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Psychology of the Unconscious
A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| AUTHOR’S NOTE | xlvii | |
| PART I | ||
| CHAPTER | ||
| INTRODUCTION | 3 | |
| Relation of the Incest Phantasy to the Oedipus Legend—Moral revulsion over such a discovery—The unity of the antique and modern psychology—Followers of Freud in this field—The need of analyzing historical material in relation to individual analysis. | ||
| I.— | CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING | 8 |
| Antiquity of the belief in dreams—Dream-meanings psychological, not literal—They concern wish-fulfilments—A typical dream: the sexual assault—What is symbolic in our every-day thinking?—One kind of thinking: intensive and deliberate, or directed—Directed thinking and thinking in words—Origin of speech in primitive nature sounds—The evolution of speech—Directed thinking a modern acquisition—Thinking, not directed, a thinking in images: akin to dreaming—Two kinds of thinking: directed and dream or phantasy thinking—Science an expression of directed thinking—The discipline of scholasticism as a forerunner—Antique spirit created not science but mythology—Their world of subjective phantasies similar to that we find in the childmind of to-day; or in the savage—The dream shows a similar type—Infantile thinking and dreams a re-echo of the prehistoric and the ancient—The myths a mass-dream of the people: the dream the myth of the individual—Phantastic thinking concerns wishes—Typical cases, showing kinship with ancient myths—Psychology of man changes but slowly—Phantastic thinking tells us of mythical or other material of undeveloped and no longer recognized wish tendencies in the soul—The sexual base—The wish, because of its disturbing nature, expressed not directly, but symbolically. | ||
| II.— | THE MILLER PHANTASIES | 42 |
| Miss Miller’s unusual suggestibility—Identifying herself with others—Examples of her autosuggestibility and suggestive effect—Not striking in themselves, but from analytic viewpoint they afford a glance into the soul of the writer—Her phantasies really tell of the history of her love. | ||
| III.— | THE HYMN OF CREATION | 49 |
| Miss Miller’s description of a sea-journey—Really a description of “introversion”—A retreat from reality into herself—The return to the real world with erotic impression of officer singing in the night-watch—The undervaluing of such erotic impressions—Their often deep effect—The succeeding dream, and poem—The denied erotic impression usurps an earlier transference: it expresses itself through the Father-Imago—Analysis of the poem—Relation to Cyrano, Milton and Job—The attempt to escape the problem by a religious and ethical pose—Contrast with real religion—Escape from erotic by transference to a God or Christ—This made effective by mutual transference: “Love one another”—The erotic spiritualized, however—The inner conflict kept conscious by this method—The modern, however, represses the conflict and so becomes neurotic—The function of Christianity—Its biologic purpose fulfilled—Its forms of thought and wisdom still available. | ||
| IV.— | THE SONG OF THE MOTH | 87 |
| The double rôle of Faust: creator and destroyer—“I came not to send peace, but a sword”—The modern problem of choice between Scylla of world-renunciation and Charybdis of world-acceptance—The ethical pose of The Hymn of Creation having failed, the unconscious projects a new attempt in the Moth-Song—The choice, as in Faust—The longing for the sun (or God) the same as that for the ship’s officer—Not the object, however: the longing is important—God is our own longing to which we pay divine honors—The failure to replace by a real compensation the libido-object which is surrendered, produces regression to an earlier and discarded object—A return to the infantile—The use of the parent image—It becomes synonymous with God, Sun, Fire—Sun and snake—Symbols of the libido gathered into the sun-symbol—The tendency toward unity and toward multiplicity—One God with many attributes: or many gods that are attributes of one—Phallus and sun—The sun-hero, the well-beloved—Christ as sun-god—“Moth and sun” then brings us to historic depths of the soul—The sun-hero creative and destructive—Hence: Moth and Flame: burning one’s wings—The destructiveness of being fruitful—Wherefore the neurotic withdraws from the conflict, committing a sort of self-murder—Comparison with Byron’s Heaven and Earth. | ||
