as we have reconstructed it from the existing material,[97] the sum of
this interpretation-mechanism would be approximately what is told in
the myth as it is actually transmitted; namely that his true mother was
not a princess, but the poor woman who was introduced as his nurse, her
husband being his father.
This interpretation is offered as the tradition, in the re-converted
myth; and the fact that this tracing of the progressive mutation
furnishes the familiar type of hero myth, is the proof for the
correctness of our interpretation.
It has thus been our good fortune to show the full accuracy of our
interpretative technique upon the material itself, and it is now
time to demonstrate the tenability of the general viewpoint upon
which this entire technique is founded. Hitherto, the results of our
interpretation have created the appearance of the entire myth formation
as starting from the hero himself, namely from the youthful hero. At
the start we took this attitude in analogizing the hero of the myth
with the ego of the child. Now we find ourselves confronted with the
obligation to harmonize these assumptions and conclusions with the
other conceptions of myth formation, which they seem to directly
contradict.
The myths are certainly not constructed by the hero, least of all by
the child hero, but they have long been known to be the product of a
people of adults. The impetus is evidently supplied by the popular
amazement at the apparition of the hero, whose extraordinary life
history the people can only imagine as ushered in by a wonderful
infancy. This extraordinary childhood of the hero, however, is
constructed by the individual myth-makers—to whom the indefinite idea
of the folk-mind must be ultimately traced—from the consciousness of
their own infancy. In investing the hero with their own infantile
history, they identify themselves with him, as it were, claiming to
have been similar heroes in their own personality. The true hero of
the romance is, therefore, the ego, which finds itself in the hero,
by reverting to the time when the ego was itself a hero, through its
first heroic act, _i.e._, the revolt against the father. The ego can
only find its own heroism in the days of infancy, and it is therefore
obliged to invest the hero with its own revolt, crediting him with
the features which made the ego a hero. This object is achieved with
infantile motives and materials, in reverting to the infantile romance
and transferring it to the hero. Myths are, therefore, created by
adults, by means of retrograde childhood fantasies,[98] the hero being
credited with the myth-maker’s personal infantile history. Meanwhile
the tendency of this entire process is the excuse of the individual
units of the people for their own infantile revolt against the father.
Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellious revolt, the myth
therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his revolt
against the father. This revolt had burdened him since his childhood,
as he had failed to become a hero. He is now enabled to excuse himself
by emphasizing that the father has given him grounds for his hostility.
The affectionate feeling for the father is also manifested in the
same fiction, as has been shown above. These myths have therefore
sprung from two opposite motives, both of which are subordinate to
the motive of vindication of the individual through the hero: on the
one hand the motive of affection and gratitude towards the parents;
and on the other hand, the motive of the revolt against the father.
It is not stated outright in these myths, however, that the conflict
with the father arises from the sexual rivalry for the mother, but is
apparently suggested that this conflict dates back primarily to the
concealment of the sexual processes (at childbirth), which in this way
became an enigma for the child. This enigma finds its temporary and
symbolical solution in the infantile sexual theory of the basket and
the water.[99]
The profound participation of the incest motive in myth formation
is discussed in the author’s special investigation of the Lohengrin
saga, which belongs to the myth of the birth of the hero. The cyclic
character of the Lohengrin saga is referred by him to the _fantasy
of being one’s own son_, as revealed by Freud (p. 131; compare also
pp. 96 and 990). This accounts for the identity of father and son,
in certain myths, the repetition of their careers; the fact that the
hero is sometimes not exposed until he has reached maturity, also the
intimate connection between birth and death, in the exposure-motive.
(Concerning the water as the water of death, compare especially chapter
IV of the Lohengrin saga.) Jung, who regards the typical fate of the
hero as the portrayal of the human libido and its typical vicissitudes,
has made this theme the pivot of his interpretation, as the fantasy
of being born again, to which the incest motive is subordinated. Not
only the birth of the hero, which takes place under peculiar symbolic
circumstances, but also the motive of the two mothers of the hero, are
explained by Jung through the birth of the hero taking place under the
mysterious ceremonials of a re-birth from the mother consort (_l. c._,
p. 356).
