Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

One principal question arises at the sight of this beauty and greatness of feeling, that is, whether the primary tendency compensated by religion is not too narrowly understood as incestuous. I have previously observed in regard to this that I consider the “resistance opposed to libido” as in a general way coincident with the incest prohibition. I must leave open for the present the definition of the psychological incest conception. However, I will here emphasize the point that it is most especially the totality of the sun myth which proves to us that the fundamental basis of the “incestuous” desire does not aim at cohabitation, but at the special thought of becoming a child again, of turning back to the parent’s protection, of coming into the mother once more in order to be born again. But incest stands in the path to this goal, that is to say, the necessity of in some way again gaining entrance into the mother’s womb. One of the simplest ways would be to impregnate the mother, and to reproduce one’s self identically. But here the incest prohibition interferes; therefore, the myths of the sun or of rebirth teem with all possible proposals as to how incest can be evaded. A very simple method of avoidance is to transform the mother into another being or to rejuvenate[453] her after birth has occurred, to have her disappear again or have her change back. It is not incestuous cohabitation which is desired, but the rebirth, which now is attained most readily through cohabitation. But this is not the only way, although perhaps the original one.

The resistance to the incest prohibition makes the phantasy inventive; for example, it was attempted to impregnate the mother by means of a magic charm of fertility (to wish for a child). Attempts in this respect remain in the stage of mythical phantasies; but they have one result, and that is the exercise of the phantasy which gradually produces paths through the creation of phantastic possibilities, in which the libido, taking an active part, can flow off. Thus the libido becomes spiritualized in an imperceptible manner. The power “which always wishes evil” thus creates a spiritual life. Therefore, in religions, this course is now raised to a system. On that account it is exceedingly instructive to see how religion takes pains to further these symbolic transferences.[454] The New Testament furnishes us with an excellent example in regard to this. Nicodemus, in the speech regarding rebirth, cannot forbear understanding the matter very realistically.

To be born of water means simply to be born from the mother’s womb. To be born of the spirit means to be born from the fructifying breath of the wind; this we learn from the Greek text (where spirit and wind are expressed by the same word, πνεῦμα) τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκος σάρξ ἐστιν, καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν.—Τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ,[455] etc.

This symbolism rose from the same need as that which produced the Egyptian legend of the vultures, the mother symbol. They were only females and were fertilized by the wind. One recognizes very clearly the ethical demand as the foundation of these mythologic assertions: thou must say of the mother that she was not impregnated by a mortal in the ordinary way, but by a spiritual being in an unusual manner. This demand stands in strict opposition to the real truth; therefore, the myth is a fitting solution. One can say it was a hero who died and was born again in a remarkable manner, and in this way attained immortality. The need which this demand asserts is evidently a prohibition against a definite phantasy concerning the mother. A son may naturally think that a father has generated him in a carnal way, but not that he himself impregnated the mother and so caused himself to be born again into renewed youth. This incestuous phantasy which for some reason possesses an extraordinary strength,[456] and, therefore, appears as a compulsory wish, is repressed and, conforming to the above demand, under certain conditions, expresses itself again, symbolically, concerning the problem of birth, or rather concerning individual rebirth from the mother. In Jesus’s challenge to Nicodemus we clearly recognize this tendency: “Think not carnally or thou art carnal, but think symbolically, then art thou spirit.” It is evident how extremely educative and developing this compulsion toward symbolism can be.

Nicodemus would remain fixed in low commonplaces if he did not succeed in raising himself through symbols above this repressed incestuous desire. As a righteous philistine of culture, he probably was not very anxious for this effort, because men seem really to remain satisfied in repressing the incestuous libido, and at best to express it by some modest religious exercises. Yet it seems to be important, on the other side, that man should not merely renounce and repress and thereby remain firmly fixed in the incestuous bond, but that he should redeem those dynamic forces which lie bound up in incest, in order to fulfil himself. For man needs his whole libido, to fill out the boundaries of his personality, and then, for the first time, he is in a condition to do his best. The paths by which man may manifest his incestuously fixed libido seem to have been pointed out by the religious mythologic symbols. On this account Jesus teaches Nicodemus: “Thou thinkest of thy incestuous wish for rebirth, but thou must think that thou art born from the water and that thou art generated by the breath of the wind,[457] and in this way thou shalt share in eternal life.”

