“In my childhood, I took a special interest in the Aztec fragments and in the history of Peru and of the Incas.”
Through the two analyses of children which have been published we have attained an insight into the child’s small world, and have seen what burning interests and questions secretly surround the parents, and that the parents are, for a long time, the objects of the greatest interest.[[353]] We are, therefore, justified in suspecting that the antique setting applies to the “ancients,” that is to say, the parents, and that consequently this Aztec has something of the father or mother in himself. Up to this time indirect hints point only to the mother, which is nothing remarkable in an American girl, because Americans, as a result of the extreme detachment from the father, are characterized by a most enormous mother complex, which again is connected with the especial social position of woman in the United States. This position brings about a special masculinity among capable women, which easily makes possible the symbolizing into a masculine figure.[[354]]
After this vision, Miss Miller felt that a name formed itself “bit by bit,” which seemed to belong to this Aztec—“the son of an Inca of Peru.” The name is “Chi-wan-to-pel.” As the author intimated, something similar to this belonged to her childish reminiscences. The act of naming is, like baptism, something exceedingly important for the creation of a personality, because, since olden times, a magic power has been attributed to the name, with which, for example, the spirit of the dead can be conjured. To know the name of any one means, in mythology, to have power over that one. As a well-known example I mention the fairy tale of “Rumpelstilzchen.” In an Egyptian myth, Isis robs the Sun god Rê permanently of his power by compelling him to tell her his real name. Therefore, to give a name means to give power, invest with a definite personality.[[355]] The author observed, in regard to the name itself, that it reminded her very much of the impressive name Popocatepetl, a name which belongs to unforgettable school memories, and, to the greatest indignation of the patient, very often emerges in an analysis in a dream or phantasy and brings with it that same old joke which one heard in school, told oneself and later again forgot. Although one might hesitate to consider this unhallowed joke as of psychologic importance, still one must inquire for the reason of its being. One must also put, as a counter question, Why is it always Popocatepetl and not the neighboring Iztaccihuatl, or the even higher and just as clear Orizaba? The last has certainly the more beautiful and more easily pronounced name. Popocatepetl is impressive because of its onomatopoetic name. In English the word is “to pop” (popgun), which is here considered as onomatopoesy; in German the words are Hinterpommern, Pumpernickel; Bombe; Petarde (le pet = flatus). The frequent German word Popo (Podex) does not indeed exist in English, but flatus is designated as “to poop” in childish speech. The act of defecation is often designated as “to pop.” A joking name for the posterior part is “the bum.” (Poop also means the rear end of a ship.) In French, pouf! is onomatopoetic; pouffer = platzen (to explode), la poupe = rear end of ship, le poupard = the baby in arms, la poupée = doll. Poupon is a pet name for a chubby-faced child. In Dutch pop, German Puppe and Latin puppis = doll; in Plautus, however, it is also used jokingly for the posterior part of the body; pupus means child; pupula = girl, little dollie. The Greek word ποππύζω designates a cracking, snapping or blowing sound. It is used of kissing; by Theocritus also of the associated noise of flute blowing. The etymologic parallels show a remarkable relationship between the part of the body in question and the child. This relationship we will mention here, only to let it drop at once, as this question will claim our attention later.
One of my patients in his childhood had always connected the act of defecation with a phantasy that his posterior was a volcano and a violent eruption took place, explosion of gases and gushings forth of lava. The terms for the elemental occurrences of nature are originally not at all poetical; one thinks, for example, of the beautiful phenomenon of the meteor, which the German language most unpoetically calls “Sternschnuppe” (the smouldering wick of a star). Certain South American Indians call the shooting star the “urine of the stars.” According to the principle of the least resistance, expressions are taken from the nearest source available. (For example, the transference of the metonymic expression of urination as Schiffens, “to rain.”)
