[110] Abraham, loc. cit., p. 40; Riklin, loc. cit., p. 74.
[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay, because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A. Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441) which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”
The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to her masculine energy, is a matter of history.
Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v. Roscher).
[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.
[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance. Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy (Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).
[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.
[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels: Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).