Having thus outlined the contents of the birth myth of the hero it
still remains for us to point out certain complications within the
birth myth itself, which have been explained on the basis of its
paranoid character, as “splits” of the personality of the royal
father and persecutor. In some myths, however, and especially in the
fairy tales which belong to this group,[100] the multiplication of
mythical personages, and with them, of course, the multiplication of
motives, or even of entire stories, are carried so far that sometimes
the original features are altogether overgrown by these addenda. The
multiplication is so variegated and so exuberantly developed, that
the mechanism of the analysis no longer does it justice. Moreover,
the new personalities here do not show the same independence, as it
were, as the new personalities created by splitting, but they rather
present the characteristics of a copy, a duplicate, or a “double,”
which is the proper mythological term. An apparently very complicated
example, namely, Herodotus’ version of the Kyros saga, illustrates that
these doubles are not inserted purely for ornamentation, or to give a
semblance of historical veracity, but that they are insolubly connected
with the myth-formation and its tendency. Also, in the Kyros-myth, as
in the other myths, the royal grandfather, Astyages, and his daughter,
with her husband, are confronted by the cattle-herder and his wife.
A checkered gathering of other personalities which move around them,
are readily grouped at sight: Between the high born parent couple
and their child stand the administrator Harpagos with his wife and
his son, and the noble Artembares with his legitimate offspring. Our
trained sense for the peculiarities of myth-structure recognizes at
once the doubles of the parents in the intermediate parent-couples and
all the participants are seen to be identical personalities of the
parents and their child; this interpretation being suggested by certain
features of the myth itself. Harpagos receives the child from the
king, to expose it; he therefore acts precisely like the royal father
and remains true to his fictitious paternal part in his reluctance to
kill the child himself—because it is related to him—but he delivers it
instead to the herder Mithradates, who is thus again identified with
Harpagos. The noble Artembares, whose son Kyros causes to be whipped,
is also identified with Harpagos; for when Artembares with his whipped
boy stands before the king, to demand retribution, Harpagos at once
is likewise seen standing before the king, to defend himself, and
he also is obliged to present his son to the king. Thus Artembares
himself plays an episodal part as the hero’s father, and this is fully
confirmed by the Ktesian version, which tells us that the nobleman who
adopted the herder’s son, Kyros, as his own son, was named Artembares.
Even more distinct than the identity of the different fathers is that
of their children, which of course serves to confirm the identity of
the fathers. In the first place, and this would seem to be conclusive,
the _children are all of the same age_. Not only the son of the
princess, and the child of the herder, who are born at the same time;
but Herodotus specially emphasizes that Kyros played the game at
kings, in which he caused the son of Artembares to be whipped, with
boys of the same age. He also points out, perhaps intentionally, that
the _son of Harpagos_, destined to become the playmate of Kyros,
whom the king had recognized, was likewise apparently of the same
age as Kyros. Furthermore, the remains of this boy are placed before
his father, Harpagos, in a basket, it was also a basket in which the
newborn Kyros was to have been exposed, and this actually happened to
his substitute, the herder’s son, whose identity with Kyros is obvious
and tangible in the report of Iustin, p. 34. In this report, Kyros is
actually exchanged with the _living_ child of the herders;, but this
paradoxical parental feeling is reconciled by the consciousness that in
reality nothing at all has been altered by this exchange. It appears
more intelligible, of course, that the herder’s wife should wish to
raise the living child of the king, instead of her own _stillborn_
boy, as in the Herodotus version; but here the identity of the boys
is again evident, for just as the herder’s son suffered death instead
of Kyros in the past, twelve years later the son of Harpagos (also in
the basket) is killed directly for Kyros, whom Harpagos had allowed to
live.[101]
The impression is thereby conveyed that all the multiplications of
Kyros, after having been created for a certain purpose, are again
removed, as disturbing elements, once this purpose has been fulfilled.