| PART II | ||
| I.— | ASPECTS OF THE LIBIDO | 127 |
| A backward glance—The sun the natural god—Comparison with libido—Libido, “sun-energy”—The sun-image as seen by the mystic in introversion—The phallic symbol of the libido—Faust’s key—Mythical heroes with phallic attributes—These heroes personifications of the human libido and its typical fates—A definition of the word “libido”—Its etymological context. | ||
| II.— | THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO | 139 |
| A widening of the conception of libido—New light from the study of paranoia—The impossibility of restricting the conception of libido to the sexual—A genetic definition—The function of reality only partly sexual—Yet this, and other functions, originally derivations from procreative impulse—The process of transformation—Libido, and the conception of will in general—Examples in mythology—The stages of the libido: its desexualized derivatives and differentiations—Sublimation vs. repression—Splittings off of the primal libido—Application of genetic theory of libido to introversion psychoses—Replacing reality by archaic surrogates—Desexualizing libido by means of phantastic analogy formations—Possibly human consciousness brought to present state in this manner—The importance of the little phrase: “Even as.” | ||
| III.— | THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LIBIDO. A POSSIBLE SOURCE OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN DISCOVERIES | 157 |
| An example of transition of the libido—Act of boring with forefinger: an infantile presexual activity—Similar activities in patient’s early childhood—Outcome in dementia præcox—Its phantasies related to mythological products: a reproduction of the creations of antiquity—The freeing of libido from the nutritive to enter the sexual function—The epoch of suckling and the epoch of displaced rhythmic activity—These followed by the beginnings of onanistic attempts—An obstacle in the sexual zone produces regression to a previous mode—These regressions easier in earlier stages of humanity than now—The ethnological phantasy of boring—Examples—The production of fire—Its sexual significance—A substitute for coitus—The invention of fire-making then due to the need of supplying a symbol for the sexual act—The psychological compulsion for such transitions of the libido based on an original division of the will—Regression to incestuous—Prohibition here sends incestuous component of libido back to presexual—Character of its application here—The substitution of Mother-Earth for the parent—Also of infantile boring—Leading then to discovery of fire—An example in Hindoo literature—The sexual significance of the mouth—Its other function: the mating call—The regression which produced fire through boring also elaborated the mating call—The beginnings of speech—Example from the Hindoo—Speech and fire the first fruits of transformation of libido—The fire-preparation regarded as forbidden, as robbery—The forbidden thing onanism—Onanism a cheating of sexuality of its purpose—The ceremonial fire-production a substitute for the possibility of onanistic regression—Thus a transformation of libido ensues. | ||
| IV.— | THE UNCONSCIOUS ORIGIN OF THE HERO | 191 |
| The cause of introversion—The forward and backward flow of the libido—The abnormal third—The conflict rooted in the incest problem—The “terrible mother”—Miss Miller’s introversion—An internal conflict—Its product of hypnagogic vision and poem—The uniformity of the unconscious in all men—The unconscious the object of a true psychology—The individual tendency with its production of the hero cult—The love for the hero or god a love for the unconscious—A turning back to the mother of humanity—Such regressions act favorably within limits—Miss Miller’s mention of the Sphinx—Theriomorphic representations of the libido—Their tendency to represent father and mother—The Sphinx represents the fear of the mother—Miss Miller’s mention of the Aztec—Analysis of this figure—The significance of the hand symbolically—The Aztec a substitute for the Sphinx—The name Chi-wan-to-pel—The connection of the anal region with veneration—Chiwantopel and Ahasver, the Wandering Jew—The parallel with Chidher—Heroes generating themselves through their own mothers—Analogy with the Sun—Setting and rising sun: Mithra and Helios, Christ and Peter, Dhulqarnein and Chidher—The fish symbol—The two Dadophores: the two thieves—The mortal and immortal parts of man—The Trinity taken from phallic symbolism—Comparison of libido with phallus—Analysis of libido symbolism always leads back to the mother incest—The hero myth the myth of our own suffering unconscious—Faust. | ||