Thus the libido which lies inactive in the incestuous bond repressed and in fear of the law and the avenging Father God can be led over into sublimation through the symbol of baptism (birth from water) and of generation (spiritual birth) through the symbol of the descent of the Holy Ghost. Thus man becomes a child[458] again and is born into a circle of brothers and sisters; but his mother is the “communion of the saints,” the church, and his circle of brothers and sisters is humanity, with whom he is united anew in the common inheritance of the primitive symbol.

It seems that at the time in which Christianity had its origin this process was especially necessary; for that period, as the result of the incredible contrast between slavery and the freedom of the citizens and masters, had entirely lost the consciousness of the common bond of mankind. One of the next and most essential reasons for the energetic regression to the infantile in Christianity, which goes hand in hand with the revival of the incest problem, was probably to be found in the far-reaching depreciation of women. At that time sexuality was so easily attainable that the result could only be a very excessive depreciation of the sexual object. The existence of personal values was first discovered by Christianity, and there are many people who have not discovered it even in the present day. However, the depreciation of the sexual object hinders the outflow of that libido which cannot be satisfied by sexual activity, because it belongs to an already desexualized higher order. (If it were not so, a Don Juan could never be neurotic; but the contrary is the case.) For how might those higher valuations be given to a worthless, despised object? Therefore, the libido, after having seen a “Helen in every woman” for so long a time, sets out on a search for the difficult to obtain, the worshipped, but perhaps unattainable, goal, and which in the unconscious is the mother.

Therefore the symbolic needs, based on the incest resistance, arise again in an increased degree, which promptly transforms the beautiful, sinful world of the Olympian Gods into incomprehensible, dreamlike, dark mysteries, which, with their accessions of symbols and obscure meaningful texts, remove us very far from the religious feelings of that Roman-Græco world. When we see how much trouble Jesus took to make acceptable to Nicodemus the symbolic perception of things, that is to say, really a repression and veiling over of the actual facts, and how important it was for the history of civilization in general, that people thought and still think in this way, then we understand the revolt which is raised everywhere against the psychologic discovery of the true background of the neurotic or normal symbolism. Always and everywhere we encounter the odious realm of sexuality, which represents to all righteous people of to-day something defiled. However, less than 2,000 years have passed since the religious cult of sexuality was more or less openly in full bloom. To be sure, they were heathen and did not know better, but the nature of religious power does not change from cycle to cycle.

If one has once received an effectual impression of the sexual contents of the ancient cults, and if one realizes oneself that the religious experience, that is, the union[459] with the God of antiquity, was understood by antiquity as a more or less concrete coitus, then truly one can no longer fancy that the motor forces of a religion have suddenly become wholly different since the birth of Christ. Exactly the same thing has occurred as with the hysteric who at first indulges in some quite unbeautiful, infantile sexual manifestations and afterwards develops a hyperæsthetic negation in order to convince every one of his special purity. Christianity, with its repression of the manifest sexual, is the negative of the ancient sexual cult. The original cult has changed its tokens.[460] One only needs to realize how much of the gay paganism, even to the inclusion of unseemly Gods, has been taken into the Christian church. Thus the old indecent Priapus celebrated a gay festival of resurrection in St. Tychon.[461] Also partly in the physicians Sts. Kosma and Damien, who graciously condescended to accept the “membra virilia” in wax at their festival.[462] St. Phallus of old memories emerges again to be worshipped in country chapels, to say nothing of the rest of the paganism!

