the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most
painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for
this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal
grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social
progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two
generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics
whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very
problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place
the sole authority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them,
_i.e._, the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father or
mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child’s
early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it
about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category
to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child,
who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in
doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested
them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a
mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents, and
the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain
ways, is utilized for this attitude of the child towards the parents.
From the psychology of the neuroses, we have learned that very intense
emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection.
The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected.
Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected,
or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love
of the parents, or at least regrets having to share the same with the
other children of the family. The feeling that one’s own inclinations
are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea,—often
consciously remembered from very early years,—of being a step-child,
or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics, very
frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior
of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this
fashion, usually under the influence of story books. The influence
of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater
tendency to harbor hostile feelings against his father than his mother,
with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father
than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly
much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic
emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the
interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously remembered,
but can almost invariably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is
the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from
the parents, which may be designated by the term _Family Romance
of Neurotics_. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental
qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which
is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about
the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family
relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty
is represented by the familiar _day dreams_,[77] which are continued
until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these day dreams
shows that they serve for the fulfilment of wishes, for the righting
of life, and that they have two essential objects, one erotic, the
other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic factor concealed
therein). About the time in question the child’s imagination is engaged
upon the task of getting rid of the parents, who are now despised and
are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The
child utilizes an accidental coincidence of actual happenings (meetings
with the lord of the manor, or the proprietor of the estate, in the
country; with the reigning prince, in the city. In the United States
with some great statesman, millionaire). Accidental occurrences of
this kind arouse the child’s envy, and this finds its expression in
fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank.
The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by
this time have become conscious, depends upon the child’s adroitness,
and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise enters into
consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim
to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is
still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. With
the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and
mother; with the child’s realization of the fact that the father is
always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain—the family romance
undergoes a peculiar restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the
father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned,
but accepted as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage
of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which
did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of sexual
matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and
relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother,
or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of
secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. In this way the
primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved
later understanding.
The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally to the
front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly those who
were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and
they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The
younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive
their predecessors of their advantage by fables of this kind (exactly
as in the intrigues of history). Frequently they do not hesitate in
crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. An
interesting variation of this family romance restores the legitimacy
of the plotting hero himself, while the other children are disposed
of in this way as illegitimate. The family romance may be governed
besides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by
its adaptability and variegated character. The little romancer gets rid
in this fashion for example of the kinship of a sister, who may have
attracted him sexually.
Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of the child
mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such matters,
should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such
a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection
of the child for his parents is still preserved under their thin
disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child
are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of
these romantic fancies, namely the substitution of both parents, or
of the father alone, by more exalted personages—the discovery will
be made that these new and highborn parents are invested throughout
with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true
lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father
but exalts him. _The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a
more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing
for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the
strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most
beautiful woman._ The child turns away from the father, as he now
knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his
imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy
time having passed away. _Thus the overvaluation of the earliest years
of childhood again claims its own in these fancies._[78] An interesting
contribution to this subject is furnished by the study of the dreams.
Dream-interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams
of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the
father and the mother.[79] Thus the infantile overvaluation of the
parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult.
As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we feel
justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero of the
myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family romances and hero
myths; keeping in mind that the myth throughout reveals an endeavor to
get rid of the parents, and that the same wish arises in the phantasies
of the individual child at the time when it is trying to establish its
personal independence. The ego of the child behaves in this respect
like the hero of the myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should
always be interpreted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped
with all the excellences. In a similar manner, the hero in personal
poetic fiction, usually represents the poet himself, or at least one
side of his character.
Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the descent from
noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box, and the raising
by lowly parents; followed in the further evolution of the story by
the hero’s return to his first parents, with or without punishment
meted out to them. It is very evident that the two parent couples of
the myth correspond to the real and the imaginary parent couple of the
romantic phantasy. Closer inspection reveals the psychological identity
of the humble and the noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and
neurotic phantasies.
In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood,
the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic
phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the
actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family romance is simply
realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to the actual conditions.
The hostility of the father, and the resulting exposure, accentuate the
motive which has caused the ego to indulge in the entire fiction. The
fictitious romance is the excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings
which the child harbors against his father, and which in this fiction
are projected against the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore,
is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic
phantasy. The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic
romance, while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child.
Rescue and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the
essence of the phantasy.
