a par with the real ones. It is the affects themselves, which are differentiated from those aroused by reality, not in the cause of their origin, nor in the form of their expression, but rather by the sign of pleasure, inverted to its opposite, which is inappropriate to the content. With this explanation comes the answer to the second question. The chief means by which the poetic art achieves its effect is the peculiar condition into which the listener is transposed. As by suggestion, he is compelled to experience things which are related to him of another, that is, to transpose them into subjective reality, jn doing which, however, he never completely loses the knowledge of the correct relation of things. The degree of deception which may be attained is different in every kind of art and conforms to the suggestive means which are employed. These means are, in part, determined from within by the material, in part, are tech- nical aids, which have developed in time to typical forms and rep- resent the inheritance from earlier generations which lie ready for the creating artist. On the other hand, those arrangements, in which the illusion may be attained by direct imitation of reality, like those in use on the modern stage, do not belong here, because they have nothing to do with the essence of poetic art. With the two others, we will deal later. We dwell next upon the peculiar middle position, in which everyone is transposed, on whom a work of poetic art exercises the full and correct effect. He will feel the truth of this work, know its falsehood, without this continual alternation, which ought to arouse the most painful indecision, troubling him in the least. When we draw the comparison with other phantasy products, especially with the dream, which is often placed parallel to poetry, we find that in the latter the deception is complete. Aside from an exceptional case with special basis (the feeling of dream within a dream), the dreamer believes, even to the end, in the reality of the processes. That the insane patient puts his de- ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 95 lusional structures in place of reality is well known. But when we keep in mind the immediate precursors of poetry, the myths, we find the same phenomenon. Man of the myth-forming ages, which are still by no means entirely past on our earth, believes in his pictures of phantasy, and may occasionally regard them as objects of the external world. That the poetic art is no longer able to do the same completely for us indicates a lowering of its function, to which its lessened hold within our social status cor- responds ; that it is partially effctive makes it the last and strong- est comforter of humanity, which finds the entrance to the old buried sources of pleasure becoming ever more difficult. The phantasy formation, to which the poetic work in this, as in many other respects, stands nearest, is the so-called day-dream, to which practically all people occasionally yield; especially be- fore and during puberty does it assume a large place and keen significance in the inner life. The day-dreamer can gain from these phantasies a considerable amount of pleasure without be- lieving in the real existence of the dreamed situations. Other characteristic marks separate these products sharply from the work of art: the day-dream is without form or rule, it knows no aid, which, as we have seen, the work of art uses to attain its suggestive effect, and can easily get along without this, since it is not calculated for effect on others, but is purely egocentric. Therefore, we may find again in the day-dream the inversion of the affective effect, which seems so puzzling to us in the work of art, but of course not in the same amount. Mostly, situations which are pleasant to the dreamer, fulfilling his conscious wishes, form the content of the day-dream; especially, such things as the gratification of ambition by immense success, as marshal of the army, statesman or artist, then the attainment of the object of his love, the satisfaction of his vengeance for the injury done him by one more powerful than himself, does the day-dreamer paint in all their fulness. Among these appear also, though less often, situations which in reality would have been highly painful ; these, however, the day-dreamer carries out and repeats with the same pleasure. The most frequent type is the phantasy of his own death and also of other suffering and misfortune: poverty, sickness, imprisonment and disgrace are often represented; not less often, also, the idea of the perpetration of infamous crime and the discovery of the same. 96 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS We will not be surprised to find that the average man, as day- dreamer, finds the same enjoyment in the production of such phantasies as the hearer of a poem in its reception. Both func- tions are in essential aspects identical, in so far as the reception of a phantasy consists only in the fact that it is experienced. The presupposition for the possibility of this circumstance, is, of course, that there be present in those receiving it the same tenden- cies, for the gratification of which the phantasy was created. The first requisite for a work of art that is destined to exert influence beyond the limitations of time and space, is therefore its universal human foundation. Now, among the similar fundamental in- stinctive tendencies of humanity, the day-dream can scarcely lack such a basis entirely ; the distinction lies in the fact that the common human traits, by which a sympathetic feeling for another is possible, appear in the phantasy of the artist without his inter- ference and assume the guidance, while with the day-dreamer they are hidden by his most personal considerations in life. Thus, we see, to give an example, in the day-dream of the ambitious person, a man whose immense success would extort no interest from us, since the dream is satisfied with the fact and disdains every in- ternal introduction of motive, by which the case would be included in the universal psychic (material). In "Macbeth," we see also an ambitious person and his success but the premises are followed even to the roots of each ambition, so that everyone who has fostered ambitious wishes, must, irresistibly transported, feel the whole horror of the night of murder. Herein we perceive a hint toward the understanding of the suggestive power of the work of art, but to the problem of the inversion of the affective effect, we have not yet approached any nearer. To that problem, we can only find the solution, when we accept the help of the affect theory of psychoanalysis. This teaches that a very great amount of affect may remain uncon- scious, indeed, in certain cases must remain unconscious, without the pleasant or unpleasant effect of these affects, which neces- sarily belong to consciousness, being lost. The pleasure and dis- comfort so existing in consciousness is then attached to other affects, namely, to those belonging to the same ideas ; many a time this union succeeds so completely that nothing striking remains; very often, however, the pleasure or discomfort is inadequate for ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 97 the affect — complex from which it seems to arise, or, as in our case, it is opposed. The pathological examples of immensely strong expressions of joy or grief on apparently insignificant occasions are well known. The foundation of the thing is, of course, more complicated than it has thus far been represented. Without fur- ther explanation, it is not correct to say that the pleasure set free by the unconscious affects is annexed to favorite representa- tives. This would contradict the strong determination in mental affairs and produce the erroneous presupposition that an affect, excluded from consciousness, would renounce its success. Rather, those ideas and affects which are capable of being con- scious, which now work with so strong gain of pleasure and dis- comfort, are nothing else than the servants and substitute forma- tions of the original, but now repressed, affects. Between these two, a close associative connection must be demonstrable and on the path prepared by this association, the pleasure shifts and the fund of energy belonging to it also. If this theory is correct, then its application to our problem must be possible, and would have to run something like this : By the work of art there are aroused, besides the conscious affects, also unconscious ones, of much greater intensity and often of op- posite pleasure phase. The ideas by the help of which this hap- pens must be so chosen that they possess, besides the connections present before the testing consciousness, also sufficient associations with the typical unconscious constellations of affect. In order to be chosen for this complicated task, the work of art must be so constituted that it will perform in its origin for the mental life of the artist, what it performs at its reproduction for the hearer, namely, the discharge and gratification by phantasy of the uncon- scious wishes common to both. It must be remembered here, what was said in the first chap- ter concerning resistance and censor, and the necessity of dis- guises (distortion) connected with these. The undisguised pres- entation of the unconscious would call forth the whole defence of the social, moral and esthetic personality, thus arouse, not pleasure but anxiety, disgust and horror. Poetry, therefore, makes the most extensive use of all those masks and means of rep- resentation — transposition of motive, inversion to the opposite, weakening of the connection, splitting of a figure into several, 8 98 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS duplication of processes, condensation of material and especially of symbolism. Thus, there arises from the repressed wish-phan- tasies, which, being typical, must necessarily remain limited to a few, and the oftener repeated, so much the more uniform, the endless, never to be exhausted variety of the work of art. This variety is assured by the individual variation and also by the varying intensity of the repression which with the change of cultural epochs, directs its strongest resistance now against one, now against some other bit of the unconscious. The conflict between repression and unconscious finds in the work of art, as in a compromise formation, a temporary accommo- dation. The unconscious succeeds in breaking through without the necessity for a direct attack upon the barriers of the censor, which are rather circumvented in clever manner. To be sure, the conflict is not removed from the world by this circumven- tion, that is shown by the frequent inverted signs of pleasure, with which the phantasies appear before consciousness. Even in the disguise, a painful characteristic adheres to the longed-for situa- tions which marks them as ghosts, rising from the haunts of the unconscious. To make this trait, able to raise the enjoyment of art, is now woven into the work of art, while the con- scious connection is so united that the chief situations readily assume the character of sad, fearful, forbidden; especially in tragedy is this regularly the case, and in it, further, the purifica- tion of the soul of the hearer is most completely attained. That most works of poetic art awaken sorrowful affects in our con- sciousness is thus no contradiction to their pleasure-giving func- tion, as we might think at first, but a confirmation of it; for on the one hand, the unpleasant affects in consciousness are employed and placed in the service of the artistic form, on the other hand, the forbidden pleasure, nourished from unconscious sources, is enjoyed under the mask of the foreign affect without offending the censor. 