[46] Jones, loc. cit., p. 79.
[47] Alas! the Venus of Medici is lost!
[48] The Œdipus dream as I was wont to call it, because it contains the key to the understanding of the legend of King Œdipus. In the text of Sophocles the relation of such a dream is put in the mouth of Jocasta (cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 222-4, etc.).
[49] New York Medical Journal, September, 1912. Reprinted in large form as Chapter X of Psychanalysis, etc., Saunders, Philadelphia.
[50] The self-inflicted injury which does not entirely tend toward self-annihilation has, moreover, no other choice in our present state of civilization than to hide itself behind the accidental, or to break through in a simulation of spontaneous illness. Formerly, it was a customary sign of mourning, at other times it expressed itself in ideas of piety and renunciation of the world.
[51] The case is then identical with a sexual attack on a woman, in whom the attack of the man cannot be warded off through the full muscular strength of the woman because a portion of the unconscious feelings of the one attacked meets it with ready acceptance. To be sure, it is said that such a situation paralyses the strength of a woman; we need only add the reasons for this paralysis. Insofar the clever sentence of Sancho Panza, which he pronounced as governor of his island, is psychologically unjust (Don Quixote, vol. ii. chap. xlv). A woman hauled before the judge a man who was supposed to have robbed her of her honour by force of violence. Sancho indemnified her with a full purse which he took from the accused, but after the departure of the woman he gave the accused permission to follow her and snatch the purse from her. Both returned wrestling, the woman priding herself that the villain was unable to possess himself of the purse. Thereupon Sancho spoke: “Had you shown yourself so stout and valiant to defend your body (nay, but half so much) as you have done to defend your purse, the strength of Hercules could not have forced you.”
[52] It is evident that the situation of a battlefield is such as to meet the requirement of conscious suicidal intent which, nevertheless, shuns the direct way. Cf. in Wallenstein the words of the Swedish captain concerning the death of Max Piccolomini: “They say he wished to die.”
[53] “Selbstbestrafung wegen Abortus von Dr. J. E. G. van Emden,” Haag (Holland), Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 12.
[54] “Beitrag zur Symbolik im Alltag von Ernest Jones,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, i. 3, 1911.
[55] Psychoanalytic research, with the penetration of infantile amnesia, has shown that this apparent precocity is a less abnormal occurrence than was previously supposed.