The Theory of Psychoanalysis

by C. G. Jung

In other words, we have to do here with a case in which the analysis brought the libido apparently to the surface, so that an improvement of the personality could have occurred. But for some reason or other, the adaptation was not made, and the libido returned to its former regressive paths.

The ninth interview proved that this was indeed the case. Our patient withheld an important piece of evidence in her ideas of sexuality, and one which contradicted the psychoanalytic explanation of sexual maturity. She suppressed the rumor current in the school that a girl of eleven had a baby with a boy of the same age. This rumor was proved to be based on no facts, but was a phantasy, fulfiling the secret wishes of this age. Rumors appear often to originate in this kind of way, as I tried to show in the above-mentioned demonstration of such a case. They serve to give vent to the unconscious phantasies, and in fulfiling this function correspond to dreams as well as to myths. This rumor keeps another way open: she need not wait so long, it is possible to have a child even at eleven. The contradiction between the accepted rumor and the analytic explanation creates resistances towards the analysis, so that it is forthwith depreciated. All the other statements and information fall to the ground at the same time; for the time being, doubt and a feeling of uncertainty have taken their place. The libido has again taken possession of its former ways, it has made a regression. This is the moment of the relapse.

The tenth sitting added important details to the story of her sexual problem. First came a remarkable fragment of a dream: “I am with other children in an open field in the wood, surrounded by beautiful pine trees. It begins to rain, to lighten and to thunder. It is growing dark. Suddenly I see a stork in the air.”

Before I enter into an analysis of this dream, I should like to point out its beautiful parallel with certain mythological presentations. This astonishing coincidence of thunderstorm and stork has, of course, to those acquainted with the works of Adalbert Kuhn and Steinthal nothing remarkable. The thunderstorm has had, from ancient times, the meaning of the fertilizing of the earth, the cohabitation of the father Heaven and the mother Earth, to which Abraham[^[13]] has recently again called attention, in which the lightning takes the place of the winged phallus. The stork is just the same thing, a winged phallus, the psychosexual meaning of which is known to every child. But the psychosexual meaning of the thunderstorm is not known to everyone. In view of the psychological situation just described, we must attribute to the stork a psychosexual meaning. That the thunderstorm is connected with the stork and has also a psychosexual meaning, seems at first scarcely acceptable. But when we remember that psychoanalytic observation has shown an enormous number of mythological associations with the unconscious mental images, we may suppose that some psychosexual meaning is also present in this case. We know from other experiences that those unconscious strata which, in former times, produced mythological forms, are still in action among modern people and are still incessantly productive. But this production is limited to the realm of dreams and the symptomatology of the neuroses and the psychoses, for the correction, through reality, is so much increased in the modern mind that it prevents their projection into reality.

We will return to the dream analysis. The associations which lead us to the heart of this image begin with the idea of rain during the thunderstorm. Her actual words were: “I think of water. My uncle was drowned in water—it must be dreadful to be kept under water, so in the dark. But the child must be also drowned in the water. Does it drink the water that is in the stomach? It is very strange, when I was ill Mamma sent my water to the doctor. I thought perhaps he would mix something with it, perhaps some syrup, out of which children grow. I think one has to drink it.”

With unquestionable clearness we see from this set of associations that even the child associates psychosexual, and even typical ideas of fructification with the rain during the thunderstorm.

Here again, we see that marvellous parallelism between mythology and the individual phantasies of our own day. This series of associations contains such an abundance of symbolic relationships, that we could easily write a whole dissertation about it. The child herself splendidly interpreted the symbolism of drowning as a pregnancy-phantasy, an explanation given long ago in psychoanalytic literature.

Eleventh interview. The next sitting was occupied with the spontaneous infantile theories about fructification and child-birth. The child thought that the urine of the man went into the body of the woman, and from this the embryo would grow. Hence the child was in the water from the beginning, that is to say, in urine. Another version was, the urine was drunk in the doctor’s syrup, so that the child would grow in the head. The head had then to be split open, to help the growth of the child, and one wore hats to cover this up. She illustrated this by a little drawing, representing a child-birth through the head. The child again had still a smaller child on the head, and so on. This is an archaic idea and highly mythological. I would remind you of the birth of Pallas, who came out of the father’s head.

We find striking mythological proofs of the fertilizing significance of the urine in the songs of Rudra in the Rigveda. Here should be mentioned something the mother added, that once the little girl, before analysis, suggested she saw a puppet on the head of her little brother, a phantasy with which the origin of this theory of child-birth might be connected. The little illustration made by the patient has remarkable affinity with certain pictures found among the Bataks of Dutch India. They are the so-called magic wands or ancestral statues, on which the members of families are represented, one standing on the top of the other. The explanation of these wands, given by the Bataks themselves, and regarded as nonsense, has a marvellous analogy with the infantile mental attitude. Schultz, who wrote about these wands, says: “The assertion, that these figures represent the members of a family who have committed incest, were bitten by a snake, entwined with another, and met a common death in their criminal embrace, is widely disseminated and obviously due to the position of the figures.”

The explanation has a parallel in our presuppositions as to our little patient. We saw from the first dream that her sexual phantasy centers round the father; the psychological condition is here the same as with the Bataks, being found in the idea of incestuous relationship.