49 The capability to create pleasure from painful affects and the emphasis of poetry on the ideas belonging to these affects, which 49 " I have often said and will never recede from it : the representation kills that which is represented, first in the representor himself, who brings under his feet in this way what had hitherto made him act, then further- more for those who enjoy it." — Friedrich Hebbel. ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 99 is rendered possible in this way, must, however, have still a second root, for the day-dream, which is unable to place the uncon- scious in the service of the artistic tension, utilizes it likewise, even though less often than the work of art. As a matter of fact, a primary gain of pleasure may be derived from these phantasies of suffering. We know already that there belongs to the infantile instinctive tendencies which may not be quite eliminated in the sexual activity of the adult, also the sexual pleasure of inflicting and enduring pain (sadism-masochism). In the day-dream, where the gratification of these infantile tendencies is connected neither with physical pain nor with evil social results, they also find after complete repression their foster home and from there, wander over into the work of art where they are received and utilized for its secondary tendencies. It is an important factor, also, that the esthetic enjoyment occurs entirely aside from the acting and achieving ego situated in reality. Thereby it is made possible for the hearer to identify himself with any feeling or with any figure without hesitation and to always give up this incorporation again without trouble. In this sense, the command "L'art pour l'art" has its full justifica- tion, since the work of art with a purpose, by which the author and his public constitute themselves, a. priori, in favor of certain opinions and figures, so that for their opponents there remains only refusal, may not bring all sides of the mental life into play. In such cases, a remnant of the relation to reality remains missing which clips the wings of the phantasy. Only he who loses him- self completely in a work of art can feel its deepest affect and for this end, complete turning away from present aims is necessary. There still remains for us, the consideration of the means of the esthetic effect, which we have divided above into internal and individual on one side, and external and technical, on the other. To the first category, belongs, preeminently, the basic principle of economy in the distribution of affect. In order to call forth a stronger impression with the work of art than would be possible in an actual occurrence or in a day-dream, a structure is necessary which does not allow the affect to flatten out immediately, and uselessly, but raises it slowly and regularly from one stage to the 100 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS next, until the highest degree is attained, and the affect is then abreacted as quickly as possible. The " internal form of art," which compels the artist to choose a different kind of treatment for each material, is nothing else than the unconscious insight into how the maximum amount of affect, which may be produced by the object, would be attained by the proper alternation between progress and retardation. According to this insight, the artist will then treat the material as tragedy, epic, novel or ballad, and further, adapt the means to the variety exactly according to the aim. The economy of affect is just that mark of genius, by the aid of which the latter produces the strongest effects, while against its rules the most beautiful declamation and the most brilliant acting produce no deep impression. Besides the economy of affect, there stands, in second place, the economy of thought, in favor of which, in the work of art, everything which happens must be given a motive, according to strict rules and without gaps, while real life, with its gay and tumultuous instincts, leaves in our hands, only here and there, the tattered shreds of a motive. In the poem, the thread of ac- tion can never break unaided, the course of events within the work is completely visible and according to the principle of suffi- cient reason for understanding without addition, that is, our laws of thought must not assert themselves painfully against the outer world, but find a world before them, which is harmoniously constructed according to their rules. The result of this is that the connections of the work of art are understood without effort, without the trains of thought and the facts crossing each other; the economy of thought is the cause of the phenomenon that, for the reception of the work of art, immensely less expenditure of energy is necessary than for the reception of a bit of the outer world of same extent ; the result of this saving of strength is a gain in pleasure. By the assistance which the economy of thought still further affords, for example, by means of the in- troduction of a consequent parallelism or the arrangement, side by side, of sharp contrasts in motives, processes and figures, this gain of pleasure can be increased. It may now be seen that at this point the narrower esthetic problems begin which can in great part be brought nearer to ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST IOI solution by the application of these fundamental principles to definite groups and families. Into these problems we may not go and, therefore, turn to the external means of art ; these consist, since speech is the medium of poetry, in clang effects which we can divide into two groups : rhythm and rhyme. Rhyme has existed in various forms as alliteration, initial rhyme, internal rhyme, etc., until it has become fixed for our circle of culture as end rhyme. The foundations of the pleasur- able effect are common to all ; the repetition of the same syllable causes a saving of attention and this just at the time when the rhyming word is both times essential for the sense, and no mere expletive ; the exertion of force, for which one must be prepared and which suddenly becomes superfluous, is transformed into pleasure by the repeated recognition of the same thing. On the other hand, the play with words, whereby the real importance is apportioned to the sound and on which the associative connection is built, is a source of childish pleasure which is thus reawakened by the rhyme for the domain of art. Rhythm was already known and used in primitive stages of culture as a means of facilitating labor; this function it has retained and it serves where the overcoming of real resistances remains outside of consideration, besides our case, for example, also in the dance and children's play for direct gaining of pleas- ure or increase of pleasure. Still it is to be added that the most important forms of sexual activity, especially the " pleasure suck- ing " of the child, then further of the sexual act itself are rhythmical from physiological reasons. By the introduction of rhythm during a definite action, the same is thus rendered similar to the sexual processes, sexualized. Hence the pleasure in rhythm has probably, outside of the motive of economy of work, also an equally important sexual root. What is said here of the work of art is founded on the inves- tigation which Freud has instituted in the problem of wit. Wit, too, serves the unpunished gratification of unconscious tendencies. In order to win favor with the listener for its content, wit, too, can utilize the childish pleasure in rhyme, which is occasionally carried to the extreme of apparent nonsense of words. All those kinds of aids, such as in poetry, the artistic form demanded by 102 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS economy of affect and of thought, then rhyme and rhythm, serve as forepleasure. That is, they afford the hearer a premium of easily attained pleasure and thus entice from him his first interest. By means of a chain of such pleasure premiums, a psychic ten- sion is produced and gradually strengthened that causes the listener to perform the exertions which the reception of the work demand of his power of imagination, to overcome his resist- ances until the endpleasure in which the discharge of the affects and the relief of the tension is attained. To the superficial ob- server, the whole sum of pleasure which a work of art awakens seems to be created by the means which serve to call forth the forepleasure; but in reality, they form only the facade, behind which the real pleasure arising from the unconscious is hidden. The mechanism of the " forepleasure " is not limited to these two cases. We have already made its acquaintance in following the course of development of sexuality ; there we saw the previ- ously independent partial instincts afford the forepleasure which spurs on to the attainment of the