Now it seems to be very obscure why the mystical figure of Chiwantopel, whom Miss Miller, in a note, compares to the control spirit of the spiritualistic medium,[[356]] is found in such a disreputable neighborhood that his nature (name) was brought into relation with this particular part of the body. In order to understand this possibility, we must realize that when we produce from the unconscious the first to be brought forth is the infantile material long lost in memory. One must, therefore, take the point of view of that time in which this infantile material was still on the surface. If now a much-honored object is related in the unconscious to the anus, then one must conclude that something of a high valuation was expressed thereby. The question is only whether this corresponds to the psychology of the child. Before we enter upon this question, it must be stated that the anal region is very closely connected with veneration. One thinks of the traditional fæces of the Great Mogul. An Oriental tale has the same to say of Christian knights, who anointed themselves with the excrement of the pope and cardinals in order to make themselves formidable. A patient who is characterized by a special veneration for her father had a phantasy that she saw her father sitting upon the toilet in a dignified manner, and people going past greeted him effusively.[[357]] The association of the anal relations by no means excludes high valuation or esteem, as is shown by these examples, and as is easily seen from the intimate connection of fæces and gold.[[358]] Here the most worthless comes into the closest relation with the most valuable. This also happens in religious valuations. I discovered (at that time to my great astonishment) that a young patient, very religiously trained, represented in a dream the Crucified on the bottom of a blue-flowered chamber pot, namely, in the form of excrements. The contrast is so enormous that one must assume that the valuations of childhood must indeed be very different from ours. This is actually the truth. Children bring to the act of defecation and the products of this an esteem and interest[[359]] which later on is possible only to the hypochondriac. We do not comprehend this interest until we learn that the child very early connects with it a theory of propagation.[[360]] The libido afflux probably accounts for the enormous interest in this act. The child sees that this is the way in which something is produced, in which something comes out. The same child whom I reported in the little brochure “Über Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” and who had a well-developed anal theory of birth, like little Hans, whom Freud made known to us, later contracted a habit of staying a long time on the toilet. Once the father grew impatient, went to the toilet and called, “Do come out of there; what are you making?” Whereupon the answer came from within, “A little wagon and two ponies.” The child was making a little wagon and two ponies, that is to say, things which at that time she especially wished for. In this way one can make what one wishes, and the thing made is the thing wished for. The child wishes earnestly for a doll or, at heart, for a real child. (That is, the child practised for his future biological task, and in the way in which everything in general is produced he made the doll[[361]] himself as representative of the child or of the thing wished for in general.[[362]]) From a patient I have learned a parallel phantasy of her childhood. In the toilet there was a crevice in the wall. She phantasied that from this crevice a fairy would come out and present her with everything for which she wished. The “locus” is known to be the place of dreams where much was wished for and created which later would no longer be suspected of having this place of origin. A pathological phantasy in place here is told us by Lombroso,[[363]] concerning two insane artists. Each of them considered himself God and the ruler of the world. They created or produced the world by making it come forth from the rectum, just as the egg of birds originates in the egg canal. One of these two artists was endowed with a true artistic sense. He painted a picture in which he was just in the act of creation; the world came forth from his anus; the membrum was in full erection; he was naked, surrounded by women, and with all insignia of his power. The excrement is in a certain sense the thing wished for, and on that account it receives the corresponding valuation. When I first understood this connection, an observation made long ago, and which disturbed me greatly because I never rightly understood it, became clear to me. It concerned an educated patient who, under very tragic circumstances, had to be separated from her husband and child, and was brought into the insane asylum. She exhibited a typical apathy and slovenliness which was considered as affective mental deterioration. Even at that time I doubted this deterioration, and was inclined to regard it as a secondary adjustment. I took especial pains to ascertain how I could discover the existence of the affect in this case. Finally, after more than three hours’ hard work, I succeeded in finding a train of thought which suddenly brought the patient into a completely adequate and therefore strongly emotional state. At this moment the affective connection with her was completely reëstablished. That happened in the forenoon. When I returned at the appointed time in the evening to the ward to see her she had, for my reception, smeared herself from head to foot with excrement, and cried laughingly, “Do I please you so?” She had never done that before; it was plainly destined for me. The impression which I received was one of a personal affront and, as a result of this, I was convinced for years after of the affective deterioration of such cases. Now we understand this act as an infantile ceremony of welcome or a declaration of love.
The origin of Chiwantopel, that is to say, an unconscious personality, therefore means, in the sense of the previous explanation, “I make, produce, invent him myself.” It is a sort of human creation or birth by the anal route. The first people were made from excrement, potter’s earth, or clay. The Latin lutum, which really means “moistened earth,” also has the transferred meaning of dirt. In Plautus it is even a term of abuse, something like “You scum.” The birth from the anus also reminds us of the motive of “throwing behind oneself.” A well-known example is the oracular command, which Deucalion and Pyrrha, who were the only survivors from the great flood, received. They were to throw behind them the bones of the great mother. They then threw behind them stones, from which mankind sprang. According to a tradition, the Dactyli in a similar manner sprang from dust, which the nymph Anchiale threw behind her. There is also humorous significance attached to the anal products. The excrements are often considered in popular humor as a monument or memorial (which plays a special part in regard to the criminal in the form of grumus merdæ); every one knows the humorous story of the man who, led by the spirit through labyrinthian passages to a hidden treasure, after he had shed all his pieces of clothing, deposited excrement as a last guide post on his road. In a more distant past a sign of this kind possessed as great a significance as the dung of animals to indicate the direction taken. Simple monuments (“little stone figures”) have taken the place of this perishable mark.
