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]