endpleasure (in sexual act). In addition, a similar arrangement may be shown in still other fields. The relationship with sexuality is not limited merely to ex- ternal affairs ; it is a common saying that the question " whether Hans will get his Gretel " is the chief theme of poetry, which is ever declaimed anew in countless variants, without the poet and public ever getting tired. That not only the material but also the creative force in art is preponderatingly sexual has been ex- pressed more than once in intuitive knowledge. Psychoanalysis must limit this view by substituting for the plainly sexual, the instinctive forces of the unconscious. If, in the unconscious also, the by far greatest significance falls on sexuality, still, it does not entirely fill out the same; on the other side, it should never be left out of consideration that the sexual springs, which psychoanalysis recognizes, must have a quite particular char- acteristic, namely, that of the unconscious. The conscious desire is not long satisfied with phantasy, it destroys the make-believe and strives toward gratification in reality ; upon the appearance of the latter, both the pleasure in creating of the artist, and the esthetic enjoyment of the audience, is removed and brought to ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST IO3 naught. The unconscious desire does not distinguish between phantasy and reality, it estimates the events not according to whether they are objective facts or only subjective ideas, and to this peculiarity, it owes its ability to form the psychological basis for the structure of art. Especially is this true of the QEdipus complex, from the sublimated instinctive force of which the masterpieces of all times and peoples have been created; the traces of this fact are afforded by the more or less disguised representations of the CEdipus situation, which the analyst can always trace back again to the primitive type. Now, as in CEdipus himself, the deed is carried out in all grossness; now, again, inverted, the forbidden desire is consciously striven for, but expiated by the fact that the relationship turns out to be false (family romance) ; most frequently, the situation is weak- ened so that instead of the mother the stepmother, the wife of the ruler or another figure who betrays herself as the mother image only in the finer details enters and the figure of the hostile father undergoes a similar distortion. If we extend our observation to the art of painting, we easily find certain related traits. As a root of the inclination for paint- ing may be assumed, for example, the sublimation of the looking instinct (Schautrieb), especially strongly developed in the in- stinctive life of the individual. The pleasure from looking (Schaulust), in its most primitive form in the child, is joined to the first objects of pleasure, among which, the sexual, in the broader sense of psychoanalysis, assumes the first place. It is known that the representation of men, especially of the naked human body, long passed as the only task of the painter and sculptor. The landscape, enlivened by no figure, first appeared, only in more recent times, after a further increase of repression had sharpened the demands of the censor for a diversion from the original goal. Still it holds even to-day that the human body is the real and noblest subject which no painter may entirely neglect. The original fundamental interest which is repressed by civilized man may still be plainly recognized in the sublimated form. The place of the economy of thought is taken in the art of painting by the economy of vision. The ideal is to show the / 104 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS spectator every phenomenon, free from confusing accidental peculiarities, in the form which is essential and most character- istic for the artistic effect, as it presents itself to the soul of the artist, thereby sparing the observer the trouble of separating that which is important for the impression from that nonessential. Still plainer than in the general foundations of the artistic creation is the connection with the unconscious in the production of the individual work. The fact that the conception of a work of art and the condition of mental elevation connected with it does not proceed from consciousness has been testified to by all, without exception, who were in a position to have experience on this point. The inspiration is a sudden comprehension of figures and connections, which were either entirely unknown to the artist himself until this moment or wavered before his mind in hazy indefinite form and now arranged themselves before him at a stroke, in vivid clearness. The mysterious part of this process has led to the assumption that the artist owed it to a heavenly inspiration which he cannot have created from his conscious- ness. Psychology has now for a long time been unable to dispense with an un- or sub-conscious in explanation, without, however, hitherto occupying itself with the nature of this force distant from consciousness, and submitting to itself the question whether the products of inspiration may not be determined by this force, so that one might learn from the investigation of their mutual characteristics something concerning the mental acts taking place beyond consciousness. The question, whence the artist gets the psychic material previously unknown to him, is not hard for psychoanalysis to answer. It is otherwise, of course, with the problem of the cause, by which the transition from conscious to unconscious is put into the work and the mechanism by which this transition is brought about. The fact that we are dealing with a flight from reality and with a regression to infantile sources of pleasure is the only fixed one. How the mode of utilization of this method differs from that which the neurotic prefers, for which exactly the same formula holds, is still little investigated. The question is just so much the more interesting, because the traits of both types very often mix, since the same man can be artist and ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST I05 neurotic at the same time, thus caring for a part of his regres- sively gained pleasure by the medium of artistic inspiration and another part by means of neurotic symptoms. According to what fundamental principles the choice is made, whether, perhaps, the union of certain instincts with certain others is needed in order to become adapted for the one or the other method, on all these points later investigation must enlighten us. A fundamental distinction was already outlined in the first chapter. The neurosis makes it impossible for the associates of the patient to attribute a meaning to it. The symptoms produce the impression of arbitrariness and nonsense and are, further- more, certainly not suited to be felt by the relatives of the patient as pleasant or to bind strangers to him. The malady troubles and hinders the social relations of the neurotic. With the artist, the condition is essentially different. Indeed, the talent for art renders difficult the adaptation to the surroundings ; the examples of this, that artists as husbands and fathers, friends or citizens do not come up to the mark, need not be gone into in detail. It belongs to the fate of the artist that, right at the point, where he should act immediately through his personality, he mostly remains without results or is not understood ; still, he knows how to give a form to his works which finds, not only understanding, but calls forth deep pleasurable effects. Thus, by the fact that he withdraws himself to his infantile attitude, the neurotic loses his social connection, even though against his will, while the artist knows how to win back that which, for the same reasons, he must give up, in a new way, which is only passable for him. He sues for love and admiration, not in the ordinary manner, but in a more complicated and more spiritual manner, he cap- tures the others in the indirect way by the depths of his own personality. For the rest, enough exists in common to form the psychological foundation for the often observed similarity be- tween the artists on the one side, and the nervous and mental invalids, on the other, genius and insanity. The tendency to sudden changes of mood, the immoderation in love and hate and the incapacity for steady following of prac- tical ends, may be explained by the strengthened influence of the unconscious on the conscious and voluntary conduct of life. ■> -— 1 .■«. o . -i f/ . - ■> ■■ » -* ■ «i iij •■ ■■ ifc :4.-^^m,. i «*. ~» - «^»f- 106 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS The constantly renewed upward pressure of primitive mental forces, which, if they succeeded in getting conrol, would burst asunder and desecrate all the bonds imposed by culture, creates a deep, lasting feeling of guilt, which transposes itself by "rationalization" into moral over-refinement; this latter occa- sionally changes again, with the consequent overstepping of ethical barriers. In general, uncompensated mental opposites are better endured in consciousness than by the average man, in whom likewise an assimilation to the unconscious mental life is to be seen, which does not stir up against each other the oppos- ing pairs, but allows them to exist side by side. To both types is common the high irritability or sensitiveness to irritation ; that is, they often react to very slight external stimuli with apparently an immeasurable and incomprehensible amount of affect. The cause of this characteristic lies in the fact that the possibility of a reaction from unconscious sources of affect is easily given as a result of an accidental disturbance of the association chains leading thither. The relation of the artist to the outer world is peculiar throughout, because the latter comes into consideration for him, not so much as playground for his passions, as instigation for his creative phantasy. For this, a very small amount of external experience suffices. Very often, the manner of work of the genius has caused wonder, that he should show in his works the closest knowledge of the human soul, in all its fulness and depth, before he could extend his observations beyond the smallest circle. The explanation lies in the fact that the human soul is infinitely greater