There are those who have not yet learned to recognize sexuality as a function equivalent to hunger and who, therefore, consider it as disgraceful that certain taboo institutions which were considered as asexual refuges are now recognized as overflowing with sexual symbolism. Those people are doomed to the painful realization that such is still the case, in spite of their great revolt. One must learn to understand that, opposed to the customary habit of thought, psychoanalytic thinking reduces and resolves those symbolic structures which have become more and more complicated through countless elaboration. This means a course of reduction which would be an intellectual enjoyment if the object were different. But here it becomes distressing, not only æsthetically, but apparently also ethically, because the repressions which are to be overcome have been brought about by our best intentions. We must commence to overcome our virtuousness with the certain fear of falling into baseness on the other side. This is certainly true, for virtuousness is always inwardly compensated by a great tendency towards baseness; and how many profligates are there who inwardly preserve a mawkish virtue and moral megalomania? Both categories of men turn out to be snobs when they come in contact with analytic psychology, because the moral man has imagined an objective and cheap verdict on sexuality and the unmoral man is entirely unaware of the vulgarity of his sexuality and of his incapacity for an unselfish love.

One completely forgets that one can most miserably be carried away, not only by a vice, but also by a virtue. There is a fanatic orgiastic self-righteousness which is just as base and which entails just as much injustice and violence as a vice.

At this time, when a large part of mankind is beginning to discard Christianity, it is worth while to understand clearly why it was originally accepted. It was accepted in order to escape at last from the brutality of antiquity. As soon as we discard it, licentiousness returns, as impressively exemplified by life in our large modern cities. This step is not a forward step, but a backward one. It is as with individuals who have laid aside one form of transference and have no new one. Without fail they will occupy regressively the old path of transference, to their great detriment, because the world around them has since then essentially changed. He who is repelled by the historical and philosophical weakness of the Christian dogmatism and the religious emptiness of an historical Jesus, of whose person we know nothing and whose religious value is partly Talmudic, partly Hellenic wisdom, and discards Christianity, and therewith Christian morality, is certainly confronted with the ancient problem of licentiousness. To-day the individual still feels himself restrained by the public hypocritical opinion, and, therefore, prefers to lead a secret, separate life, but publicly to represent morality. It might be different if men in general all at once found the moral mask too dull, and if they realized how dangerously their beasts lie in wait for each other, and then truly a frenzy of demoralization might sweep over humanity.

It must not be imputed to me that I am wishing to refer the libido back by analytical reduction to the primitive, almost conquered, stages, entirely forgetting the fearful misery this would entail for humanity. Indeed, some individuals would let themselves be transported by the old-time frenzy of sexuality, from which the burden of guilt has been removed, to their own greatest detriment.

But these are the ones who under other circumstances would have prematurely perished in some other way. However, I well know the most effectual and most inexorable regulator of human sexuality. This is necessity. With this leaden weight human lust will never fly too high.

To-day there are countless neurotics who are so simply because they do not know how to seek happiness in their own manner. They do not even realize where the lack lies. And besides these neurotics there are many more normal people—and precisely people of the higher type—who feel restricted and discontented. For all these reduction to the sexual elements should be undertaken, in order that they may be reinstated into the possession of their primitive self, and thereby learn to know and value its relation to the entire personality. In this way alone can certain requirements be fulfilled and others be repudiated as unfit because of their infantile character. In this way the individual will come to realize that certain things are to be sacrificed, although they are accomplished, but in another sphere. We imagine that we have long renounced, sacrificed and cut off our incest wish, and that nothing of it is left. But it does not occur to us that this is not true, but that we unconsciously commit incest in another territory. In religious symbols, for example, we come across incest.[463] We consider the incestuous wish vanished and lost, and then rediscover it in full force in religion. This process or transformation has taken place unconsciously in secular development.

Just as in Part I it is shown that a similar unconscious transformation of the libido is an ethically worthless pose, and with which I compared the Christianity of early Roman antiquity, where evidently licentiousness and brutality were strongly resisted, so here I must remark in regard to the sublimation of the incestuous libido, that the belief in the religious symbol has ceased to be an ethical ideal; but it is an unconscious transformation of the incest wish into symbolic acts and symbolic concepts which cheat men, as it were, so that heaven appears to them as a father and earth as a mother and the people upon it children and brothers and sisters. Thus man can remain a child for all time and satisfy his incest wish all unawares. This state would doubtless be ideal[464] if it were not infantile and, therefore, merely a one-sided wish, which maintains a childish attitude. The reverse is anxiety. Much is said of pious people who remain unshaken in their trust in God and wander unswervingly safe and blessed through the world. I have never seen this Chidher yet. It is probably a wish figure. The rule is great uncertainty among believers, which they drown with fanatical cries among themselves or among others; moreover, they have religious doubts, moral uncertainty, doubts of their own personality, feelings of guilt and, deepest of all, great fear of the opposite aspect of reality, against which the most highly intelligent people struggle with all their force.