This purpose is undoubtedly the exalting tendency which is inherent to
the family romance. The hero in the various duplications of himself
and his parents, ascends the social scale from the herder Mithradates,
by way of the noble Artembares, who is high in the king’s favor, and
of the first administrator, Harpagos, who is personally related to the
king—until he has himself become a prince; so his career is exposed in
the Ktesian version, where Kyros advances from the herder’s son to the
king’s administrator.[102] In this way, he constantly removes, as it
were, the last traces of his ascent, the lower Kyros being discarded
after absolving the different stages of his career.[103]
This complicated myth with its promiscuous array of personages is
thus simplified and reduced to three actors, namely the hero and his
parents. Entirely similar conditions prevail in regard to the “cast”
of many other myths. For example, the duplication may concern the
daughter, as in the Moses myth, in which the princess mother (in order
to establish the identity of the two families)[104] appears among
the poor people as the daughter Miriam, who is merely a split of the
mother, the latter appearing divided into the princess and the poor
woman. In case the duplication concerns the father, his doubles appear
as a rule in the part of relatives, more particularly as his brothers,
as for example in the Hamlet saga, in distinction from the foreign
personages created by the analysis. In a similar way, the grandfather,
who is taking the place of the father, may also appear complemented by
a brother, who is the hero’s grand uncle, and as such his opponent,
as in the myths of Romulus, Perseus and others. Other duplications,
in apparently complicated mythical structures, as for example in
Kaikhosrav, Feridun, and others, are easily recognized when envisaged
from this angle.
The duplication of the fathers, or the grandfathers, respectively, by
a brother may be continued in the next generation, and concern the
hero himself, thus leading to the _brother myths_, which can only be
hinted at in connection with the present theme. The prototypes of the
boy, who in the Kyros saga vanish into thin air after they have served
their purpose, namely the exaltation of the hero’s descent, if they
were to assume a vitality of their own, would come to confront the hero
as competitors with equal rights, namely as his brothers. The original
sequence is probably better preserved through the interpretation of the
hero’s strange doubles as shadowy brothers, who like the twin brother,
must die for the hero’s sake. Not only the father, who is in the way of
the maturing son, but also the interfering competitor, or the brother,
are removed, in a naïve realization of the childish fantasies, for the
simple reason that the hero does not want a family.
The complications of the hero myth with other myth cycles include,
besides the myth of the hostile brothers, which has already been
disposed of, also the actual incest myth, such as forms the nucleus
of the Œdipus myth. The mother, and her relation to the hero, appear
relegated to the background in the myth of the birth of the hero. But
there is another conspicuous motive, meaning that the lowly mother
is so often represented by an animal. This motive of the helpful
animals[105] belongs in part to a series of foreign elements, the
explanation of which would far exceed the scope of this essay.[106]
The animal motive may be fitted into the sequence of our
interpretation, on the basis of the following reflections. In a similar
way as the projection on to the father justifies the hostile attitude
on the part of the son, so the lowering of the mother into an animal
is likewise meant to vindicate the ingratitude of the son, who denies
her. In a similar way as the detachment of the persecuting king from
the father, the exclusive rôle of a wet nurse, alloted to the mother,
in this substitution by an animal, goes back to the separation of
the mother into the parts of the child bearer and the suckler. This
cleavage is again subservient to the exalting tendency, in so far as
the child bearing part is reserved for the high born mother, whereas
the lowly woman, who cannot be eradicated from the early history, must
content herself with the function of a nurse. Animals are especially
appropriate substitutes, because the sexual processes are here plainly
evident also to the child, while the concealment of these processes is
presumably the root of the childish revolt against the parents. The
exposure in the box and in the water asexualizes the birth process, as
it were, in a childlike fashion; the children are fished out of the
water by the stork,[107] who takes them to the parents in a basket. The
animal fable improves upon this idea, by emphasizing the similarity
between human birth and animal birth.