| V.— | SYMBOLISM OF THE MOTHER AND OF REBIRTH | 233 |
| The crowd as symbol of mystery—The city as symbol of the mother—The motive of continuous “union”—The typical journey of the sun-hero—Examples—A longing for rebirth through the mother—The compulsion to symbolize the mother as City, Sea, Source, etc.—The city as terrible mother and as holy mother—The relation of the water-motive to rebirth—Of the tree-motive—Tree of life a mother-image—The bisexual character of trees—Such symbols to be understood psychologically, not anatomically—The incestuous desire aims at becoming a child again, not at incest—It evades incest by creating myths of symbolic rebirth—The libido spiritualized through this use of symbols—To be born of the spirit—This compulsion toward symbolism brings a release of forces bound up in incest—This process in Christianity—Christianity with its repression of the manifest sexual the negative of the ancient sexual cult—The unconscious transformation of the incest wish into religious exercise does not meet the modern need—A conscious method necessary, involving moral autonomy—Replacing belief by understanding—The history of the symbolism of trees—The rise of the idea of the terrible mother a mask of the incest wish—The myth of Osiris—Related examples—The motive of “devouring”—The Cross of Christ: tree of death and tree of life—Lilith: the devouring mother—The Lamias—The conquering of the mother—Snake and dragon: the resistance against incest—The father represents the active repulse of the incest wish of the son—He frequently becomes the monster to be overcome by the hero—The Mithraic sacrificing of the incest wish an overcoming of the mother—A replacing of archaic overpowering by sacrifice of the wish—The crucified Christ an expression of this renunciation—Other cross sacrifices—Cross symbol possesses significance of “union”—Child in mother’s womb: or man and mother in union—Conception of the soul a derivative of mother imago—The power of incest prohibition created the self-conscious individual—It was the coercion to domestication—The further visions of Miss Miller. | ||
| VI.— | THE BATTLE FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE MOTHER | 307 |
| The appearance of the hero Chiwantopel on horseback—Hero and horse equivalent of humanity and its repressed libido—Horse a libido symbol, partly phallic, partly maternal, like the tree—It represents the libido repressed through the incest prohibition—The scene of Chiwantopel and the Indian—Recalling Cassius and Brutus: also delirium of Cyrano—Identification of Cassius with his mother—His infantile disposition—Miss Miller’s hero also infantile—Her visions arise from an infantile mother transference—Her hero to die from an arrow wound—The symbolism of the arrow—The onslaught of unconscious desires—The deadly arrows strike the hero from within—It means the state of introversion—A sinking back into the world of the child—The danger of this regression—It may mean annihilation or new life—Examples of introversion—The clash between the retrogressive tendency in the individual unconscious and the conscious forward striving—Willed introversion—The unfulfilled sacrifice in the Miller phantasy means an attempt to renounce the mother: the conquest of a new life through the death of the old—The hero Miss Miller herself. | ||
| VII.— | THE DUAL MOTHER ROLE | 341 |
| Chiwantopel’s monologue—His quest for the “one who understands”—A quest for the mother—Also for the life-companion—The sexual element in the wish—The battle for independence from the mother—Its peril—Miss Miller’s use of Longfellow’s Hiawatha—An analysis of Hiawatha—A typical hero of the libido—The miraculous birth—The hero’s birth symbolic because it is really a rebirth from the mother-spouse—The twofold mother which in Christian mythology becomes twofold birth—The hero his own procreator—Virgin conception a mask for incestuous impregnation—Hiawatha’s early life—The identification of mother-nature with the mother—The killing of a roebuck a conquering of the parents—He takes on their strength—He goes forth to slay the father in order to possess the mother—Minnehaha, the mother—Hiawatha’s introversion—Hiding in the lap of nature really a return to the