The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A psychological interpretation of mythology

by Otto Rank

Lohengrin

The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven around the mythic knight with the swan (the old French Chevalier au cigne) can be traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions. The following is the version which has been made familiar by Wagner’s dramatisation of this theme. The story of Lohengrin, the knight with the swan, as transmitted by the medieval German epic [modernized by Junghaus, Reclam] and briefly rendered by the Grimm brothers, in their “German Sagas” (Part II, Berlin, 1818, p. 306) under the title: Lohengrin in Brabant.

The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than a young daughter, Els, or Elsam by name; her he recommended on his death bed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich, the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’ hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor Heinrich, surnamed the Vogler, and the verdict was that she must defend herself against him, through some hero, in a so called divine judgment, in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed ardently to God, to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch, in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing that there was some one in urgent need of help. The Grail therefore resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin the son of Parsifal. Just as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup a swan came floating down the water drawing a skiff behind him. As soon as Lohengrin set eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: “Take the steed back to the manger, I shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me.” Having faith in God’s omnipotence he took no food with him in the skiff. After they had been afloat on the sea five days, the swan dipped his bill in the water, caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the other half to the prince to eat. Thus the knight was fed by the swan.

Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted swimming up stream (river Schelde) and drawing behind him a skiff, in which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had his helmet, shield and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been done to the duchess, and willingly consented to become her champion. Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. The place was prepared in Mayence, where Lohengrin and Friedrich were to fight in the emperor’s presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe. Elsa was alloted to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he secretly insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry, or whence he had come, saying that otherwise he would have to leave her instantaneously and she would never see him again.

For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was angry, and spoke out amongst the women, saying: “Lohengrin may be brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that his nobility is not of much account for no one knows whence he has come floating to this land.” These words pierced the heart of the Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said “What is the matter, Elsa, my own?” She made answer, “the Duchess of Cleve has caused me sore pain.” Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: “Lord, do not chide me! I wish to know, for our children’s sake, whence you were born; for my heart tells me that you are of high rank.” When the day broke, Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them to take good care of his horn and sword which he would leave behind, and said: “Now, I must be gone.” To the duchess he left a little ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, came swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in a faint. The empress resolved to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for his father’s sake, and to bring him up as her own child. But the widow wept and mourned [72] the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who never came back to her.

On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is placed first,—on the basis of the rearrangement, or even transmutation of motives, not uncommonly found in myths,—we find the type of saga with which we have now become familiar: The infant Lohengrin, who is identical with his father of the same name, floats in a vessel upon the sea and is carried ashore by a swan. The empress adopts him as her son, and he becomes a valorous hero. Having married a noble maiden of the land, he forbids her to enquire as to his origin. When the command is broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the Grail.

Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have retained this original arrangement of the motives, although they appear commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the Knight with the Swan, as related in the Flemish People’s Book (Deutsche Sagen, I, 29), contains in the beginning the history of the birth of seven children, [73] borne by Beatrix, the wife of King Oriant of Flanders. The wicked mother of the absent king, Matabruna, orders that the children be killed, and the queen be given seven puppy dogs in their stead. But the servant contents himself with the exposure of the children, who are found by a hermit, named Helias, and are nourished by a goat until they are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later on Matabruna learns that the children have been saved and her repeated command to kill them causes the hunter, who has been charged with the murder, to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience to her behest, the silver neck chains which the children wore already at the time of their birth. One of the boys, named Helias, after his foster father, alone keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from the fate of his brothers, who are transformed into swans, as soon as their chains are removed. Matabruna volunteers to prove the relations of the queen with the dog, and upon her instigation, Beatrix is to be killed, unless a champion arises to defend her. In her need, she prays to God, who sends her son Helias as a rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the other chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down. King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who causes the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees his brother, the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the castle. This he regards as a heavenly sign, he arms himself and mounts the skiff. The swan takes him through rivers and lakes to the place where God has ordained him to go. Next follows the liberation of an innocently accused duchess, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage to her daughter Clarissa, who is forbidden to ask for her husband’s ancestry. In the seventh year of their marriage she disobeys and puts the question, after which Helias returns home in the swan’s skiff. Finally, his lost brother swan is likewise released.