In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as just
sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret
certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to require
a special explanation. This demand would seem to acquire special
importance in view of the fact that no satisfactory explanation
of these details is forthcoming in the writings of even the most
enthusiastic astral mythologists, or natural philosophers. Such details
are represented by the regular occurrence of dreams (or oracles), and
by the mode of exposure in a box and in the water. These motives do not
at first glance seem to permit a psychologic derivation. Fortunately
the study of dream-symbolisms permits the elucidation of these elements
of the hero-myth. The utilization of the same material in the dreams
of healthy persons and neurotics[80] indicates that the exposure in
the water signifies no more and no less than the _symbolic expression
of birth_. The children come out of the “water.”[81] The basket,
box or receptacle[82] simply means the container, the womb; so that
the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although it is
represented by its opposite.
Those who object to this representation by opposites should
remember how often the dream works with the same mechanism (compare
“Traumdeutung,” II edition, p. 238). A confirmation of this
interpretation of the exposure, as taken from the common human
symbolism, is furnished by the material itself, in the dream dreamt by
the grandfather (or still more convincingly by the mother herself)[83]
in the Ktesian version of Kyros before his birth; in this dream, so
much water flows from the lap of the expectant mother as to inundate
all Asia, like an enormous ocean.[84] It is remarkable that in
both cases the Chaldeans correctly interpreted these water dreams
as birth-dreams. In all probability, these dreams themselves are
constructed out of the knowledge of a very ancient and universally
understood symbolism, with a dim foresight of the relations and
connections which are appreciated and presented in Freud’s teachings.
There he says (“Traumdeutung,” 2d edition, p. 199) in referring to a
dream in which the dreamer hurls herself in the dark water of a lake:
Dreams of this sort are birth-dreams, and their interpretation is
accomplished by reversing the fact as communicated in the manifest
dream; namely, instead of hurling oneself into the water, it means
emerging from the water, _i.e._, to be born.[85] The justice of this
interpretation, which renders the water-dream equivalent to the
exposure, is again confirmed by the fact that precisely in the Kyros
saga, which contains the water-dream, the motive of the exposure in the
water is lacking, while only the basket, which does not occur in the
dream, plays a part in the exposure.
In this interpretation of the exposure as the birth, we must not let
ourselves be disturbed by the discrepancy in the succession of the
individual elements of the symbolized materialization, with the real
birth process. This chronological rearrangement or even reversal
has been explained by Freud as due to the general manner in which
recollections are elaborated into phantasies; the same material
reappears in the phantasies, but in an entirely novel arrangement, and
no attention whatsoever is paid to the natural sequence of the acts.[86]
Besides this chronological reversal, the reversal of the contents
requires special explanation. The first reason for the representation
of the birth by its opposite,—the life threatening exposure in the
water, is the accentuation of the parental hostility towards the future
hero.[87] The creative influence of this tendency to represent the
parents as the first and most powerful opponents of the hero will be
appreciated, when it is kept in mind that the entire family-romance
in general owes its origin to the feeling of being neglected, namely
the assumed hostility of the parents. In the myth, this hostility
goes so far that the parents refuse to let the child be born, which
is precisely the reason of the hero’s lament, moreover, the myth
plainly reveals the desire to enforce his materialization even against
the will of the parents. The vital peril which is thus concealed in
the representation of birth through exposure, actually exists in the
process of birth itself. The overcoming of all these obstacles also
expresses the idea that the future hero has actually overcome the
greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth, for he has victoriously
thwarted all attempts to prevent it.[88] Or another interpretation
may be admitted, according to which the youthful hero, foreseeing
his destiny to taste more than his share of the bitterness of life,
deplores in pessimistic mood the inimical act which has called him
to earth. He accuses the parents, as it were, for having exposed him
to the struggle of life, for having allowed him to be born.[89] The
refusal to let the son be born, which belongs especially to the father,
is frequently concealed by the contrast motive, the wish for a child
(as in Œdipus, Perseus and others), while the hostile attitude towards
the future successor on the throne and in the kingdom is projected to
the outside, namely it is attributed to an oracular verdict, which is
thereby revealed as the substitute of the ominous dream, or better, as
the equivalent of its interpretation.
From another point of view, however, the family romance shows that the
phantasies of the child, although apparently estranging the parents,
have nought else to say concerning them besides their confirmation as
the real parents. The exposure myth, translated with the assistance of
symbolism, likewise contains nothing but the assurance: this is my
mother, who has borne me at the command of the father. But on account
of the tendency of the myth, and the resulting transference of the
hostile attitude, from the child to the parents, this assurance of
the real parentage can only be expressed as the repudiation of such
parentage.