This introduction of the motive may possibly be interpreted from the
parodistic point of view, if we assume that the child accepts the
story of the stork from the parents, feigning ignorance, but adding
superciliously: If an animal has brought me, it may also have nursed
me.[108]
When all is said and done, however, and when the cleavage is followed
back, this separation of the child bearer from the suckler—which
really endeavors to remove the bodily mother entirely, by means of her
substitution through an animal or a strange nurse—does not express
anything beyond the fact: The woman who has suckled me is my mother.
This statement is found directly symbolized in the Moses legend,
the retrogressive character of which we have already studied; for
precisely the woman who is his own mother is chosen to be his nurse
[similarly also in the myth of Herakles, and in the Egyptian-Phenician
Osiris-Adonis myth, where Osiris, encased in a chest, floats down the
river to Phenicia, and is finally found under the name Adonis, by Isis,
who is installed by Queen Astarte as the nurse of her own son].[109]
Only a brief reference can here be made to other motives which seem
to be more loosely related to the entire myth. Such motives include
that of playing the fool, which is suggested in animal fables as the
universal childish attitude towards the grown ups; furthermore, the
physical defects of certain heroes [Zal, Œdipus, Hephaistos], which are
perhaps meant to serve for the vindication of individual imperfections,
in such a way that the reproaches of the father for possible defects
or shortcomings are incorporated in the myth, with the appropriate
accentuation, the hero being endowed with the same weakness which
burdens the self-respect of the individual.
This explanation of the psychological significance of the myth of
the birth of the hero would not be complete without emphasizing its
relations to certain mental diseases. Also readers without psychiatric
training—or these perhaps more than any others, must have been
struck with these relations. As a matter of fact, the hero myths are
equivalent in many essential features to the delusional ideas of
certain psychotic individuals, who suffer from delusions of persecution
and grandeur,—the so called paranoiacs. Their system of delusions is
constructed very much like the hero myth, and therefore indicates
the same psychogenic motives as the neurotic family romance, which
is analysable, whereas the system of delusions is inaccessible even
for psychoanalytical approaches. For example, the paranoiac is apt to
claim that the people whose name he bears are not his real parents,
but that he is actually the son of a princely personage; he was to be
removed for some mysterious reason, and was therefore surrendered to
his “parents” as a foster child. His enemies, however, wish to maintain
the fiction that he is of lowly descent, in order to suppress his
legitimate pretensions to the crown or to enormous riches.[110] Cases
of this kind often occupy alienists or tribunals.[111]
This intimate relationship between the hero myth and the delusional
structure of paranoiacs has already been definitely established through
the characterization of the myth as a paranoid structure, which is
here confirmed by its contents. The remarkable fact that paranoiacs
will frankly reveal their entire romance has ceased to be puzzling,
since the profound investigations of Freud have shown that the contents
of hysterical fantasies, which can often be made conscious through
analysis, are identical up to the minutest details with the complaints
of persecuted paranoiacs; moreover, the identical contents are also
encountered as a reality, in the arrangements of perverts for the
gratification of their desires.[112]
The egotistical character of the entire system is distinctly revealed
by the paranoiac, for whom the exaltation of the parents, as brought
about by him, is merely the means for his own exaltation. As a
rule the pivot for his entire system is simply the culmination of
the family romance, in the apoditic statement: I am the emperor
(or god). Reasoning in the symbolism of dreams and myths, which is
also the symbolism of all fancies, including the “morbid” power of
imagination—all he accomplishes thereby is to put himself in the place
of the father, just as the hero terminates his revolt against the
father. This can be done in both instances, because the conflict with
the father—which dates back to the concealment of the sexual processes,
as suggested by the latest discoveries—is nullified at the instant when
the grown boy himself becomes a father. The persistence with which the
paranoiac puts himself in the father’s place, _i.e._, becomes a father
himself, appears like an illustration to the common answer of little
boys to a scolding or a putting off of their inquisitive curiosity: You
just wait until I am a papa myself, and I’ll know all about it!