This other side is the devil, the adversary or, expressed in modern terms, the corrective of reality, of the infantile world picture, which has been made acceptable through the predominating pleasure principle.[465] But the world is not a garden of God, of the Father, but a place of terrors. Not only is heaven no father and earth no mother and the people not brothers nor sisters, but they represent hostile, destroying powers, to which we are abandoned the more surely, the more childishly and thoughtlessly we have entrusted ourselves to the so-called Fatherly hand of God. One should never forget the harsh speech of the first Napoleon, that the good God is always on the side of the heaviest artillery.

The religious myth meets us here as one of the greatest and most significant human institutions which, despite misleading symbols, nevertheless gives man assurance and strength, so that he may not be overwhelmed by the monsters of the universe. The symbol, considered from the standpoint of actual truth, is misleading, indeed, but it is psychologically true,[466] because it was and is the bridge to all the greatest achievements of humanity.

But this does not mean to say that this unconscious way of transformation of the incest wish into religious exercises is the only one or the only possible one. There is also a conscious recognition and understanding with which we can take possession of this libido which is bound up in incest and transformed into religious exercises so that we no longer need the stage of religious symbolism for this end. It is thinkable that instead of doing good to our fellow-men, for “the love of Christ,” we do it from the knowledge that humanity, even as ourselves, could not exist if, among the herd, the one could not sacrifice himself for the other. This would be the course of moral autonomy, of perfect freedom, when man could without compulsion wish that which he must do, and this from knowledge, without delusion through belief in the religious symbols.

It is a positive creed which keeps us infantile and, therefore, ethically inferior. Although of the greatest significance from the cultural point of view and of imperishable beauty from the æsthetic standpoint, this delusion can no longer ethically suffice humanity striving after moral autonomy.

The infantile and moral danger lies in belief in the symbol because through that we guide the libido to an imaginary reality. The simple negation of the symbol changes nothing, for the entire mental disposition remains the same; we merely remove the dangerous object. But the object is not dangerous; the danger is our own infantile mental state, for love of which we have lost something very beautiful and ingenious through the simple abandonment of the religious symbol. I think belief should be replaced by understanding; then we would keep the beauty of the symbol, but still remain free from the depressing results of submission to belief. This would be the psychoanalytic cure for belief and disbelief.

The vision following upon that of the city is that of a “strange fir tree with gnarled branches.” This vision does not seem extraordinary to us after all that we have learned of the tree of life and its associations with the city and the waters of life. This especial tree seems simply to continue the category of the mother symbols. The attribute “strange” probably signifies, as in dreams, a special emphasis, that is, a special underlying complex material. Unfortunately, the author gives us no individual material for this. As the tree already suggested in the symbolism of the city is particularly emphasized through the further development of Miss Miller’s visions here, I find it necessary to discuss at some length the history of the symbolism of the tree.

It is well known that trees have played a large part in the cult myth from the remotest times. The typical myth tree is the tree of paradise or of life which we discover abundantly used in Babylonian and also in Jewish lore; and in prechristian times, the pine tree of Attis, the tree or trees of Mithra; in Germanic mythology, Ygdrasil and so on. The hanging of the Attis image on the pine tree; the hanging of Marsyas, which became a celebrated artistic motive; the hanging of Odin; the Germanic hanging sacrifices—indeed, the whole series of hanged gods—teaches us that the hanging of Christ on the cross is not a unique occurrence in religious mythology, but belongs to the same circle of ideas as others. In this world of imagery the cross of Christ is the tree of life, and equally the wood of death. This contrast is not astounding. Just as the origin of man from trees was a legendary idea, so there were also burial customs, in which people were buried in hollow trees. From that the German language retains even now the expression “Totenbaum” (tree of death) for a coffin. Keeping in mind the fact that the tree is predominantly a mother symbol, then the mystic significance of this manner of burial can be in no way incomprehensible to us. The dead are delivered back to the mother for rebirth. We encounter this symbol in the Osiris myth, handed down by Plutarch,[467] which is, in general, typical in various aspects. Rhea is pregnant with Osiris; at the same time also with Isis; Osiris and Isis mate even in the mother’s womb (motive of the night journey on the sea with incest).