On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the
hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns especially
the father. Usually, as in the myth of Œdipus, Paris, and others, the
royal father receives a prophecy of some disaster, threatening him
through the expected son; then it is the father who causes the exposure
of the boy and who pursues and menaces him in all sorts of ways after
his unlooked-for rescue, but finally succumbs to his son, according to
the prophecy. In order to understand this trait, which at first may
appear somewhat startling, it is not necessary to explore the heavens
for some process into which this trait might be laboriously fitted.
Looking with open eyes and unprejudiced minds at the relations between
parents and children, or between brothers such as these exist in
reality[90]—a certain tension is frequently, if not regularly revealed
between father and son, or still more distinctly a competition between
brothers; although this tension may not be obvious and permanent, it is
lurking in the sphere of the unconscious, as it were, with periodical
eruptions. Erotic factors are especially apt to be involved, and as a
rule the deepest, generally unconscious root of the dislike of the son
for the father, or of two brothers for each other, is referable to the
competition for the tender devotion and love of the mother. The Œdipus
myth shows plainly, only in grosser dimensions, the accuracy of this
interpretation, for the parricide is here followed by the incest with
the mother. This erotic relation with the mother, which predominates in
other mythic cycles, is relegated to the background in the myths of the
birth of the hero,[91] while the opposition against the father is more
strongly accentuated.
The fact that this infantile rebellion against the father is
apparently provoked in the birth myths by the hostile behavior of the
father is due to a reversal of the relation, known as projection,
which is brought about by very peculiar characteristics of the myth
forming psychic activity. The projection mechanism, which also bore
its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well as
certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed
presently,—necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth
as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar
processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately
connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating
or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. This process, as
illustrated by the two parents couples, provides the foundation for the
myth formation, and together with the projection mechanism supplies the
key to the understanding of an entire series of otherwise inexplicable
configurations of the myth. As the motor power for this projection
of the hero’s hostile attitude on to the father stands revealed the
wish for its justification, arising from the troublesome realization
of these feelings against the father. The displacement process which
begins with the projection of the troublesome sensation is still
further continued, however, and with the assistance of the mechanism
of separation or dissociation, it has found a different expression of
its gradual progress in very characteristic forms of the hero myth. In
the original psychologic setting, the father is still identical with
the king, the tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this
relation is manifested in those myths in which the separation of the
tyrannical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but
not yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the
hero, usually as his grandfather, for example in the Kyros-myth with
all its versions, and in the majority of all hero myths in general.
In the separation of the father’s part from that of the king, this
type signifies the first return step of the descent fantasy toward
the actual conditions, and accordingly the hero’s father appears in
this type mostly as a lowly man: See Kyros, Gilgamos and others.
The hero thus arrives again at an approach toward his parents, the
establishment of a certain kinship, which finds its expression in the
fact that not only the hero himself, but also his father and his mother
represent objects of the tyrant’s persecution. The hero in this way
acquires a more intimate connection with the mother (they are often
exposed together: Perseus, Telephos, Feridun), who is nearer to him on
account of the erotic relation; while the renouncement of his hatred
against the father here attains the expression of its most forcible
reaction,[92] for the hero henceforth appears, as in the Hamlet saga,
not as the persecutor of his father (or grandfather, respectively)
but as the avenger of the persecuted father. This involves a deeper
relation of the Hamlet saga with the Iranese story of Kaikhosrav,
where the hero likewise appears as the avenger of his murdered father
(compare Feridun and others).
The person of the grandfather himself, who in certain sagas appears
replaced by other relatives (the uncle, in the Hamlet saga), also
possesses a deeper meaning.[93] The myth complex of the incest with
the mother—and the related revolt against the father—is here combined
with the second great complex, which has for its contents the erotic
relations between father and daughter. Under this heading belongs
besides other widely ramified groups of sagas (quoted in the author’s
“Incest Book,” Chapter XI), the story which is told in countless
versions of a _newborn boy_, of whom it is _prophesied_ that he is to
become the _son-in-law_ and _heir_ of a certain ruler or potentate,
and who finally does so in spite of all persecutions (exposure and
so forth) on the part of the latter. Detailed literary references
concerning the wide distribution of this story are found in R. Köhler,
“Kleine Schriften,” II, 357. The father who refuses to give his
daughter to any of her suitors, or who attaches certain conditions
difficult of fulfillment to the winning of the daughter, does this
because he really begrudges her to all others, for when all is told he
wishes to possess her himself. He locks her up in some inaccessible
spot, so as to safeguard her virginity (Perseus, Gilgamos, Telephos,
Romulus), and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the daughter
and her offspring with insatiable hatred. However, the unconscious
sexual motives of his hostile attitude, which is later on avenged by
his grandson, render it evident that again the hero kills in him simply
the man who is trying to rob him of the love of his mother: namely the
father.