mother’s womb—The regression to the presexual revives the importance of nutrition—The inner struggle with the mother, to overpower and impregnate her—This fight against the longing for the mother brings new strength—The Mondamin motive in other myths—The Savior-hero the fruit of the entrance of the libido into the personal maternal depths—This is to die, and be born again—Hiawatha’s struggle with the fish-monster—A new deliverance from the mother—And so again with Megissogwon, the Magician—The hero must again and again conquer the mother—Then follows his marriage with Minnehaha—Other incidents, his death: the sinking of the sun in the west—Miss Miller also reminded by Chiwantopel’s longing of Wagner’s Siegfried—Analysis of the Siegfried myth—The treasure-guarding dragon—The dragon the son’s repressed longing for the mother—Symbolism of the cave—The separation from the mother, the hero’s conquering of the dragon—The symbolism of the cup—Drinking from the mother—Cup of the blood of Christ—The resultant mysterious union of man—Profane interpretations of this mystery—The phallic significance of the serpent—The snake as representing the introverting libido—Self-procreation: or creation of the world through introversion—The world thus an emanation of the libido—The hero himself a serpent—The psychoanalytic treatment of regression—The hidden libido touched upon causes a struggle: that is, the hero fights the fight with the treasure-guarding dragon—The awakening of Brunhilde—Siegfried finding his mother: a symbol of his own libido—The conquest of the terrible mother brings the love and life-giving mother. | ||
| VIII.— | THE SACRIFICE | 428 |
| Miss Miller’s vision again—The paradoxical striving of the libido away from the mother toward the mother—The destroying mother becomes beneficent on being conquered—Chiwantopel a hero of words, not deeds—He has not that will to live which breaks the magic circle of the incestuous—His identification with the author, and her wish for the parents—The end is the devouring of the daughter’s libido by the mother—Sexuality of the unconscious merely a symbol—Idle dreaming the mother of the fear of death—This downward path in the poetry of Hölderlin—The estrangement from reality, the introversion leading to death—The necessity of freeing libido for a complete devotion to life—Otherwise bound by unconscious compulsion: Fate—Sublimation through voluntary work—Creation of the world through cosmic sacrifice—Man discovers the world when he sacrifices the mother—The incest barrier as the producer of thought—Budding sexuality drawing the individual from the family—The mind dawns at the moment the child begins to be free of the mother—He seeks to win the world, and leave the mother—Childish regression to the presexual brings archaic phantasies—The incest problem not physical, but psychological—Sacrifice of the horse: sacrifice of the animal nature—The sacrifice of the “mother libido”: of the son to the mother—Superiority of Christian symbol: the sacrifice, not only of lower nature, but the whole personality—Miss Miller’s phantasy passes from sacrifice of the sexual, to sacrifice of the infantile personality—Problem of psychoanalysis, expressed mythologically, the sacrifice and rebirth of the infantile hero—The libido wills the destruction of its creation: horse and serpent—The end of the hero by means of earthquake—The one who understands him is the mother. | ||
“Therefore theory, which gives to facts their value and significance, is often very useful, even if it is partially false, for it throws light on phenomena which no one observed, it forces an examination, from many angles, of facts which no one had hitherto studied, and it gives the impulse for more extended and more productive researches.
“It is, therefore, a moral duty for the man of science to expose himself to the risk of committing error and to submit to criticism, in order that science may continue to progress. A writer has attacked the author for this very severely, saying, here is a scientific ideal very limited and very paltry. But those who are endowed with a mind sufficiently serious and impersonal as not to believe that all that they write is the expression of truth absolute and eternal, approve of this theory which places the aims of science well above the miserable vanity and paltry ‘amour propre’ of the scientist.”—Guglielmo Ferrero.
Les Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme—1895. Preface, p. viii.