It is noteworthy that Miss Miller quotes another case, where a name suddenly obtruded itself, parallel to the emerging into consciousness of Chiwantopel, namely, A-ha-ma-ra-ma, with the feeling that it dealt with something Assyrian.[[364]] As a possible source of this, there occurred to her “Asurabama, who made cuneiform bricks,”[[365]] those imperishable documents made from clay: the monuments of the most ancient history. If it were not emphasized that the bricks are “cuneiform,” then it might mean ambiguously “wedged-shaped bricks,” which is more suggestive of our interpretation than that of the author.
Miss Miller remarks that besides the name “Asurabama” she also thought of “Ahasuerus” or “Ahasverus.” This phantasy leads to a very different aspect of the problem of the unconscious personality. While the previous materials betrayed to us something of the infantile theory of creation, this phantasy opens up a vista into the dynamics of the unconscious creation of personality. Ahasver is, as is well known, the Wandering Jew; he is characterized by endless and restless wanderings until the end of the world. The fact that the author has thought of this particular name justifies us in following this trail. The legend of Ahasver, the first literary traces of which belong to the thirteenth century, seems to be of Occidental origin, and belongs to those ideas which possess indestructible vital energy. The figure of the Wandering Jew has undergone more literary elaboration than the figure of Faust, and nearly all of this work belongs to the last century. If the figure is not called Ahasver, still it is there under another name, perhaps as Count of St. Germain, the mysterious Rosicrucian, whose immortality was assured, and whose temporary residence (the land) was equally known.[[366]] Although the stories about Ahasver cannot be traced back any earlier than the thirteenth century, the oral tradition can reach back considerably further, and it is not an impossibility that a bridge to the Orient exists. There is the parallel figure of Chidr, or “al Chadir,” the “ever-youthful Chidher” celebrated in song by Rueckert. The legend is purely Islamitic. The peculiar feature, however, is that Chidher is not only a saint, but in Sufic circles[[367]] rises even to divine significance. In view of the severe monotheism of Islam, one is inclined to think of Chidher as a pre-Islamitic Arabian divinity who would hardly be officially recognized by the new religion, but might have been tolerated on political grounds. But there is nothing to prove that. The first traces of Chidher are found in the commentaries of the Koran, Buchâri and Tabare and in a commentary to a noteworthy passage of the eighteenth sura of the Koran. The eighteenth sura is entitled “the cave,” that is, after the cave of the seven sleepers, who, according to the legend, slept there for 309 years, and thus escaped persecution, and awoke in a new era. Their legend is recounted in the eighteenth sura, and divers reflections were associated with it. The wish-fulfilment idea of the legend is very clear. The mystic material for it is the immutable model of the Sun’s course. The Sun sets periodically, but does not die. It hides in the womb of the sea or in a subterranean cave,[[368]] and in the morning is “born again,” complete. The language in which this astronomic occurrence is clothed is one of clear symbolism; the Sun returns into the mother’s womb, and after some time is again born. Of course, this event is properly an incestuous act, of which, in mythology, clear traces are still retained, not the least of which is the circumstance that the dying and resurrected gods are the lovers of their own mothers or have generated themselves through their own mothers. Christ as the “God becoming flesh” has generated himself through Mary; Mithra has done the same. These Gods are unmistakable Sun-gods, for the Sun also does this, in order to again renew himself. Naturally, it is not to be assumed that astronomy came first and these conceptions of gods afterwards; the process was, as always, inverted, and it is even true that primitive magic charms of rebirth, baptism, superstitious usages of all sorts, concerning the cure of the sick, etc., were projected into the heavens. These youths were born from the cave (the womb of mother earth), like the Sun-gods, in a new era, and this was the way they vanquished death. In this far they were immortal. It is now interesting to see how the Koran comes, after long ethical contemplations in the course of the same sura, to the following passage, which is of especial significance for the origin of the Chidher myth. For this reason I quote the Koran literally:
“Remember when Moses said to his servant, ‘I will not stop till I reach the confluence of the two seas, or for eighty years will I journey on.’
“But when they reached their confluence they forgot their fish, and it took its way in the sea at will.