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!