Another attempt at a reversal to a more original type consists in
the following trait: The return to the lowly father, which has been
brought about through the separation of the father’s rôle from that
of the king, is again nullified through the lowly father’s secondary
elevation to the rank of a god, as in Perseus and the other sons of
virgin mothers; Karna, Ion, Romulus, Jesus. The secondary character of
this godly paternity is especially evident in those myths where the
virgin who has been impregnated by divine conception, later on marries
a mortal (Jesus, Karna, Ion) who then appears as the real father, while
the god as the father represents merely the most exalted childish idea
of the magnitude, power and perfection of the father.[94] At the same
time, these myths strictly insist upon the motive of the virginity of
the mother, which elsewhere is merely hinted at. The first impetus is
perhaps supplied by the transcendental tendency, necessitated through
the introduction of the god. At the same time, the birth from the
virgin is the most abrupt repudiation of the father, the consummation
of the entire myth, as illustrated by the Sargon legend, which does not
admit any father, besides the vestal mother.
The last stage of this progressive attenuation of the hostile relation
to the father is represented by that form of the myth in which the
person of the royal persecutor not only appears entirely detached from
that of the father, but has even lost the remotest kinship with the
hero’s family, which he opposes in the most hostile manner, as its
enemy (in Feridun, Abraham, King Herod against Jesus, and others).
Although of his original threefold character as the father, the king,
and the persecutor, he retains only the part of the royal persecutor
or the tyrant, the entire plan of the myth conveys the impression as
if nothing had been changed, but as if the designation as “father”
had been simply replaced by the term of “tyrant.” This interpretation
of the father as a “tyrant” which is typical of the infantile
ideation,[95] will be found later on to possess the greatest importance
for the interpretation of certain abnormal constellations of this
complex.
The prototype of this identification of the king with the father,
which regularly recurs also in the dreams of adults, presumably is
the origin of royalty from the patriarchate in the family, which is
still attested by the use of identical words for king and father, in
the Hindoo-Germanic languages[96] (compare the German “Landesvater,”
father of his country, = king). The reversal of the family romance to
actual conditions is almost entirety accomplished in this type of myth.
The lowly parents are acknowledged with a frankness which seems to be
directly contradictory to the tendency of the entire myth.
Precisely this revelation of the real conditions, which hitherto had
to be left to the interpretation, enables us to prove the accuracy of
the latter from the material itself. The biblical Moses-legend has been
selected, as especially well adapted to this purpose.
Briefly summarizing the outcome of the previous
interpretation-mechanism, to make matters plainer, we find the two
parent-couples to be identical, after their splitting into the
personalities of the father and the tyrannical persecutor has been
connected; the high born parents being the echo, as it were, of the
exaggerated notions which the child originally harbored concerning
its parents. The Moses-legend actually shows the parents of the hero
divested of all prominent attributes; they are simple people, devotedly
attached to the child, and incapable of harming it. Meanwhile, the
assertion of tender feelings for the child is a confirmation, here
as well as everywhere, of the bodily parentage (compare Akki, the
gardener, in the Gilgamos-legend; the teamster, in the story of Karna;
the fisher, in the Perseus myth, etc.). The amicable utilization of
the exposure motive, which occurs in this type of myth, is referable
to such a relationship. The child is surrendered in a basket to the
water, but not with the object of killing it (as for example the
hostile exposure of Œdipus and many other heroes), but for the purpose
of saving it (compare also Abraham’s early history, p. 15). The danger
fraught warning to the exalted father becomes a hopeful prophecy for
the lowly father (compare, in the birth story of Jesus, the oracle for
Herod and Joseph’s dream), entirely corresponding to the expectations
placed by most parents in the career of their offspring.
Retaining from the original tendency of the romance, the fact that
Bitiah, Pharaoh’s daughter, drew the child from the water, _i.e._, gave
it birth, the outcome is the familiar theme (grandfather type) of the
king, whose daughter is to bear a son, but who on being warned by the
ill-omened interpretation of a dream, resolves to kill his forthcoming
grandson. The handmaiden of his daughter (who in the biblical story
draws the box from the water, at the behest of the princess), is
charged by the king with the exposure of the newborn child in a box,
in the waters of the river Nile, that it may perish (the exposure
motive, from the viewpoint of the highborn parents, here appearing in
its original disastrous significance). The box with the child is then
found by lowly people, and the poor woman raises the child (as his
wet nurse), and when he is grown up he is recognized by the princess
as her son (just as in the prototype the phantasy concludes with the
recognition by the highborn parents).