Their son is Arueris, later called Horus. It is said of Isis that she was born “in absolute humidity” (τετάρτῃ δὲ τῆν Ἴσιν ἐν πανύγροις γενέσθαι[468]). It is said of Osiris that a certain Pamyles in Thebes heard a voice from the temple of Zeus while drawing water, which commanded him to proclaim that Osiris was born μέγας βασιλεὺς εὐεργέτης Ὄσιρις.[469] In honor of this the Pamylion were celebrated. They were similar to the phallophorion. Pamyles is a phallic demon, similar to the original Dionysus. The myth reduced reads: Osiris and Isis were generated by phallus from the water (mother womb) in the ordinary manner. (Kronos had made Rhea pregnant, the relation was secret, and Rhea was his sister. Helios, however, observed it and cursed the relation.) Osiris was killed in a crafty manner by the god of the underworld, Typhon, who locked him in a chest. He was thrown into the Nile, and so carried out to sea. Osiris, however, mated in the underworld with his second sister, Nephthys (motive of the night journey to the sea with incest). One sees here how the symbolism is developed. In the mother womb, before the outward existence, Osiris commits incest; in death, the second intrauterine existence, Osiris again commits incest. Both times with a sister who is simply substituted for the mother as a legal, uncensured symbol, since the marriage with a sister in early antiquity was not merely tolerated, but was really commended. Zarathustra also recommended the marriage of kindred.

This form of myth would be impossible to-day, because cohabitation with the sister, being incestuous, would be repressed. The wicked Typhon entices Osiris craftily into a box or chest; this distortion of the true state of affairs is transparent. The “original sin” caused men to wish to go back into the mother again, that is, the incestuous desire for the mother, condemned by law, is the ruse supposedly invented by Typhon. The fact is, the ruse is very significant. Man tries to sneak into rebirth through subterfuge in order to become a child again. An early Egyptian hymn[470] even raises an accusation against the mother Isis because she destroys the sun-god Rê by treachery. It was interpreted as the ill-will of the mother towards her son that she banished and betrayed him. The hymn describes how Isis fashioned a snake, put it in the path of Rê, and how the snake wounded the sun-god with a poisonous bite, from which wound he never recovered, so that finally he had to retire on the back of the heavenly cow. But this cow is the cow-headed goddess, just as Osiris is the bull Apis. The mother is accused as if she were the cause of man flying to the mother in order to be cured of the wound which she had herself inflicted. This wound is the prohibition of incest.[471] Man is thus cut off from the hopeful certainty of childhood and early youth, from all the unconscious, instinctive happenings which permit the child to live as an appendage of his parents, unconscious of himself.

There must be contained in this many sensitive memories of the animal age, where there was not any “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not,” but all was just simple occurrence. Even yet a deep animosity seems to live in man because a brutal law has separated him from the instinctive yielding to his desires and from the great beauty of the harmony of the animal nature. This separation manifested itself, among other things, in the incest prohibition and its correlates (laws of marriage, etc.); therefore pain and anger relate to the mother, as if she were responsible for the domestication of the sons of men. In order not to become conscious of his incest wish (his backward harking to the animal nature), the son throws all the burden of the guilt on the mother, from which arises the idea of the “terrible mother.”[472] The mother becomes for him a spectre of anxiety, a nightmare.[473]

After the completed “night journey to the sea,” the chest of Osiris was cast ashore by Byblos, and lay in the branches of an Erica, which grew around the coffin and became a splendid tree. The king of the land had the tree placed as a column under his roof.[474] During this period of Osiris’s absence (the winter solstice) the lament customary during thousands of years for the dead god and his return occurs, and its εὕρεσις is a feast of joy. A passage from the mournful quest of Isis is especially noteworthy: