Essays In Applied Psychoanalysis Vol II

CO > UJ

u <OU_1 64531 >[g

OUP 67 1 1-1-685,000,

OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Call No. 1&U34- Accession No. l

Author "

Title
This book should be returned on or before the date last marked below.

THE INTERNATIONAL

PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL

LIBRARY

No. 41

Simone Martini : The Annunciation

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST JONES, M.D.

No. 41

ESSAYS IN
APPLIED PSYCHO
ANALYSIS

BY

ERNEST JONES, M.D.

VOL. II

ESSAYS IN FOLKLORE, ANTHROPOLOGY
AND RELIGION

THE HOGARTH PRESS LTD

40-42 WILLIAM IV STREET LONDON W.C.*
AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

I9SI

PUBLISHED BY

The Hogarth Press Ltd

and
The Institute of Psycho-Analysis

LONDON
*

Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd
TORONTO

SECOND IMPRESSION

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
EBENEZER BAYLIS & SON, LTD., WORCESTER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE

THE essays in this volume are grouped into those dealing with
Folklore, Anthropology and Religion respectively. My acknowledg-
ments are due to the publishers concerned for permission to re-issue
them. Chapters IX and X, containing an explanation of the success
of Christianity over its rivals which I have not encountered elsewhere,
have not been previously printed.

When Freud was publishing the translation of his Moses and Mono-
theism he wondered what reception it would have in England, which
he thought was still the most religiously-minded country. I suggested
he insert into the preface something on the lines of the following
paragraph, but on reflection he decided it was not necessary.

"In no other European country has so much tolerance been shown
towards the discoveries of psycho-analysis as in England. This is in
accord with her profound trust in the importance of freedom of
thought. And for some centuries now it has also been the English
tradition that frank and sincere discussion of theological and religious
problems is to be included in this freedom; indeed, historically it was
the origin of it."

CONTENTS

PAGE

I Psycho-Analysis and Folklore I

II The Symbolic Significance of Salt 22

III Beliefs concerning the Nightmare no

IV Psycho- Analysis and Anthropology 114
V Mother- Right and the Sexual Ignorance of Savages 145

VI A Psycho- Analytical Note on Palaeolithic Art 174

VII Free Will and Determinism 178

VIII The Psychology of Religion 190

IX Psycho-Analysis and the Christian Religion 198

X The Significance of Christmas 212

XI Rationalism and Psycho-Analysis 225

XII The God Complex 244

XIII The Madonna's Conception through the Ear 266

XIV A Psycho-Analytic Study of the Holy Ghost Concept 358
Index 374

I

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE 1

THE very extensive and original contributions that psycho-
analysis has made to* the science of folklore in the past
twenty years have passed almost entirely unnoticed by folk-
lorists. That the present is the first occasion on which the
matter has been brought to their direct attention cannot, I
think, be the main explanation of this remarkable neglect.
I should regard it rather as one more manifestation of the
anti-psychological bias that prevails among scholars and
men of science. In their laudable endeavour to emerge from
the subjective pre-scientific era they have naturally tended
to confound objectivity with the study of the outer world,
and to identify contemplation of the mind with subjectivity.
This attitude has proved eminently successful in so far as
the investigation of physical phenomena that are unin-
fluenced by mental processes is concerned, or at least the
drawbacks attaching to it have hitherto been relatively in-
considerable and are only now beginning to be perceived,
but the limitations it imposes on the study of phenomena
which are the product of mental processes are so grave as to
confine such studies to a preliminary charting out of the
ground. This is evident when we consider the material
studied in folklore, whether it be customs, beliefs, or folk-
songs, for without exception it is the product of dynamic
mental processes, the response of the folk soul to either
outer or inner needs, the expression of various longings,
fears, aversions, or desires. Indeed the only reason why

1 Read before the Jubilee Congress of the Folk-Lore Society, Sept. 25th,
1928.

I

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

what I have just said escapes being a platitude is that, in
providing explanations for any of this material, folklorists
have necessarily forged a psychology of their own or else
taken a commonly accepted one for granted. When they
explain certain customs as having been motivated by the
desire for more food or better crops they are justified in
assuming such desires as common human attributes and
experience no need to investigate their nature any further ;
that, they would say, is the business of the psychologist or
physiologist. This attitude, however, has many pitfalls, for
modern psychology has indubitably shown that the human
mind is a far more complex apparatus than is commonly
supposed, and that many motives which appear simple
enough on the surface prove on examination to have a much
more elaborate substructure.

Another consideration comes into play here. Psychology
itself has in the past been singularly unhelpful to ancillary
sciences such as folklore. What is known as academic
psychology and I am leaving philosophy quite out of
account here has found itself in an unprecedented situa-
tion, the nature of which is not at all generally appreciated.
In approaching its subject-matter it finds insuperable bar-
riers almost at the entry. In investigating the genesis of any
given mental processes it has, necessarily, to make halt
whenever thoughts are approached which are of too intim-
ate a nature to be disclosed, or else a point is reached when
the subject himself is unable to provide any further data
a state of things which we now know to be due to the con-
fines having been reached between the conscious and the
unconscious mind. The psychologists had perforce to con-
tent themselves with relatively superficial mental processes,
such as the data of sense physiology or the rapidity with
which various objects could be committed to memory and
the like. It was only when the science of clinical psychology
was born that a motive, namely, mental suffering, was

2

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

furnished powerful enough to overcome a person's natural
objection to laying bare the secrets ot his soul, and it was
only when Freud provided the special technique of psycho-
analysis for the exploration of the unconscious that it be-
came possible to trace any mental process to its ultimate
source. The discoveries thus made have, as is well known,
proved to be startlingly revolutionary, and have led to a
fundamentally new conception of the mind. This in its turn
was bound to have repercussions in all the sciences, includ-
ing folklore, that are concerned with the products of mental
activity. Contributions from this point of view have in fact
been made to a number of such sciences, such as anthro-
pology, mythology, philology, pedagogy, and last but not
least to folklore. It is the object of the present paper to
present to you some of the points of view in question, and
to illustrate a few of the bearings they have on the study of
folklore material.