than the circle which presents itself to consciousness. In the unconscious, lies buried the whole past of our race; it re- sembles a navel-string which binds the individual to the race. The greater the valuable part of the unconscious is, just so many more possibilities exist for the genius, divesting himself of his conscious ego, to change into strange personalities. If Shakes- peare saw, even to the bottom of the souls of wise men and fools, saints and criminals, he was not only unconscious of all this — which applies perhaps to everyone — but he possessed also, the other gift which we lack, of making his unconscious visible, while he allowed it to create apparently independent figures from his ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 107 phantasy. These figures are all merely the poet's own uncon- scious, which he has put out, " projected," in order to free him- self from it. The artist can experience more in very small events than the average man in the gayest adventures, because they are only the occasion for him to become acquainted with his inner kingdom. His irritability is only the reverse side of the phenomenon and must appear, so far as he does not utilize this overflow for his work but chooses the everyday way of allowing his affects to discharge in reality. Finally, if we attempt to gain from the previous considera- tions a standpoint for the recognition of the importance of art in cultural development, then, we come to the conclusion that the artists belong to the leaders of humanity in the struggle for the taming and ennobling of the instincts hostile to culture. When one of the customary forms of expression becomes obsolete, that is, remains below the cultural level and stands in the way of ascent with its all too treacherous figure, then it is the individuals gifted with artistic creative force who make it possible for their fellow men to free themselves from the injurious instinct, without being compelled to renounce the pleasure, at the same time casting the old instinct in a new, unobjectionable, nobler form and putting this in the place of the old. Inversely, if the repression becomes superfluous in one place in its previous intensity, then the artists first feel the lessening of the pressure which bore heaviest on their spirits and utilizing the newly won freedom for art before it has yet come to pass in life, point out the way to their contemporaries. CHAPTER VI Philosophy, Ethics, Law f As philosophy has a quite special relation to the other sciences, so the psychoanalytic method of consideration occupies a special '■-.position toward philosophy. The disciplines previously treated, permit the analyst to fall back upon the object of these and dis- close in them in the more or less phantastic, unconscious share of scarcely-to-be-denied wish material, the entrance to the understanding of the phenomena and therewith the enrichment of the fields of knowledge in question. The philosophical sys- tems, on the contrary, meet us in the shape of material knowledge, with the claim to be judged as purely scientific and final explana- tions of the position of man in the outer world and in the universe. If this separation of philosophy seems, at first, to preclude every psychoanalytic entrance, still, two other prominent peculiar- ities in the consideration of the philosophical system and its cre- ators afford us an occasion for approaching the problem of philos- ophy and the philosopher. It must strike everyone at once that in philosophy, the personality of its creator appears in a measure that does not really exist in a science, and also, in no other field of knowledge except art. This circumstance induces us to eluci- date from the standpoint of psychoanalysis the peculiar psycho- logical structure of the philosopher, which raises him above the pure scientist and brings him nearer the type of the artist, yet still sharply differentiates him from the latter. With this eluci- dation is given us also a comprehension of an essential part of the system formation which is influenced, to a perceptible degree, by individual attributes of the personality, indeed, is often deter- mined by purely subjective agencies. The following of this indi- vidual set of conditions of the system, as far as the instinctive life and the fate of the libido, on the one side, and the exposure of its inner relations to character, personality and life influences, on the other, forms the task of a psychographic investigation as it is 108 PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW IO9 beginning to develop from the application of psychoanalytic prin- ciples and viewpoints to the life and work of gifted minds. This method of investigation opens to us what one might call an inner door to the depths of personality, in the wish material underlying the system ; a series of philosophic systems affords the psychoanalytic investigation a broad field of attack upon the sys- tems themselves, in which the unconscious of their creators, which invests them with much of general validity, either as metaphysical projection into a transcendental world, or as mystical expression of endopsychic perception, or finally, directly in what you might call metapsychological knowledge, appears as object of philosoph- ical consideration. We would now discuss briefly and method- ically these different possibilities of an application of psycho- analytic viewpoints to the field of philosophy, beginning with the psychographic consideration of the philosophical personality, of which, we may, selecting the extreme forms, distinguish three chief types : 1. The type of intuitive spectator, the real artistic metaphy- sician, as represented most truly by Plato and as plainly delineated in the Mystics and the closely related speculative natural philos- ophers ; 2. The type of synthetic investigator, such as the systems of positivism of Comte, Spencer and even, in a certain degree, the empirical theory of Locke, presuppose; 3. Finally the type of analytic thinker, as represented in sharp- est outlines by Kant and Spinoza and also by Descartes, Hume and others. These types are naturally, as our artificial arrangement of the systems among them shows, seldom to be encountered in pure form in individual cases, but still possess temporary value in the far more frequent mixed forms of these various traits shown in individual philosophers. The type of analytic thinker who proceeds preeminently from the certainty of the theory of knowledge which seeks to erect the foundations and bounds of conscious human knowledge will scarcely afford in his theories an object for psychoanalytic inves- tigation. The mingling of unconscious wish elements is, in far- reaching measure, excluded, since consciousness works in the self- knowledge of its own capabilities. With this type our interest 110 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS is concentrated on the peculiar character formation and personal- ity which comes to expression therein, so that the philosopher, as shown in many places, seeks to shut himself from the practical and genial life, to keep himself free from the deceptive mingling of reality in his thought processes, as far as he may, in order to bring thought reality into play in extensive manner. The psychoanalytic study of the obsessional neurotic has af- forded a first understanding of these philosophical tendencies, as well as the relation to world and men, action and thinking, re- sulting from them, that is, to the limitation of action and over- growth of thought. These patients are not only closely related to the type of the philosopher by their own keen intelligence, their interest in transcendental things and their ethical scruples, but also betray to us further the narcissistic nature of self-examina- tion of their own thinking and the intensive sexualization of this, which tends ever farther away from the original sensual content of the ideas, to the pleasurable emphasizing of the thought proc- esses themselves. To the neurotic compulsion to subtle inquiry, to the pathological search for explanation, to the force-destroying doubt of the obsessional neurotic individual, there corresponds the philosophical admiration of otherwise unobserved phenomena, the logically motivated pedantic arrangement of thought according to the principle of symmetry, the strong need for causality that unites itself preferably to the deepest, insoluble problems of indi- vidual and cosmic design, which are enveloped in eternal doubt. All these traits reveal themselves to the psychoanalytic investiga- tion as the result of various fates of definite infantile instinctive tendencies and inclinations, among which the pleasure in looking (Schaulust) and the craving for knowledge, as well as the in- stinct for mastery, connected with cruel impulses, play the chief roles. In particular does the early and energetic repression, which the intensive sexual investigation of the child experiences from external and internal agencies, come into play in corresponding manifold ways. Either the desire for knowledge of the forbidden object of investigation is so well repressed that it remains inhib- ited from then on ; or the repression of sexual curiosity fails and returns from the unconscious, as neurotic compulsion to constant questioning, in which, now, the thinking and investigating itself assumes the pleasure which originally applied to the sexual aim ; PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW III finally, there is still possible, the ideal case, that the libido sub- limated to the desire for knowledge supports and stimulates the instinct for investigation, so that it is possible for the latter to work in the service of intellectual interests. We easily recognize that the type of analytic thinker stands nearest to the second possible outcome of the repression of infan- tile instinct for investigation, in that he, remaining in a purely intellectual field, invests the thought processes themselves, by means of a far-reaching introversion of libido, with pleasure, and forces upon reality the laws of his own thought, as happens in the subjective realism of Kant, 50 Schopenhauer, 51 and others, and further, in the phenomenalism ending in Solipsism. The egocen- tric attitude toward the outer world, reveals itself, as the result of a narcissistic overvaluation of the ego 52 and thought reality, which is projected into the outer world. Opposed to this, stands the type of positivistic investigator, who applies his sublimated need for knowledge and causality in suitable manner to objective reality and therewith, has, for the most part, renounced the pleasure principle. As is obvious, he represents the third of the cited potential results of infantile re- pression of instinct, and will afford the psychoanalytic investiga- tion in his personality and his work, the least material, since with him, libidinous instinctive forces, as in Nietzsche, functionate only as a thought creating motor. By far our greatest interest belongs to the first type of true metaphysical philosopher, who is most accessible psychoanalytic- ally, not only in his artistic personality, but often also betrays so plainly in the content of his work the phantastic wish material that the relationship of this kind of philosophizing to the invention of myths struck even Aristotle. Thus, while the two first types 50 Kant : " Hitherto, one assumed that all our knowledge must direct itself toward objects; . . . One may therefore make the attempt once, whether we may not get along better in the problems of metaphysics by assuming that objects must direct themselves according to our knowledge." 