The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga,—that the divine hero disappears again in the same mysterious fashion in which he has arrived; also the transference of mythical motives from the life of the older hero, bearing the same name, to a younger one, a very universal process in myth-formation, are likewise embodied in the Anglian-Longobard saga of Scëaf, which is mentioned in the introduction to the Beowulf-Song, the oldest German epic, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon tongue (translated by H. v. Wolzogen, Reclam). The father of old Beowulf received his name, Scild Scéfing (meaning the son of Scëaf), because as a very young boy, he was cast ashore as a stranger, asleep in a boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-saxon, scéaf). The waves of the sea carried him to the coast of the country which he was destined to defend. The inhabitants welcomed him as a miracle, raised him, and later on made him their king, as an emissary of God. (Compare Grimm, German Mythology, I, p. 306; III, p. 391, and H. Leo: Beowulf, Halle, 1839.) What is told of the ancestor of the royal house, Scaf, [74] or Scëaf, appears in the Beowulf song transferred to his son, Scëafing Scild, according to the unanimous statement of Grimm (see above), and Leo (p. 24): His dead body is exposed at his behest, surrounded by kingly splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into the sea. Thus he vanishes in the same mysterious manner in which his father arrived ashore; this trait being accounted for, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.

A cursory review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings out a series of uniformly common features, with a typical ground work, from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed. This schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human skeleton which is constantly seen, with minor deviations, on transillumination of figures which outwardly differ from one another. The individual traits of the several myths, and especially apparently crude variations from the prototype, can only be entirely elucidated by the myth-interpretation. The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following scheme:

The hero is the child of most distinguished parents; usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents, due to external prohibition or obstacles. During the pregnancy, or antedating the same, there is a prophecy, in form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father, or his representative. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds) and is suckled by a female animal, or by a humble woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion; takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, is acknowledged on the other, and finally achieves rank and honors. [75]

The normal relations of the hero towards his father and his mother regularly appearing impaired in all these myths, as shown by the schedule, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood—and may be noted in the modern epigones of the heroic age—that for the hero who is exposed to envy, jealousy and calumny to a much higher degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. The old saying that “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his father’s house,” has no other meaning but this, that he whose parents, brothers and sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not so readily conceded to be a prophet (Gospel of St. Mark, VI, 4). There seems to be a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents; also, the well-known opera of Meyerbeer is based upon the avowal that the prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon and repudiate even his tenderly beloved mother.

A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper enquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever his family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination. [76] The fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore, the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more handicapped mythical and artistic imagination in general.

Meanwhile the investigation of the juvenile faculty of imagination has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently advanced to permit the utilization of the findings for the explanation of the more complicated psychic activities. The reason for this imperfect understanding of the psychic life of the child is referable to the lack of a suitable instrument, as well as of a reliable avenue, leading into the intricacies of this very delicate and rather inaccessible domain. These juvenile emotions can by no means be studied in the normal human adult, and it may actually be charged, in view of certain psychic disturbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal subjects consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten their childish vagaries and imaginations: so that the way has become blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation (which as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the investigation of psychic processes, because we are not as yet enabled to trace all manifestations correctly to their motive forces: so that we are lacking the instrument. There is a certain class of persons, the so-called psychoneurotics, shown by the teachings of Freud to have remained children, in a sense, although otherwise appearing grown up. These psychoneurotics may be said not to have given up their juvenile psychic life, which on the contrary, in the course of maturity, has become strengthened and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the emotions of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions appear broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of neurotics are, as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions of the childish imaginings. This would point the way to a solution of the problem. Unfortunately, however, the access is still much more difficult to establish in these cases than to the child mind. There is only one known instrument which makes this road practicable, namely the psychoanalytic method, which has been developed through the work of Freud. Constant handling of this instrument will clear the observer’s vision to such a degree that he will be enabled to discover the identical motive forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also in the psychic life of those who do not become neurotics later on.

Professor Freud had the amiability to place at the author’s disposal his highly appreciated experience with the psychology of the neuroses; and on this material are based the following comments, on the imaginative faculty of the child as well as the neurotic.

The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of 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).

If the Moses-legend were placed before us in this more original form, 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.