Besides the paranoiac, his equally a-social counterpart must also
be emphasized. In the expression of the identical fantasy contents,
the hysterical individual who has suppressed them, is offset by the
pervert, who realizes them, and even so the diseased and passive
paranoiac—who needs his delusion for the correction of the actuality,
which to him is intolerable—is offset by the active criminal, who
endeavors to change the actuality according to his mind. In this
special sense, this type is represented by the anarchist. The hero
himself, as shown by his detachment from the parents, begins his
career in opposition to the older generation; he is at once a rebel,
a renovator, and a revolutionary. However, every revolutionary is
originally a disobedient son, a rebel against the father.[113] (Compare
the suggestion of Freud, in connection with the interpretation of a
“revolutionary dream.” Traumdeutung, II edition, p. 153. See English
translation by Brill. Macmillan. Annotation.)
But whereas the paranoiac, in conformity with his passive character,
has to suffer persecutions and wrongs which ultimately proceed from
the father, and which he endeavors to escape by putting himself in
the place of the father or the emperor—the anarchist complies more
faithfully with the heroic character, by promptly himself becoming
the persecutor of kings, and finally killing the king, precisely like
the hero. The remarkable similarity between the career of certain
anarchistic criminals and the family romance of hero and child has
been illustrated by the author, through special instances (Belege zur
Rettungsphantasie, _Zentralblatt f. Psychoanalyse_, I, 1911, p. 331,
and Die Rolle des Familienromans in der Psychologie des Attentäters,
Internationale Zeitschrift für aerztliche Psychoanalyse, I, 1913).
The truly heroic element then consists only in the real justice or
even necessity of the act, which is therefore generally endorsed and
admired;[114] while the morbid trait, also in criminal cases, is the
pathologic transference of the hatred from the father to the real king,
or several kings, when more general and still more distorted.
As the hero is commended for the same deed, without asking for its
psychic motivation, so the anarchist might claim indulgence from the
severest penalties, for the reason that he has killed an entirely
different person from the one he really intended to destroy, in spite
of an apparently excellent perhaps political motivation of his act.[115]
For the present let us stop at the narrow boundary line where the
contents of innocent infantile imaginings, suppressed and unconscious
neurotic fantasies, poetical myth structures, and certain forms of
mental disease and crime lie close together, although far apart as to
their causes and dynamic forces. We resist the temptation to follow one
of these divergent paths which lead to altogether different realms, but
which are as yet unblazed trails in the wilderness.
INDEX
PAGE
Abraham, 15
Aleos, 21
Alkmene, 45
Akrisios, 22
Ambivalence, 70
Amphion and Zetos, 43
Anarchist, 93
Animal motives, 88
Apollo, 17
Artembares, 29
Arthurian legends, 55
Astyages, 29
Attenuation of myth, 78
Auge, 22
Babylonian myths, 12
Beating, 56
Beowulf, 60
Birth symbols, 69
Blancheflure, 38
Borrowing theories, 2
Box, 69
Bride true, 40
Brother myths, 87
Brothers, hostility of, 88
Buddha, 53
Child psyche and myth formation, 63
Childhood of hero, 81
Conflict of younger and older generation, 64
Content reversals, 72
Criminality and myths, 93
Criticism of parents, 64
Darab, 19
Daughter father, 77
Delusion formation, 91
Dirke, 46
Displacements in myths, 76
Dream and myth, 69
Dreams of water, 71
Dughda, 51
Duplication, 87
Egotism motives, 92
Elsa, 56
Erotic factors, 74
Exposure myths, 72, 73
Family relations, 62
Family romance of neurotics, 65
Father and hero, 61
Father and tyrant, 76
Father daughter, 77
Father replacement, 67
Feridun, 37
Flood myths, 25, 34
Fool motive, 90
Gilgamos, 23, 79
Grandfather replacement, 77
Hamlet, 76
Harpagos, 26, 27, 28
Hekabe, 20
Hercules, 44
Hero and father, 61
Hero and mother, 61
Hero myth, summary of, 67
Herod, 50
Horn, 55
Hostile brothers, 88
Hostility motives, 74
Hysteria and myth, 92
Hysterical fantasies, 92
Incest motive in myth, 83
Infantile imagination, 62