51 Schopenhauer : " The world is my idea." 52 It is known that Fichte places most distinctly the ego and its con- sideration in the center of his philosophy and view of the world and derives everything else from that. The metaphysical distinction between pure and empirical ego does not come into the question for our psycho- logical consideration. 112 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS possess preeminent characterological interest for us, since the unconscious instinctive impulses and libidinous energies serve only in the byway of character formation, as generator of thought and investigation, still, in the third type, the content of the system is plainly determined and influenced by the unconscious; to this fact, the few typical fundamental views and systems, ever recur- ring in the course of the development of philosophy, would have called our attention ; the many surprising similarities in structure and content between these philosophical systems and the miscar- ried system formations of certain sufferers from mental disease, psychoanalysis has disclosed. Though this kind of philosophizing is closely related to artistic endeavor, still, it is not to be overlooked, that both these types of mental productivity display a sharp differentiation, indeed, in certain respects, a psychoanalytically interesting contrast. Even outwardly, the artist is scarcely conceivable without a strong at- tachment and need for courting his contemporaries, while a strong introversion of his libido and an autistic thinking (Bleuler) char- acterize the philosopher. 53 The banal conception of the erotic freedom of the artist and of the sexual continence (chastity) of the philosopher, denotes this contrast even if grossly, still, not without significance. 54 The artist ever joins his universal human creatiorb to the individual case, the philosopher strives for generalizations ; the artist wishes to please and, therefore, uses suggestive means, the philosopher wishes to convince and therefore makes use of logical means. A distinction extending beyond the description, Schopenhauer has fixed in the statement : " One is not a poet with- out a certain bias for error and falsehood; on the other hand, not a philosopher, without a directly opposite propensity." The deeper differences may, in the ultimate analysis, be traced back to a difference of sexual constitution, that by the artist, an hyper- erotic, that by the philosopher, an anerotic, matured on variously emphasized partial instincts and the manifold fates of these, but especially in the philosopher, on a much farther forced diversion from sexual into mental, transcendental, unreal. 53 Plato also calls thinking " sublimated sexual instinct." 54 Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche emphasize the typical unmarried condition of the philosopher, which they themselves demonstrate in the examples of Cartesius, Leibniz, Malebranche, Spinoza, Kant and others. PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 113 The unconscious expresses itself in corresponding manner in these system-formations as in the artistic productions. We dis- tinguish accordingly two forms of expression of the same in the philosopher which are characterized as metaphysical, since they seem to be founded on no objective knowledge: namely, the re- ligious and mythological system-formation. The former, of which there are various forms, postulates a creator, who may have produced the world from himself or from nothing (Heraclitus, Stoics, Neo-Platonists, Mystics). As in the formation of religion, psychoanalysis recognizes also in this, the universal unconscious projection of a father image, which has been powerful in infantile life, and can assert, that the feeling of omnipotence ruling the " thinker " here seems to pass over to the god- father by way of projection. In other systems, the whole world is animated in animistic manner and the dualism of the dead physical world and of the spirit permeating it, is contemplated under the picture of sexual reproduction; the rich elaboration of this sexual symbolism by individual mystics plainly betrays this system as projection of inner libido processes. In conscious recognition of this sexualiza- tion, not only of the thought functions, but also of the thought content, Ludwig Feuerbach once traced back the philosophical con- trasts and speculative discussion of the relation of subject and object, to the sexual relation of man and woman. The mystical system-formations are characterized by the as- sumption of a transcendental world, which, like the subjective idealism, can pass as depreciation, refusal, or destruction of pain- ful reality and as a flight to the infantile wish-situations projected from the unconscious. Here belongs also the belief in preexist- ence, transmigration of souls and return of the same, which, in ultimate analysis, proceeds like the corresponding religious dog- mas, from unconscious mother-womb and rebirth phantasies. These metaphysical ideas are, in their disregard of every test of reality, most readily accessible to psychoanalytic dissection, as phantasy products, and reveal themselves then, as phenomena of projection of the unconscious mental life into a supernatural world which naturally approaches the wishes of the individual in ques- tion, and those of many others in high degree, since psycholog- ically considered, it represents only a narcissistic self-reflection of the individual in the cosmos. This metaphysical projection forms I 14 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS in a way, the most primitive and most frequent form, in which the unconscious flows into system formation. The first step in the direction of knowledge of the unconscious is formed by the ra- tionalistic and mystical systems which, however opposed they may appear otherwise, still have in common that they expect to find the deepest nature of the world and the ultimate knowledge of things; in spite of this tendency, they cannot gain a direct insight into the field of the unconscious but conceive only in endopsychic percep- tion and represent in symbols. In this stage of knowledge, the unconscious meets us in the philosophical theories as something mystical, inconceivable and unrecognizable. In the course of fur- ther development, there has finally come about a sharp, definite conception of the unconscious, of which individual philosophers, as for example Hartmann, speak, even though in a different sense than psychoanalysis, while others have recognized and repre- sented it in its significance and operation, as Schopenhauer, in the theory of will, or Nietzsche, whose psychoanalytic derivation of the metaphysical and ethical needs from primitive instinctive im- pulses, needs only to be recalled here. In order to forestall misunderstandings, we will state expressly, although in this connection, the exclusive emphasis of psycho- analysis needs no apology, that, with these schematic remarks, we have neither exhausted the essence of philosophy, nor glanced over the history of its development, nor believe to have made entirely comprehensible the personality of the philosopher. All we could expect was to hastily indicate from what points the psychoanalytic method of consideration was in a position to ap- proach these problems. Searching detailed investigations will have to show how much such attempts may be able to contribute to the psychological comprehension of philosophy. 55 To a critical estimation of a system, they will naturally never extend, and do not pretend to ; they may only give definite hints and suggestions concerning the personal and subjective conditions of philosophical thought and views, whereby, however, the objective value of philosophical results must not be touched in the least. Similar viewpoints and limitations, as for our study of meta- physics, apply also to the psychoanalytic elucidation of ethics, as 55 Compare the works of Dr. Phil. Alfr. Frh. v. Winterstein and Dr. Eduard Hitschmann in " Imago," II, 1913, Part 2, April. PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 115 far as it is treated in the systems as a philosophical discipline. This comes about mostly from the claim that philosophy, on the ground of its insight into world phenomena and human life, is also first called upon to state ethical standards for the conduct of the individual in his relation to society. Here we have to overlook entirely this tendency, which goes back to the rationalistic con- ception of Socrates of the instruction of youth, and to consider psychologically the ethical theories of the individual philosophers primarily as the expression of individual needs and demands. Such a study teaches that the history of ethical development within philosophy represents a reflection of the repression of the gross, egoistic, violent and cruel impulses of man and that the struggle against these asocial impulses takes place in the field of ethics, as the struggle against the libidinous impulse's does in the domain of metaphysics. Thus, for the special elaboration of ethics, the fate of the predominating infantile instinctive impulses of cruelty and pleasure in mastery will be important, which de- pend on their mingling with libidinous components (sadism). The establishment of ethical standards comes about by repression of these impulses by means of reaction formation, from which formations result the demands of pity, human love and like esteem of fellow men. That opposing asocial impulses originally underlie these ethical postulates is plainly shown in the ethical revolutionaries appearing from time to time, who ridicule the coddling morality of pity, and prize as remedy the unscrupulous devotion to crass egoism, the will to power, like Stirner and Nie- tzsche. But even so profound a follower of ethics as Schopen- hauer cannot do enough in the detailed description of evil, cruel and jealous instinctive impulses; it is even reported by Spinoza that he, under pretense of scientific aims, tormented insects most cruelly; the most pretentious ethicist among the philosophers, Kant, began his philosophical career with an article " concei ning radical evil in human nature." Thus, the history of ethics shows the unceasing alternation between the pressure of the reaction-formations against the ego- istic instincts and the tendency to carry these through, regardless of everything; both kinds of attitude are conditioned by particular instinctive tendencies of the individual and the more or less suc- cessful repression of definite groups of instincts. A similar rela- Il6 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS tion exists also in the demand, enunciated in many ethical sys- tems, for complete or partial renunciation of sexual intercourse and the numerous limitations of sexual pleasure (sexual ethics). 56 Youth is thus nothing less than teachable, everyone is rather necessarily "ethical" so far as his repression suffices for the erection and maintenance of reaction formations, and the demands of individual philosophers can first have significance and applica- tion, only for themselves and a number of similarly endowed individuals. That, under such circumstances, the eminently im- portant problem of apparent freedom of the will, in the sense of a psychoanalytic view of the world, needs a revision, may be merely mentioned here. If we would attempt to gain from our viewpoint an insight into the genesis of ethics, we must proceed from the fact that its essence exists in the renunciation of a gratification in pleasure which the individual voluntarily imposes upon himself. That far, the old taboo prohibitions are the direct forerunners of the ethical standards. Of course, the motivation is quite different in the two cases. For, the limitations by the taboo go back, as far as a con- scious motive was formed for it, to an entirely egoistic basis, the anxiety before an evil threatening the transgressor. The un- conscious grounds, on the contrary, are the social considerations in those institutions, especially the primitive family, the existence of which would be threatened by the temptation which the taboo would forestall. The temptation itself became repressed and, at the same time, the correct motivation connected with it must have become inaccessible to consciousness. Since the welfare of the individual is closely united to that of the race, the social grounds go back again in great part to the egoistic. For the other part, however, libidinous desires participate, which invest the renuncia- tion in mental life with permanency, by rendering it pleasant, at least in indirect ways. Such motivations, proceeding from the libido, and mostly probably secondary, are for example, the experience of greater gain in pleasure by deferring the gratifi- cation or the love to a person whose claims and emotions may be spared by the renunciation. In contrast to this, in the ethical position, egoism may play 56 Compare Christian v. Ehrenfels : " Sexualethik " (Grenzfragen, No. 56, Wiesbaden, 1908). ==" ? - T .e.i"- ;• • ri -i"*- " *• ' " ' ■ ■ 't •■ .-,■-,.. f r r .- ,. PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 117 absolutely no further role as motive, except as anxiety before punishment. It is suppressed ; in the most extreme case of the " saint," it is even repressed from consciousness like the asocial wishes with the taboo. The social motivation, on the contrary, which, to-day, where the family no longer coincides with the state and humanity, has become colorless and unobjectionable, is now placed in the foreground and published as the only and suffi- cient one. Concerning the sources of this social duty, two chief opinions have been advanced in science, of which one represented by Rousseau seeks a voluntaristic determination in the "original goodness of human nature," while the other, intellectualistic, cen- ters in the categorical imperative of Kant. To the unconscious motivation of ethics, as reaction formation against repressed in- stincts, attention has already been called. The chief tendency of the taboo barrier was to make physically impossible, the for- bidden (action) by cutting off every opportunity, while the method of action of ethics consists in mental energies trying to draw the will to their side. Farthest removed from the sphere of direct influence of the unconscious seems to stand law, since it grants to gratification in pleasure the smallest place and represents most strictly the mate- rial and logical conformity to the end in view, thus, adaptation to reality. Law, in its pure form, renounces entirely the demands on the community of emotional interest, its formula is not the "you should" of ethics but the matter of fact "if you do this and do not do that, a definite injury will be done you by the community or a definite advantage withheld," wherein it leaves out of practical consideration for the individual to decide. In this, the statutes stand nearer to the taboo than does ethics, only the taboo threatens an indefinite evil from indefinite source. If this didn't happen, then probably the punishment was decreed by the community and thus the transition from taboo prohibition to law was effected. We leave entirely out of consideration the civil law, and would devote a short consideration only to the criminal law, which, because of its saturation with ethical and religious views, stands nearer to the unconscious mental life. This relationship makes its appearance also outwardly by the manifold symbolism with which legal decisions and execution of punishment were Il8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS adorned among all peoples. 57 Even in our time, which puts aside the symbolism that is otherwise unsuitable for practical ends, a bit of this symbolic dress has remained in the criminal process. The significance of this symbolism has been happily investigated by J. Storfer 58 in a case of punishment of parricide in ancient Rome. He succeeded in showing that the symbolism has been the expression of the universal unconscious assumption, that the motive for the murder of a father (the basic case of parricide), is always the striving for the sole possession of the mother. Of such an hypothetical form of the participation of the unconscious in punishment, we may naturally speak, only in figurative sense. In truth, the case must be that every individual unconsciously transfers himself into the mental situation of the criminal, identifies himself with the latter. The crime, which the community punishes, was thus unconsciously committed by each of its members. The punishment gives the community welcome opportunity to do the otherwise forbidden cruelty under a social sanction. The predilection with which on such occa- sion the same was meted out to the criminal as he had done and the unconscious of the others had wished (jus talionis), is to be considered as final real execution of the wish awakened by the crime. The criminal who committed these acts which the others have already renounced thus represents a lower stage of control of instincts, viewed from the standpoint of present day culture, a phenomenon of regression to more primitive epochs. The an- thropological similarity between the criminal and the savage, emphasized by Lombroso, has a psychological parallel in the neurotic, who fails in the social order from failure of repression of instinct, though in different manner. (Criminal psychology has hitherto made little use of the in- sight of psychoanalysis. 59 One way, which allows the recog- nition of a connection with the unconscious, was indicated by 57 Max Schlesinger, Die Geschichte des Symbols, Berlin, 1912, Book III, Chap. 2, as well as other literature there noted (page 267 ft.). 5S J. Storfer, Zur Sonderstellung des Vatermordes, Vienna and Leip- sic, 1911. 59 In this connection, compare Erich Wulffen, Der Sexualverbrecher, Berlin, 1909. PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 1 19 the association experiment. The method chosen in that is the one elaborated by the Swiss school of psychoanalysis (Jung and others), in which it had been demonstrated that the feelings and experiences of the subject of the experiment could frequently be brought to light by his reactions to a series of selected stimu- lus words. Since for the criminal his act belongs to the strongly emotionally toned complexes, the attempt was made to deter- mine the condition of facts and convict the presumptive crim- inal. 60 We have previously spoken of crime, as a phenomenon of regression, and must now also consider the question under what conditions a deed could be so estimated. Also in this regard, the previously mentioned work of Storfer affords valuable ex- planation. In this early stage of social development, in the epoch of patriarchies, murder of the father was synonymous with high treason ; since the primitive kind of expiation other- wise practiced, the blood revenge, was impossible in this case — not within the family because the son, by the success of his deed, would have become chief of his sex and not from family to family, because no injury to a strange fellow man was present — the endeavor to protect the life of the most important member of the community became the first occasion for the establishment of culpability for an act, from the viewpoint of public law. Therefore, murder of a father is to be considered as the arche- type of crime. In primitive relations, the motive of such a deed is to be sought in the economic rivalry between father and son. As a matter of fact, there exists among many people the institution of setting aside the father by the son who has attained power. Amidst the family property, the wife stands in first rank and the exclusive right of the father to all the women of the family has left behind its traces in the jus primse noctis of the patriarchal commonwealth. The parallels with what psychoanalysis has found in the unconscious mental life of the individual may thus be shown in the origin and development of the criminal law. 60 C. G. Jung, Die psycholog. Diagnose des Tatbestandes, Juristisch- psychiatrische Grenzfragen, IV, 2, Marhold, Halle, 1906. A. Stohr, Psychologie der Aussage, Das Recht, Sammlung v. Abhand- lungen f. Juristen und Laien, Vol. IX/X, Berlin, 1912. CHAPTER VII Pedagogy and Characterology Psychoanalysis is not merely a science which represents an essential enrichment of our knowledge of human mental life; (rather, it was first elaborated as a practical method of treatment for influencing mental disturbances. The essence of the therapeutic technique consists in freeing the patient from the obsessional control of certain instinctive impulses, unbearable to his ego, but insufficiently repressed, which develop their preponderating effect from the unconscious, while the unsuitable process of repression automatically pro- ceeding from the pleasure-pain principle is annulled in the anal- ysis and replaced by the conscious control of these impulses, corresponding to the adaptation to reality. The means of this influencing are, according to the nature of the malady, less of an intellectual than of an affective kind, and are aided by the patient's desire for health, as well as his intel- lectual interest in the analysis. By the associations of the pa- tient, his dreams, symptomatic acts, mistakes, and other expres- sions, avenues to his unconscious are created and gradually broad- ened, during which, the intensity of the original repression meets the physician as resistance against the disclosure of the uncon- scious. The overcoming of this resistance is the chief task of the treatment. It succeeds only with the help of a dynamic factor, on the correct grasping of which, the possibility and out- come of the treatment depend. It is this, the influence of the physician, which becomes possible on the basis of a definite af- fective attitude of the patient which we call transference, be- cause it corresponds to a sum of affect of sympathy or antipathy transposed to the person of the physician, which had once been applied to important and authoritative persons of childhood (parents, relatives, nurses, teachers, priests). In the employ- ment of the , suggestive factor, psychoanalysis differs from all other psychotherapeutic methods in the fact that it remains con- PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 121 tinually conscious of the peculiar nature of its activity and utilizes the pliant faith of the patient to accomplish lasting changes in his mental life, which guarantees him, after the necessary dissolution of the transference relation, his mental capability and independence. The effect of the psychoanalytic influence comes from two factors: the freeing of the repressed instinctive impulses from the false symptom-forming attitude and the new and suitable adaptation of these impulses to the real possibilities of gratifica- tion, that is, the directing into socially valuable paths of ac- tivity (sublimation), which arrangements had failed in an earlier stage of development. The psychoanalytic therapy is thus to be compared to a " late reeducation in the conquering of the rem- nants of childhood" (Freud) and as such has a claim on peda- gogic esteem. Of course, the therapy developed for adult and melancholy individuals is not suited without change to be transferred to direct application to the healthy growing child. The nature of the psychoanalytic task, and its solution, brought along with it the circumstance that, at first, it throws light only on what one might call the negative side of the educational problem, since it teaches us what influences are to be kept from the child in order to protect it from the later ruin in the neurosis, the downfall of all educational results. The foundation for the prosecution of the positive pedagogic task must be an understanding sexual education, particularly sexual enlightenment. This should not result from, as so often happens, gross seduction, brusque initiation or accidental over- hearing of sexual acts (especially of the parents). Rather, all these injurious influences are to be kept away, but on the other side, every forcing away from healthy sexual knowledge, espe- cially every kind of mysteriousness in sexual matters is to be avoided. So far as possible, one should leave the child alone, with as complete withholding of direct injurious influences as possible, and inhibit him as little as possible in his natural de- velopment. The child takes the sexual affairs of which he re- ceives knowledge from the processes of his own sharp sighted observation of the bits of nature around him at first like other IJ2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS facts of experience and so must the adult learn to accept them, if he will be a helpful counselor to the child. A real explanation would first have to be given, as soon as the child himself, by spontaneous questions, betrays an intense interest in the meaning of sexual processes, which, because of his limited experience, can be only partially or not at all comprehensible. The growing boy, who is interested in the question Whence come Children? has a right, if not to complete at least to undistorted information, the withholding or falsification of which, may be severely avenged later. But further, an imme- diately fateful result may come about in the child, who, as a rule, is informed to some extent before the question is asked, if he feels himself lied to and deceived by his parents. Not seldom, he loses all reverence and trust for adults and becomes accessible with difficulty to influence from the educator. For, already in the child there arises that portentous trans- ference relation of libidinous impulses toward the persons of his nearest surroundings, which was recognized both in the psychoanalytic treatment and in the normal education, as the most important lever of suggestive influence. As the child stands in relation to the parents, especially the father, so will he arrange his attitude toward the respective persons later repre- senting this authority (teacher, priest, superior, chief, etc.) and, therefore, the most important condition of all later educational work remains the formation and preservation of good relations in the family, which, at present, unfortunately, are only the ex- ception and not the rule. On the other side, these relations should not become too intimate, since otherwise, the capability for transference, sublimation and separation of the parent libido, may be rendered difficult and even limited to neurotic fixation. The smooth separation from the authority of the parents and the personalities representing them, is one of the most important but also most difficult performances which is incumbent upon the child at the close of his educational work, if he is to attain mental and social independence. Here, pedagogy has much to learn from the transference relation and its gradual dissolution in the psychoanalytic treatment. Psychoanalysis allows, however, not only the exhibition and PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 1 23 avoidance of errors of education hitherto committed but may also lead to the attainment of better results of a positive nature. The psychoanalytic study of the neuroses has illuminated, from the dynamic side, the problem of character formation and de- velopment which had previously remained in almost total dark- ness. Of course, it can say nothing concerning heredity in- fluencing the character of the man, which goes beyond the scanty and uncertain results of the theory of heredity, but knows ever so much more of the process of its growth, which is decisively determined by external and internal processes of the individual life. Character can be conceived as an especially clear mode of reaction of the individual, taking place in typical manner ; the analytic investigation has now shown that in its formation a far smaller share falls to the intellectual agencies than one had hitherto been inclined to believe. Rather, the character struc- ture rests on an economy of mental interplay of forces suitable for the individual, which sometimes demands a quite definite dis- tribution of masses of affect, a certain amount of gratification, suppression and sublimation of instinct. The remaining charac- ter traits of a man are either unchanged continuations of the original instinctive impulses, diversions of the same to higher aims, or reaction formations against the same. Thus can a child, perhaps originally cruel, who gratifies himself sadistically by tormenting animals, later become a butcher or ardent devotee of hunting and thereby continue the old satisfaction and gratifi- cation of instinct in little modified, though socially more useful manner ; he may, however, choose a profession which allows him this in the service of higher, more intellectual and more scien- tific interests and perhaps, as naturalist, carry on vivisection with especial interest or as surgeon perform valuable service to science and his fellow men ; in a third case, the all too powerful instinctive impulse may fall under intensive repression and seek gratification by way of reaction formation in humanitarian and ethical activities, which are opposed to the original instinctive aims, thus, the cruel sadistic child becomes in later life out- wardly sympathetic and devotes himself with special predilec- tion possibly to protection of animals. Finally, there are pos- sible by the strengthening of original instinctive tendencies dur- 124 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS ing the course of development and deficient formation of inhibi- tions, the antisocial outcomes in perversion (sadism) and crime (cut-throat), as on the other side, an overintense repression can lead to unfortunate outcome in the asocial neurosis (obsessional). Other attributes of character show less simple relations to the component instincts underlying them or the endeavors spring- ing from these; many are not simple in their origin, since indi- vidual components of instinct can undergo various fates; on the other hand, many partial instincts may have interacted for the ultimate formation of a character trait, strengthening, paralyz- ing, limiting one another. Still, psychoanalytic analysis of in- stinct has shown that our best virtues, many of our most valuable mental achievements and social institutions owe their origin to the transformation of instincts which were originally evil, low and asocial. Also for the child's later choice of a vocation and the so frequent fateful mistakes therein, the psychoanalytic method of consideration gives the educator certain points of vantage which are worthy of attention, even though often enough, in individual cases, external factors resisting influence inexorably demand their rights. In general, the individual will come nearest to the ideal of education, of being subjectively most happy and at the same time most efficiently fulfilling his profession in the service of society where he is permitted to utilize the infantile sources of instinctive activity in a sublimated and for society more useful form, like that in the above mentioned case of the surgeon. Besides the dynamic conception, a further piece of psycho- analytic comprehension of character formation rests on the in- sight, that just the component instincts of sexuality, which are unsuitable in normal social and love life, are earliest capable of such modifications and improvements, so that it is, therefore, the task of education to take the expressions of these asocial and " perverse " instincts in the child, not as occasion for their sharp- est violent suppression, but as indications of the proper time and place for a favorable influencing of the instinctive tendency. In particular, there are in early childhood, pleasurable sensation, con- nected with the excretory functions (anal and urethral eroticism) which undergo the most intensive repression with present-day PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEEOLOGY 125 civilized people, and afford by reaction formations against these "animal" interests, essential contributions to the formation of character. The relation of man toward his animal functions (to which sexuality is also reckoned) and the kind of his mental reaction structures to these, are not only characteristic in gen- eral for individuals but seem also, to establish essential racial differences and inclinations. For the educator, there results from psychoanalytic experi- ence, the demand to keep more sharply in mind, besides the in- tellectual components of character formation, especially the af- fective agencies of transference, further the dynamic ones of the sexual instinctive share and its fate, and by consciously di- rected guidance, to make these useful. In this sense, psycho- analysis must first become an educational method for healthy adults, as it is already for adult patients, with whom the healthy have in common the bit of amnesia for the important processes of childhood, which renders difficult and prevents the under- standing of the mental life of the child. It will be the task of a psychoanalytic propaganda to educate the educator to self knowl- edge, to mutual freedom and candor, which are demanded for intimate dealing with children and for their favorable influencing. Throughout, psychoanalysis warns against imposing on the child too severe demands for repression, emphasizing rather, more careful consideration of the individual capabilities which, of course, should be raised to a certain common cultural level. In general, it cannot be so much the task of education to create new repressions in violent manner, as rather to observe care- fully, and support appropriately, in its appearance and progress, the tendencies to repression, which has already begun spon- taneously on the basis of internal processes and the general in- fluence of civilization ; in particular, to see that this repression is not demanded in exaggerated intensity, thus turning the instinct into false and injurious channels. Psychoanalysis recommends striving for control of instinct in place of suppression of instinct, the aiding by certain premiums of pleasure the child in the re- nunciation of momentary gratification in pleasure in favor of a later more valuable one adapted to the demands of reality; these premiums, however, should not consist in customary manner of 126 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS material things (playthings, candy, money, etc.) but in ideal values. The child is only to be educated by love, and under this condition, will feel sufficiently punished by the temporary withdrawal of this. Only for a beloved person does he gladly give up the undesirable activities and aims, and assumes in imi- tation, by way of identification with adults, what culture, in the shape of this beloved object of love, demands of him. Outside of the negative and positive hints and stimuli which pedagogy can gain and make use of, from the results of psycho- analytic investigation of the mental life of the adult, in the edu- cation of those who have failed, the practice of pedagogy offers frequent opportunity for bringing into direct application the psychoanalytic viewpoints and technical aids, where we have to deal with children and youths who are already in false paths, to influence favorably and to prevent further, perhaps serious in- juries, even before they have opportunity to encroach in devas- tating activity upon the social life. Excluded from pedagogic influence in this sense are feeble-minded, morally deficient or degenerate individuals, as well as outspoken neurotics, whose treatment should be left to the analytically trained physician. In spite of these limitations, there is open to the pedagogues and also, as the promising works of the Zurich pastor, Dr. Oskar Pfister show, to the spiritual adviser, a rich and fruitful field of work, which, as yet, lies as good as fallow. A mass of childish peculiarities, which are either not at all, or falsely understood, and are usually rendered worse by the bad pedagogical measures, reveal themselves to the educator trained in psychoanalysis, at first glance, as neurotic traits determined by the unconscious; the early recognition of these traits in the period of their ap- pearance in youthful age, can easily render them innocuous ; at the same time, the neurotically disposed individual is enabled by such attention to enter upon the struggle for the control of his instinctive life, better prepared. Everyone who has experienced, even in a few cases, the satisfaction of having childish faults, as meanness, stubborness, shyness, lying, stealing, fear of work, which faults had obstinately resisted every pedagogical influence, disappear as result of the psychoanalytical tracing back of these activities to neurotic attitude toward the parents, or false dis- PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 1 27 placement of instinct, indeed, often to see these vices give place to opposite virtues, must give expression to the conviction that psychoanalysis is destined to perform invaluable service to the science of education. But further, certain severe clinical symp- toms, as anxiety conditions of definite kind (fear of animals, pavor nocturnus, etc.), idiosyncrasies (against foods, persons, objects), eccentricities and mild nervous symptoms of physical nature (stuttering, nervous cough, clearing of the throat) prove by their neurotic character and the easily attainable influencing from circumstances under the control of the educator, to be ac- cessible objects for pedagogical psychoanalysis; at any rate, they are recognizable, in statu nascendi, to the analytically trained educator, and where it is necessary, can be referred early to medical treatment. In general, one may say that psychoanalysis, as it has already progressed far beyond its originally purely therapeutic signifi- cance to a science, indeed to a mental movement, also gains its pedagogic application beyond the field of individual prophylaxis in a social significance as a positive educational theory. And if also the psychoanalytic direction of investigation calls upon it to proceed, always of necessity, from the unconscious mental life, still, it is not to be overlooked that in ultimate end, psycho- analysis strives for the better control of this unconscious by constant widening of the conscious field of vision. Therewith of course, is imposed on man, who, with the beginning of civili- zation, had to learn to renounce the direct utilization of certain sources of pleasure, and with the gradual progress of culture, also the wish compensations of these, described in the fore- going chapters, a further denial, which is counterbalanced by the intellectual factor of pleasurably toned knowledge and conscious control of his own ego, as well as the outer world itself, up to a certain degree. In this renunciation of the pleasure principle in favor of adaptation to reality demanded of humanity, educa- tion is our most valuable means of assistance, since it can pre- pare the young and growing human child for this adaptation at the right time, show him suitable ways to substitute gratifica- tion, and thus make him adapted to the civilized life, while it avoids and prevents the flight into the old mental attitudes which have been abandoned as unsuitable. No 14 General Paresis. By PROF. E. KRAEPELIN, Price $3.0.0.. (Illustrated.) A masterly presentation of the subject of general paresis by the renowned Munich professor. No. 15. Dreams and Myths. By DR. KARL ABRAHAM, Price $1.00. Tr. by Dr. W. A. White. ,. A very lucid presentation of Freud's theory of dreams and the application of ' the principles of dream interpretation to the understanding of certain myths. A study in comparative mythology from the standpoint of dream psychology. No. 16. Poliomyelitis. By DR. I. 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