Perhaps the most important conclusion reached by
psycho-analytic work is that what we call our mind, i.e., the
mental processes known to consciousness, is only a trans-
formed selection of the whole mind, derived from its deeper
and absolutely unconscious layers and modified by contact
with the stimuli of the outer world. The deeper unconscious
layer, originating in our organic instincts, is mainly com-
posed of wishes which are actively striving for expression.
They come into conflict with opposing forces, especially
those relating to fear and guilt, the nucleus of what later
will become the moral conscience. What is allowed to seek
expression by entering consciousness represents a com-
promise between the two groups ; the wishes achieve fulfil-
ment only in a modified and disguised form. In our judge-
ments and beliefs about the outer world far more contribu-
tions from the obscure inner world of the mind are to be
found than is commonly supposed, and it is particularly
with those subjective and less rational contributions to

3

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

thought and conduct that folklore is concerned. When
prominent they often produce a quaint or even comical
effect, and elicit the disdain to which folklorists are accus-
tomed in regard to the material of their work, but when
traced to their origin they prove not only to have a perfectly
intelligible logic of their own, but to be derived from the
most fundamental sources of our being.

Psycho-analysis has produced much evidence to show
that all our conscious ideas, feelings, interests, and beliefs
originate in the unconscious ; the conscious mind originates
nothing, its functions being confined to criticism, selection,
and control. Unconscious impulses may be called primitive
both as being earlier in development in time, thus being
nearly synonymous with "infantile", and as representing a
lower stage in mental evolution, one out of which more
highly differentiated forms of mental activity develop. Now
these primitive impulses may come to expression in con-
sciousness in, broadly speaking, one of two ways. Normally
they undergo a process of transformation and adaptation in
accordance with external reality; in this process they be-
come adjusted both to the claims of reality and to the
demands of inner conscience (what is nowadays called the
"super-ego"). The other way in which they may come to
expression is through the formation of complicated forms of
compromise which act in effect as disguises, the impulses
themselves remaining in their unaltered form and under-
going none of the transformation characteristic of the first
mode. The former thus gives rise to what may be called the
normal interests, ideas, and occupations of mankind. It is
the second class that is of special interest in the present con-
nection. They represent relics of the primitive mental state,
fragments left over in the process of evolution. In the
language of folklore they would be termed survivals. The
value of them to the psychologist is the direct light they
throw on the primitive mind before it has undergone evolu-

4

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

tion. To the ancillary sciences they are of value because
through this knowledge they can be interpreted and thus
throw light on the context in which they occur. Now the
important point is that the material we have termed sur-
vivals is to be met with in very similar form in extremely
diverse fields. To give a few examples of this: neurotic
symptoms, the field in which these discoveries were first
made, are all survivals of this nature, and represent part of
the infantile life that has resisted the process of normal
growth. The phenomena of dream life, the understanding of
which has exercised the imagination of so many generations,
have proved to be of the same nature and, as you probably
know, the elucidation of them plays an extensive part in the
modern treatment of neurotic symptoms, to which they
afford a close parallel. To come to our present subject, many
savage beliefs and folklore customs can be shown to be
closely related, in both form and content, to the other
phenomena that I have just classed under the same general
heading. They show the same peculiar mental mechanisms
characteristic of unconscious products and, what is perhaps
even more important, they reveal the same underlying con-
tent and are derived from the same sources. This sentence,
which contains the gist of my whole thesis, I shall presently
have to amplify at some length, for to do so is to discuss the
relationship between psycho-analysis and folklore. To put
the whole matter in another way, what we maintain is that
there is a far-reaching parallelism between survivals of
primitive life from the racial past and survivals from the
individual past. The practical value of this generalization
is that the study of survivals in folklore can be usefully
supplemented by the study of survivals in living individuals,
where they are far more accessible to direct investiga-
tion.

One little point may be mentioned at the outset. As you
all know, a controversy has raged for many years among

5

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

folklorists over the very definition of their subject-matter;
the question was admirably summed up by our last Presi-
dent, Mr. A. R. Wright, in his valedictory address. The
point at issue was whether folklore should be confined to
the study of survivals from the past, to phenomena which
in the nature of things are approaching exhaustion, or
whether it should also include the new manufacture of a
certain class of data possessing the same characteristics as
the familiar survivals. Mr. Wright quoted the following
passages from previous presidential addresses: "But folk-
lore, being what it is, namely the survival of traditional
ideas or practices among a people whose principal members
have passed beyond the stage of civilization which those
ideas and practices once represented, it is impossible for it
to have any development" ;* "One advantage possessed by
our inclusive science is that the evidence which it presents
is not disturbed by the intrusion of unsuspected elements.
It is a science of survivals, not of discoveries" ; 2 and he then
proceeded to make a vigorous defence of the opposite point
of view. "The old tree of folk thought and practice has life
not only in its surviving branches, on which there are both
withered twigs and fresh buds, but also in new and vigorous
shoots which are being put out from the old trunk." 3 Now
psycho-analysis would certainly support this more compre-
hensive view of the subject, the one vigorously defended by
Mr. Wright, laying stress, as it does, on the dynamic and
spontaneous aspects of these survival products and regard-
ing them as efforts on the part of the unconscious to find
expression; it would point out not only that the impulses
that generated these products are a permanent part of man
and are still as actively at work as ever, but also that the
differences between the new products and the old can be

* G. L. Gomme, Folk-Lore, Vol. IV, p. 6.

Edward Clodd, ibid., Vol. VI, p. 75.

A. R. Wright, ibid.. Vol. XXXVIII, p. 24.

6

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

shown to be more superficial than essential. Mr. Wright
takes as an example of the former the war superstition that
to use a match to light three cigarettes portended the death
of the third smoker. Folklorists cannot fail to be reminded
at once of the great part played in superstition by the idea
of death following a third act or process, e.g., a third stroke
of apoplexy and so on. Psycho-analysis would go still
further, and would be able to correlate the form of this
belief with certain unconscious ideas concerning the number
three, and it would in practice be able to show that just
these unconscious ideas have been operative in the case of
any particular person who was seriously influenced by the
cigarette superstition. In doing so it would establish a con-
tinuity between the old and the new products, and would
thus justify the inclusion of both in the same region of
scientific study. I might illustrate the same point from
another example which will also illuminate the connection
between psycho-analytical and folkloristic data. In Sir
Laurence Gomme's study of anthropological survivals in
these islands he comes to the conclusion that "the whole
associated group of customs received adequate explanation
only on the theory that it represented the detritus of a once
existing totemic system of belief". 1 Now in the psycho-
analysis of individuals we have in a number of cases been
able to demonstrate that ideas closely parallel to totemistic
beliefs had been cherished during infancy, partly con-
sciously, partly unconsciously, and, what is even more
interesting, that survivals of this primitive period had been
left in later life in the form of particular neurotic symptoms
such as animal phobias. In other words, we have before us
in the individual the whole evolution of beliefs, and customs
or rituals based on them, which is parallel to what in the
field of folklore has run a course of perhaps thousands of
years.

1 G. L. Gomme, Folklore as an Historical Science. 1908, p. 276.

7

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The unconscious mind has a considerable number of
characteristics which distinguish it from the conscious mind,
and indications of many of these can often be traced in the
phenomena that I have here grouped as unconscious sur-
vivals. I shall not take up your time by enumerating them
here, 1 but should like to mention one or two of them with
which you will be specially familiar in the field of folklore.
In psycho-analysis we refer to it by the name of "omni-
potence of thoughts", implying thereby the unconscious
belief that the thoughts, or rather wishes, of the person in
question possess a magical power of reaching fruition in the
outer world. The elucidation of mental processes of this
kind plays a large part in daily psycho-analytic work, and
as to folklore I am at a loss to choose an illustration of it,
for the vast majority of folkloristic data are based on this
principle. Every custom or ritual or formula designed to
bring about results in the outer world, preservation from
sickness, improvement in the crops, and so on, is based
ultimately on the idea that the human mind possesses the
power to influence the course of nature in the outer world,
a power which religion deputes to Deity and achieves by the
more indirect technique of prayer.

The characteristic just mentioned may perhaps be re-
garded as a special example of a more general one, namely
the disregard of reality. In its extreme form this can attain
quite delusional dimensions, and, in fact, emerges into con-
sciousness among the insane as actual delusions. Most often,
however, the tendency to ignore reality is not absolute, at
least in its conscious manifestations. It is this attribute that
confers on so much of folklore material its apparent irra-
tionality. I use the word "apparent", for the process in
question is not really irrational, once one grants its
premises; but the premises are often enough not in accord
with the facts of external reality. If, for example, peasants

* See Freud. "The Unconscious," Collected Papers, 1925, Vol. IV, Ch. VI.

8

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

beat a saucepan during an eclipse of the sun, the procedure
is not so senseless if one admits the presence of a wolf who
is trying to devour their hero. Speaking still more broadly,
we are concerned here with the part the imagination plays
in the vast majority of folklore phenomena, and psycho-
analysis can trace the workings of the imagination back to
the internal phantasies that precede interest in the outer
world and which take their origin in unconscious interests
and impulses. Imagination can, of course, be generated in
response to an inner need, i.e., act "spontaneously", or be
stirred from without. External influences can do nothing
except affect the form assumed by the imaginative act. It is
through discounting this consideration that certain mem-
bers of the "diffusionist" school of anthropology have
invented an antinomy between the psycho-analytical and
the anthropological points of view which does not, in my
opinion, really exist. The all-embracing explanation they
find in demonstrating the spread of a given belief or custom
reminds me of the similar attitude in psycho-pathology of
those who are satisfied by ascribing every neurotic symp-
tom to "suggestion" from without, and the criticism one
would make is the same in the two cases. With neurotic
symptoms one can prove that, where outside suggestion
has played a part, it has done so only by stirring internal
impulses that were ready enough to be stirred, and that its
influence is confined to determining in some degree the form
taken by the product of the internal impulse. I am per-
suaded that much the same must be true of the mass as of
the individual, for the forces at work are of the same
psychological nature with both. It is not a valid argument
against this to point out that the original meaning of a
custom is sometimes lost in its new setting, and can be
discovered only by tracing historically its spread from its
place of origin, or even that the meaning may change as the
result of the transplantation. To this I would reply that the

9 B

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

"meaning" here referred to is rarely more than the rational-
istic fa$ade given by the people to the belief or custom, and
that behind this facade and quite unknown to them lies the
real deeper motive. If the deeper motivation be investigated
it will be found to be very similar in the two cases, i.e., that
the belief before and after transplantation is often the
expression of the same underlying impulse.

I will now consider one of the most puzzling and im-
portant features of unconscious mentation, namely sym-
bolism. A great part of the confusion on this subject arises
simply from the fact that many quite disparate processes are
often described by the same term. 1 Metaphors, emblems,
similes, and so on, in fact almost any process in which one
idea stands for another, have had the name "symbolism"
applied to them. In psycho-analysis the word is employed
in a much more restricted and defined sense, to designate a
peculiar process whereby an idea or process represents an
associated one which is in a state of repression in the uncon-
scious mind. The number of possible symbols is countless,
whereas the number of ideas in the unconscious that can be
symbolized is very limited indeed, only those referring to
the immediate blood relatives, various parts of the body,
and the phenomena of birth, love, and death. Actually the
large majority of symbols represent some half-dozen uncon-
scious ideas. It follows that the interpretation of symbols
displays a somewhat depressing monotony, though it is not
true to say, as is sometimes done, that it is stereotyped. One
is often less depressed than amazed by this monotony,
though both emotions are obviously irrelevant to the more
important question of the truth of the interpretations, a
matter I have not the opportunity to discuss here. I would
only point out that the data of folklore are replete with
examples of symbolism in the psycho-analytical sense, and

*See "The Theory of Symbolism/' Ch. VIII of my Papers on Psycho-
Analysis, 1923.

10

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

that the interpretation of such symbols not only illuminates
the inner meaning of the data but can constantly be con-
firmed by comparative study of allied material.

In the following example I would call special attention to
the fact that a symbol always represents a concrete idea,
never a general or abstract one. Let us take for instance the
custom of throwing rice at weddings, which used to be
general in the days of my youth, but which has now been
replaced by the use of confetti. It would doubtless be agreed
that the rice in this context represents the idea of fertility,
and the act of throwing it the corresponding wish in respect
of the bridal couple. Psycho-analysts would say that the
rice is an emblem of fertility, but a symbol of seed; and they
would mean by this that investigation of the unconscious
would show that it was the idea of seed there from which
all the other acts and thoughts proceeded. I have published
an exhaustive study 1 of the beliefs and customs surrounding
the idea of salt, one which has the same symbolic meaning,
and have there discussed the relation of symbolism to
superstition.

It will be seen that the unconscious ideas are not only
more concrete but also cruder than the ideas represented in
metaphorical processes, and this crudity and simplicity of
unconscious ideas is a matter on which it is necessary to
insist. In the allied, but now obsolescent, custom of throw-
ing an old slipper or shoe after the departing couple, a
custom which has more than one meaning in different layers
of the mind, one would regard the object thrown as a symbol
for the (fruitful) female organ itself, an interpretation that
may be supported by quoting the decidedly broad saying
that used to accompany it "May you fit her as well as my
foot fits this old shoe" or by the Bohemian custom of
getting hens to lay more eggs by feeding them with peas in a

1 "The Symbolic Significance of Salt in Folklore and Superstition/' Ch. IV
in my Essays in Applied Psycho- Analysis, 1923.

II

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

shoe on a holy eventide. 1 To take off the bride's shoe has the
same defloration significance as to tear through the bridal
wreath or loosen her girdle. Symbols with the same meaning

that play a very considerable part in folklore are the cowry
shell, the crescent moon, innumerable cups, goblets, cauld-
rons, and caskets, and almost any object with an opening,
from door portals and snake-stones to hollow trees or even
the opening under a leaning ladder. Perhaps the most
familiar example of all is the inverted horseshoe still to be
seen over most stable doors. This is the descendant of the
actual genital organ of the mare or cow displayed in Eastern
countries to ward off the Evil Eye, just as the Shela-na-gig
did that used to be found outside the door of Irish churches.
It is the counterpart of the numerous forms of Asherah
with its usual accompaniment of male symbols such as the
arrow, cross, palm tree, star, etc., facing its concavity.

These few examples alone raise a host of problems. I
intend to mention only two of them, and indeed shall have
to postpone consideration of these until something has been
said about the content of the unconscious. The first problem
is, how comes it that the very same symbol can be used now
as a sign of bad luck and now as a sign of good luck, and
that the ideas symbolized are constantly changing in their
relation to good and bad luck? An even prior question is,
what is the real meaning of good and bad luck, terms which
play such an enormous part in folklore beliefs and customs ?
The second problem concerns the place occupied by the
subject of sexuality. Although no one has suggested that all
unconscious symbols are sexual, which would be an entirely
false suggestion, we have to face the fact that an astonish-
ing number, certainly the large majority, are of this nature,
and we cannot refrain from inquiring into the meaning of
this unexpected finding. Now it would be quite wrong to
ascribe a merely lascivious motive to the occurrence of

1 Aigremont, Fuss- und sehuh-Symbolik und Erotih, 1909, S. 54.

12

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

sexual symbols, and if this were more generally recognized
there would perhaps be less prudishness in dealing seriously
with the problem. The circumstances that such symbolism

pervades all religions, even the higher ones, should in itself
be enough to make us regard the matter more soberly. I
hope to show presently that the two questions just raised
are intimately connected and that they are concerned with
the most fundamental issues of life and death.

I think it is fair to say that the phenomena studied in
folklore relate for the most part to simple or even lowly
themes. The same is true a fortiori of the unconscious mind.
In folklore we have to do with the simple wishes and fears of
the people and very little with elaborate philosophical,
spiritual, or artistic preoccupations. We find the people
concerned with such matters as the preservation of health,
the warding off of danger and death, the hopes of fortune,
and the desire for happy marriage and the blessing of
children. The unconscious is similarly engrossed with such
topics and in even more primitive terms. I will illustrate
this by laying before you two broad generalizations about
its content. The first is that it is mainly concerned with the
themes of birth, love and death. These are the springs of
life, and psycho-analysis would go so far as to maintain
that all our manifold imaginative interests originate there,
and consist only in ramifications of these themes modified
by the influence of two other factors, the defensive reactions
against certain dangers inherent in them (the moral "super-
ego"), and contact with outer reality. These two influences
exercise a constantly moulding effect on the primitive im-
pulses that are striving for expression in their naked form.
They control them, thwart them, select from them, and
modify them to such an extent that in the final forms in
which they emerge they are mostly transformed or distorted
out^of recognition. From time to time, of course, they
emerge in ruder forms in various contexts. If, for instance,

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

myths and nursery tales were taken seriously and not as a
form of entertainment, we should doubtless be horrified at
the recurring evidences they present of barbarous and
loutish impulses. Sir Laurence Gomme is assuredly right
when he says that "it is not accidental but persistent
savagery we meet with in the folk-tale" 1 . Further, as might
be expected, the orientation of these impulses is decidedly
egocentric; the unconscious, like charity, begins at home.

The second generalization about the unconscious is that
primarily it recognizes no human beings except the imme-
diate blood relatives; parents, siblings, and children. Atti-
tudes and feelings about other people are all developed by
either transforming or directly transferring those belonging
to the relatives. This finding has tremendous import, but
first I should like to make it a little more intelligible by
reminding you of the banal fact that an infant's feelings and
reactions are of necessity displayed first in respect of the
persons in its immediate environment. The generalization I
have just enunciated is by no means identical with this
banal fact, though it has much in common with it. It illus-
trates the genetic aspects of the unconscious, and shows
how nearly akin it is to the infantile. The really important
feature of it is that, since the unconscious is composed of our
most primitive impulses, we have to face the conclusion that
in that region of the mind the relationship to other members
of the family far transcends the conventional ones of piety
and affection. It does this in both directions, i.e., it is both
more and less affectionate than one would infer from con-
scious manifestations. By less than affectionate I mean the
jealous and hostile attitudes inherent in the family relation-
ship, which regularly culminate in death-wishes. By more
than affectionate I mean sexual, and in saying this I reach
the hotly contested doctrine of psycho-analysis on the
subject of infantile sexuality. This is not the place either to

1 G. L. Gomme, op. cit., p. 82.

14

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

expound or to defend the doctrine, and I can only express
my personal conviction of its truth. The only possible
alternatives are that psycho-analysts are entirely mistaken
in maintaining the existence of infantile sexuality, or, on
the other hand, that, as they assert, powerful motives of
repression are generally operative in leading people to over-
look or discount the signs of it that exist all around. Those
who have seriously examined the mass of evidence that has
been adduced can, I think, hardly remain long in doubt
between these two alternatives.

The aspect of this subject that most concerns us here is
the relationship of infantile sexuality to other members of
the family, the so-called incest trends. According to psycho-
analysis every child goes through a period in the first few
years of its life where its development is dominated by un-
conscious conflicts relating to these trends, and very much
of its future will depend on how it copes with them.
Powerful barriers of fear and guilt are constructed against
the forbidden and dangerous trends, and these barriers from
the nucleus of what later becomes morality, conscience, and
much of religion. I cannot describe here the complicated
ways in which the two sets of forces in this conflict result in
various compromises, out of which much of our conscious
mind emerges ; what interests us here is the less satisfactory
products of the conflict. By these I mean the relics of the
primitive state, what I termed "survivals" in the earlier
part of my paper, and, as I then pointed out, they are very
nearly synonymous with much of the data investigated by
folklorists. The most typical group is that which in its
psychological structure can be likened to neurotic symp-
toms. An example would be the averting of "ill-luck" by a
magical gesture, incantation, or amulet. There is an interest-
ing group, however, which is intermediate between this one
and the quite normal transformation of the primitive im-
pulses into daily activities. This intermediate one may, in a

15

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

broad sense, be called artistic. The prominent part in it that

phantasy plays allies it to the last group, from which it is
separated, however, by a certain deference to reality. At the
present Congress we have had several attractive presenta-
tions on the matter of folk-songs and folk-dance, but there
are two topics even more familiar to us all in this connec-
tion. I refer to fairy tales and children's games. It has long
been surmised, and in part demonstrated, that both these
prerogatives of childhood have more to do with adult life
than might at first sight appear. It seems clear, for instance,
that the building and defending of castles and the use of
bows and arrows must be traditionally handed down from
times when these were serious occupations in adult life. In
some cases, as in the doctor game and the preoccupation
with dolls, the relation to the sexual life of adults is unmis-
takable, but it will surprise many of you to be told that
there is good reason to suppose that sexual elements are to
be traced in most of these youthful interests. Symbolism
plays an even larger part in the mentality of children than
in that of adults, and the actual psycho-analysis of young
children has shown that both their spontaneously invented
games and the traditional ones they adopt so eagerly are
often the symbolic expression of the infantile sexuality I
mentioned earlier. The same is true of fairy tales. Let me
illustrate this by the familiar example of the frog-prince
type of tale, in which the frog through repeated pleadings is
gradually admitted to increasing intimacy with the maiden
and is finally unspelled on being admitted to her bed. We
learn from the sequel that the frog was all the time a prince
in disguise, but to this we have to add the fact that the frog
is in the unconscious a constant symbol of the male organ
when viewed with disgust. So we have to complete the
interpretation by saying that the story represents the
maiden's gradual overcoming of her aversion to intimacy
with this part of the body.

16

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

This leads me to say a word about the part played by
animals in phantasy, in children's games, in nursery tales,
in legends, and, last but not least, in dreams. The simple
fact that these animals, in spite of their frequently objec-
tionable behaviour, surprise us by displaying peculiarly
human characteristics should provide a hint ta their real
meaning. This is no more and no less than that they
represent particular human beings, most often the parents,
especially the father, less often brothers or sisters or
children. In many fairy tales, e.g., The Twelve Brothers,
The Seven Ravens, etc. (Grimm), this is explicitly stated,
and, incidentally, we get a hint of the motives behind such
transformations, since it is clear that in these instances the
father has cast the spell from jealousy of his daughter's
fondness for the brothers. It is noteworthy that the father-
animal identification is usually much more disguised than
the other forms, indicating that the repressed thoughts
about the father are in a corresponding state of inhibition.
The animals of heraldry, however, might be quoted in this
context, for the connection between heraldry and ancestry
is evident enough as is that between the worship and taboos
about snakes and piety for ancestors. Again, there are the
numerous beliefs of tribes and nations being descended
from particular animals, as the English are supposed to be
from horses. Ancestor worship and the numerous beliefs
about ancestors are but a displacement of similar attitudes
concerning the father. The animals may of course be actual
or imaginary ones, such as unicorns, dragons, etc., and in
the latter case indicate a further stage in the disguise of the
repressed idea. For the reason of the disguise is certainly
repression. If one asks why should not the actual persons
intended appear in the story or dream, the answer we get
from investigation of the data is always the same, namely,
that the theme that has given rise to the phantasy contains
elements that are unacceptable to consciousness, and so are

'7

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

allowed to emerge only when they have been changed into
an unrecognizable form. The various elements in question
fall into two groups, sexual and hostile, a rule to which I
know no exception, and the incompatibility of these atti-
tudes with the piety due to one's family is obvious.

These human animals remind us of the .other figures of
phantasy, giants, dwarfs, fairies, and ghosts, about each of
which very much could be said. It is generally recognized
by now that the conception of giants, with their clumsy
stupidity and their alternation of kindliness and ogrish
devouring of children, is a projection of various infantile
thoughts about grown-ups, particularly the parents, and
perhaps one might say the same as regards the sexual
significance of jesters, and dwarfs, of which Triumbkins and
Rumpelstiltskin serve as typical examples. The belief in
ghosts is one which has naturally attracted much attention
from folklorists, and here again I would suggest that much
advantage may accrue from co-operation between their
work and that of psycho-analysts. It is surely clear that a
limit is soon reached if we confine our investigation of
ghosts (and allied spiritistic phenomena) to examination of
the purely objective aspects, without taking into account
the subjective state of the witnesses. In such studies we
cannot distinguish between the parts played by the inner
world and the outer world so long as we attend, as is nearly
always the case, to the latter only. Psycho-analysis is
naturally concerned with the former problem and often
enough has to investigate the fear of ghosts, the proneness
to see them, and so on. After unravelling and curing such
mental states, it is possible to say something pretty definite
about the genesis and meaning of them, and a great deal of
evidence has accumulated to show that this is intrinsically
connected with unconscious death wishes relating to one or
both of the parents, the strength and ramifications of which
are difficult to overestimate.

18

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

After making this wide excursion let us return to the two
questions I raised earlier in the paper, namely, the problem
of luck and the problem of why it is that sexual symbolism
occupies such an unexpectedly large part in the unconscious
processes from which folklore survivals are derived. Curi-
ously enough, the answer to these questions is substantially
the same. Both subjects have to do with certain fears and
wishes dating from a particularly difficult phase in develop-
ment which everyone goes through, which everyone forgets,
and of which there is therefore no conscious knowledge. It is
perhaps the outstanding discovery attaching to the name of
Freud that every young child goes through a stage of
intense incestuous attachment which leaves an ineffaceable
mark on all its later development. In connection with it two
invariable reactions occur, fear and hate, and, soon after-
wards, guilt. The dread of punishment, as distinct from the
normal fear of punishment or enmity, is in the unconscious
always associated with this primary theme, whatever be the
context in which it occurs consciously. The sense of sin is
born in connection with incest wishes, all sin is appre-
hended as incest by the unconscious, and therefore all guilt
and moral punishment remain throughout life inextricably
intertwined with these primary ideas. The very word
"incest" is derived from a Sanskrit word signifying "undis-
ciplined", "unpunished". Another remarkable ramification
is the way in which the concept of punishment is in the
unconscious extended to that of misfortune in general.
Here, as in so many other respects, Christian theology
follows closely the prototype of the unconscious, for it, too,
regards the misfortunes that befall humanity as Divine
punishment for our sins. The practical corollary from all
this is that exactly in proportion to the difficulty an
individual has experienced in overcoming this early phase
in development will he tend to react to the misfortunes of
life as if they were punishments for sin. He will try to ward

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

them off by measures which may be purely magical in
nature, or may assume the religious form of penance and
propitiation.

The next point is that the punishment for sin is always
the same in the unconscious. It appropriately takes the
talion form of deprivation of sexual capacity, this being
most typically expressed in men as impotence which is the
conscious equivalent of castration in the unconscious and
in women of sterility. Often enough this finds directly
conscious expression, as in the endless superstitions and
practices to do with fertility and sterility on the one hand,
and the manifold dread of what was called the "ligature"
on the other hand, the dread which is the secret of the
witchcraft epidemic. Usually, however, the dreads and
defensive measures are expressed in various symbolic
guises that need to be interpreted before their meaning
becomes clear. Two vast subjects in this connection are
those of ill-health and death, which is natural enough when
one reflects how largely they bulk among the misfortunes of
humanity. Hypochondriacal concern about health and a
disproportionate apprehension of death always, as I have
expounded elsewhere in a similar connection, 1 prove when
investigated to be the manifestations of unconscious guilt
with dread of the punishment of impotence.

I come last to what, I think, is the most interesting point
of all in this complicated subject. It is that, just as the
punishment for forbidden sexuality (incest) always takes
the talion form of a veto on sexuality, so do the apotropaeic
measures designed to ward off evil seek to achieve their aim
by means of the same talion, or what might perhaps be here
better termed homoeopathic, principle. The underlying idea
appears to be that if only the person could dare to prove to
himself that he could commit incest, symbolically of course,

1 "Psycho- Analysis and Anthropology," The Journal of the Royal Anthro-
pological Institute, Vol. LIV, 1924.

2O

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND FOLKLORE

without the dreaded punishment ensuing, that very im-
punity would be the best reassurance imaginable against his
fears. This is the reason why sexual symbolism plays such
an astonishing part in the customs and beliefs that make up
so much of folklore. As I indicated above, it would be both
superficial and erroneous to regard these findings as simply
indications of lasciviousness. They are dictated by the desire
to free the personality from guilt, from danger from punish-
ment, and from misfortune, and thus to restore the innate
faculty of potency and fertility, in short, to ensure happi-
ness. We have here the explanation of how it is that the idea
of incest signifies both the maximum of danger and the
maximum of security. And that is the reason why the same
act, the same object, the same belief can at one moment or
in one place represent the idea of good-luck and at another
that of ill-luck.

If this Congress were entirely devoted to the relation of
psycho-analysis to folklore, it would be able to deal with
only the fringe of such a vast subject. I have singled out,
however briefly and inadequately, what I consider to be a
few of the most vital points of connection, and will express
the hope that future co-operation between workers in what
are apparently very different fields will be equally fruitful
to both.

21

II

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT
IN FOLKLORE AND SUPERSTITION 1

I

IN the course of some highly suggestive remarks on the
subject of superstition Freud 2 writes: "I take it that this
conscious ignorance and unconscious knowledge of the
motivation of psychical accidents is one of the psychical
roots of superstition." He maintains in general that the
undue significance attached by the superstitious to casual
external happenings arises from associative connections that
exist between these and important thoughts and wishes of
which the subject is quite unaware, and that it constitutes a
projection of the significance really belonging to these
unconscious thoughts : the feeling of significance, therefore,
is fully justified, though it has been displaced into a false
connection. The object of the present communication is to
examine in the light of this thesis one of the most familiar
and wide-spread of superstitions namely, the belief that
it is unlucky to spill salt at table. In doing so the endeavour
will be made to use the inductive method only, that is to
say, to construct hypotheses only when they appear to be
legitimate inferences from definitely ascertained facts and
then to test them in their capacity to resume the whole
range of accessible evidence.

Two primary considerations may be mentioned at the
outset. First that in all ages salt has been invested with a

1 Published in Imago, 1912, Bd. i, S. 361 and 454.

* Freud, Zur Psychopathologic des Alltagslebens, 1904, S. 82.

22

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

significance far exceeding that inherent in its natural pro-
perties, interesting and important as these are. Homer calls
it a divine substance, Plato describes it as especially dear
to the Gods, 1 and we shall presently note the importance
attached to it in religious ceremonies, covenants, and
magical charms. That this should have been so in all parts
of the world and in all times shows that we are dealing
with a general human tendency and not with any local
custom, circumstance or notion. Secondly, the idea of salt
has in different languages lent itself to a remarkable pro-
fusion of metaphorical connotations, so that a study of these
suggests itself as being likely to indicate what the idea has
essentially stood for in the human mind, and hence perhaps
the source of its exaggerated significance.

We may begin by considering the chief characteristic
properties of salt that have impressed themselves on popular
thought and have in this way become associated with more
general ideas of an allied nature. Perhaps the most promi-
nent of these is the durability of salt and its immunity against
decay. On account of this property salt was regarded as
emblematic of durability and permanence, 2 and hence of
eternity and immortality; 3 in the Middle Ages it was
thought that the devil for this reason detested salt. 4 In
connection with eternity is also mentioned the idea of
wisdom, which salt is likewise supposed to symbolize, 5
though Pitre 6 says that this comes merely from a play on
the words sedes sapientia and sale e sapienza. Brand, 7 how-

1 Plutarch, Morals (Goodwin's English Edition), 1870, Vol. II, p. 338.
8 Lawrence, The Magic of the Horse-Shoe: with other Folk-Lore Notes, 1899.
Ch. Ill, "The Folk-Lore of Common Salt," p. 157.

1 Seligmann, Der bose Blick und Verwandtes, 1910, Bd. II, S. 33.

4 Bodin, De la Dtmonomanie des Sorciers, 1593, p. 278.

5 Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal, 1818, t. II, p. 278; Lawrence, ibid.
Pitre\ Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi delpopolo Siciliano, 1889, Vol. Ill,

p. 426.

7 Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849,
Vol. I. p. 433-

23

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

ever, quotes an introductory address delivered at a German
university in the seventeenth century that seems to show
an intrinsic connection between the two ideas: "The senti-
ments and opinions both of divines and philosophers concur
in making salt the emblem of wisdom or learning^ and that
not only on account of what it is composed of, but also with
respect to the several uses to which it is applied. As to its
component parts, as it consists of the purest matter, so
ought wisdom to be pure, sound, immaculate, and incor-
ruptible : and similar to the effects which salt produces upon
bodies ought to be those of wisdom and learning upon the
mind." This explanation of the association between the
ideas of salt and wisdom sounds a little too strained to be
altogether convincing and suggests that perhaps there may
be other determining factors besides those just mentioned.
Wisdom was frequently personified holding a salt-cellar,
and the bestowal of Sal Sapientite, the Salt of Wisdom, is
still a formality in the Latin Church. The heavenly Sophia
appears in mystical science as sodium, and her colour is
yellow, the colour of burning salt. 1

The idea of durability in regard to salt is evidently an
important cause of the old association between it and the
topic of friendship and loyalty? Owing to its lasting and
incorruptible quality it was regarded as the emblem of
perpetual friendship, 3 and from this several secondary
meanings are derived. One corollary, for instance, is that
the spilling of salt is supposed to involve a quarrel or break-
ing of friendship. 4 Salt has played an important part in
matters of hospitality. Stuckius 5 tells us that the Muscovites
thought a prince could not show a stranger a greater mark

1 Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism, 1912, Vol. I, p. 228.

1 See Victor Hehn, Das Salz. Eine kulturhistorische Studie, ze Aufl., 1901, S.
10-12.

* Brand, op. cit.. Vol. Ill, p. 162; Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 169, 171.

*Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Dritte Bearbeitung,
1900, S. 21 1 ; Brand, loc. cit.

8 Stuckius, Antiquitatum Convivialiunt, 1690, S. 17.

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

of affection than by sending to him salt from his own table.
In Eastern countries it is a time-honoured custom to place
salt before strangers as a token and pledge of friendship
and good-will, 1 and in Europe it was usually presented to
guests before other food, to signify the abiding strength of
friendship. 2 When an Abyssinian desires to pay an especially
delicate attention to a friend or guest he produces a piece of
rock-salt and graciously permits the latter to lick it with his
tongue. 3 In the most diverse countries and at all ages, from
Ancient Greece to modern Hungary, salt has been used to
confirm oaths and compacts ; 4 according to Lawrence, "in the
East, at the present day, compacts between tribes are still
confirmed by salt, and the most solemn pledges are ratified
by this substance." Such compacts are inviolable, and in
the same way "to eat a man's salt", a phrase still in current
use, carries with it the obligation of loyalty*, during the
Indian mutiny of 1857 a chief motive of restraint among the
Sepoys was said to have been the fact that they had sworn
by their salt to be loyal to the Queen. 5 Byron, in "The
Corsair", refers to this group of beliefs as follows:

Why dost thou shun the salt ? that sacred pledge,
Which, once partaken, blunts the sabre's edge,
Makes even contending tribes in peace unite,
And hated hosts seem brethren to the sight !

Closely allied to the preceding feature of incorruptibility
is the capacity salt possesses of preserving other bodies from
decay. It is generally supposed that this is the reason for
the power salt has of warding off the devil and other

1 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 156.

Lawrence, op. cit., p. 169.

* Lawrence, op. cit., p. 188.

4 Schleiden, Das Salz. Seine Geschichte, seine Symbolik und seine Bedeutung
im Menschenleben, 1875, S. 71-3; Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 164-6.
6 Manley, Salt and other Condiments, p. 90.

25 G

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

malignant demons, who have a horror of it. 1 The same
property has also greatly aided in establishing the associa-
tion between salt and immortality; the connection is plainly
seen in the Egyptian custom of using salt for embalming.
It is one reason for the custom, obtaining until recently in
every part of Great Britain, of placing salt on a corpse; 2
usually earth was added, "the earth being an emblem of
the corruptible body, the salt an emblem of the immortal
spirit." In later years this was said to be done so as to
prevent decomposition, 3 an idea probably akin to the
original one. A Welsh elaboration of the custom was to
place a plate of bread and salt over the coffin (the combina-
tion of bread and salt will be discussed later); the pro-
fessional "sin-eater" of the district then arrived, murmured
an incantation and ate the salt, thereby taking upon him-
self all the sins of the deceased. 4

An important conception of salt is that of its constituting
the essence of things, particularly of life itself. This seems
to include two sub-ideas, those of necessary presence and
of value respectively. The idea of ultimate essence no doubt
underlies the Biblical phrase (Matthew v. 13) "Ye are the
salt of the earth", and in many other expressions it is used
in the sense of aristocratic, quintessential, and the like. 5
In alchemy salt was considered to be one of the three
ultimate elements out of which the seven noble metals were
generated. Mercury symbolized the spirit, sulphur the soul,
and salt the body; mercury represented the act of illumina-
tion, sulphur that of union, and salt that of purification.
Herrick, in his Hesperides (p. 394), ranks salt even more
highly:

1 Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, 1879, Vol. I, p. 288; Moresin, Papatus,
etc., 1594, p. 154; Bodin, loc. cit.

Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, p. 102; Sikes, British
Goblins, 1880, p. 328; Brand, op. cit., Vol. II. pp. 234, 235.

* Brand and Sikes, loc. cit.

4 Sikes, op. cit., pp. 324, 326.

Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. VIII, p. 59.

26

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

The body's salt the soule is, which when gone,
The flesh soone sucks in putrefaction.

In Ancient Egypt salt and a burning candle represented
life, and were placed over a dead body to express the ardent
desire of prolonging the life of the deceased. 1 The following
argument was employed by Latin writers, e.g., Plutarch:
"After death all parts of the body fall apart. In life the soul
maintains the parts intact and in connection with one
another. In the same way salt maintains the dead body in
its form and connection, thus representing so to speak
the soul." 2 The culmination of eulogies, in which the idea of
value is also prominent, is to be found in a treatise on salt,
published in 1770, where the writer launches forth in im-
passioned style the most extravagant encomiums upon this
substance, which he avers to be the quintessence of the
earth. Salt is here characterized as a Treasure of Nature, an
Essence of Perfection, and the Paragon of Preservatives.
Moreover, whoever possesses salt thereby secures a prime
factor of human happiness among material things. 3

Salt is closely associated with the idea of money or
wealth, and indeed this is one of the connotations of the
word. Nowadays the implication is even of excessive or
unfairly high value, as in the colloquial phrase "a salt or
salty price"; similarly in French "il me Pa bien sale" means
"he has charged me an excessive price". In commercial
circles the expression "to salt a mine or property" means to
add a small quantity of some valuable substance to it so as
artificially to raise its selling price. In Ancient Rome
soldiers and officials were paid in salt instead of money,
whence (from salarium) the modern words "salair" and
"salary" and the phrase "to be worth one's salt" (=to be

1 Moresin, op. cit., p. 89.

Ibid.

8 Elias Artista Hermetica, Das Geheitnnis vom Salt, 1770.

27

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

capable, to earn one's salary). A salt currency was in vogue
in Africa in the sixth century, and in the Middle Ages this
was so also in England, 1 as well as in China, Tibet, and
other parts of Asia. 2 The name of the Austrian coin "Heller"
is derived from an old German word for salt, "Halle." 3 The
Montem ceremony at Eton, 4 which consisted in collecting
money in exchange for salt, was continued until 1847. Salt-
Silver was the term used to denote the money paid by
tenants to their lord as a commutation for the service of
bringing him salt from market. 6 In parts of Germany the
game is played of placing some sand, some salt, and a green
leaf on the table and making a blind-folded person grope for
them; if he seizes the salt it denotes wealth. 6

These and other considerations have invested the idea
of salt in the popular mind with a sense of general import-
ance. Waldron 7 states that in the Isle of Man "no person
will go out on any material affair without taking some salt
in their pockets, much less remove from one house to
another, marry, put out a child, or take one to nurse,
without salt being mutually exchanged; nay, though a poor
person be almost famished in the streets, he will not accept
any food you will give him, unless you join salt to the rest
of your benevolence". To carry salt with one on moving
to a new dwelling is a very wide-spread custom; 8 it is
related that when the poet Burns, in 1789, was about to
occupy a new house at Ellisland, he was escorted there by a
procession of relatives in whose midst was carried a bowl of
salt. 9 The Arabs of Upper Egypt, before setting out on a

1 Brand, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 436.

Schleiden, op. tit., S. 68-70, 82.
9 Hehn, op. tit., S. 90.

4 Brand, op. tit., pp. 433-40.

Brand, op. tit, p. 403.
Wuttke,op. tit., 8.233.

7 Waldron, Description of the Isle of Man, 1725, p. 187.
Wuttke, op. tit., 8.396.

Rogers, Scotland, Social and Domestic. 1869* Vol. Ill, p. 288.

28

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

journey, burn salt to prevent ill-luck. 1 The laying of salt
at the table was in the Middle Ages a tremendous cere-
mony. The other implements were disposed with minute
care in their relation to the salt, which throughout was
treated with special deference. 2 With the Romans it was a
matter of religious principle that no other dish was placed
upon the table until the salt was in position. Rank and pre-
cedence among the guests were precisely indicated by their
seat above or below the salt and their exact distance from
it. Schleiden 8 remarks: "How great was the importance
attached to salt is also seen from the fact that hardly a
place existed in which salt was produced where this was not
expressed in the name of the place, from the Indian
Lavanapura ('Salt-town') and the Austrian Salzburg ('Salt-
town') to the Prussian Salzkotten and the Scottish Salt-
coats."

The high importance attaching to salt led to various
magical powers being ascribed to it, and it has been very
extensively employed in magical procedures. It could be
used for these and other purposes by placing it on the
tongue or by rubbing the body with it, but the favourite
method was to dissolve it in water and bathe the person
with this. The principal function of salt in this connection,
like that of most other charms, was to ward off harm,
chiefly by averting the influence of malignant spirits. Salt
is almost universally thought to be abhorrent to evil
demons, 4 the only exception I know of being in Hungarian
folk-lore, where on the contrary evil beings are fond of salt. 5
Salt was always missing from the devil's and witches'
banquets. 6 Salt has therefore been one of the staple charms

1 Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 1822, p. 169.
1 Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 197-205.

* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 70.

4 Bodin, loc. cit.; Collin de Plancy, op. cit., pp. 277, 278; Schleiden, op. cit,
S. 78.

* Lawrence, op. cit., p. 159.

Wright, Sorcery and^ Magic, 1851, p. 310.

29

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

against the power of the devil, 1 of magicians, 2 of witches, 3
of the evil eye, 4 and of evil influences in general: 5 such
beliefs are found in countries so far apart as Arabia 6 and
Japan. 7 Cattle are also protected against witchcraft in the
same way. 8 In India and Persia one can even determine by
means of salt whether a given person has been bewitched
or not. 9 Salt will also protect the fields from evil influences. 10
It was further used to prevent the souls of the dead from
returning to earth and to secure them peace in Purgatory. 11
These practices were performed with especial frequency
with children. The custom of rubbing new-born infants with
salt is referred to in the Bible (Ezekiel xvi. 4). The use of
salt to guard the new-born against evil demons and evil
influences, either by placing a little on the tongue or by
immersing the infant in salt and water, was in vogue
throughout Europe from early times, and certainly ante-
dated Christian baptism; 12 in France the custom lasted until
1408 of putting salt on children until they were baptised,
when it was considered no longer necessary. 13 At the present
day it is still placed in the cradle of the new-born child in
Holland. 14 In Scotland it was customary to put salt into a

1 Bodin and Collin de Plancy, loc. cit.

9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Vierte Ausgabe, 1876, S. 876.

* Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1908, S. 39 ; Mannhardt, Germanische
Mythen, 1858, S. 7; Seligmann, op. cit., Band II, S. 33; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 95,
258, 283; Grimm, op. cit., Nachtrag, S. 454.

* Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 312, 313, 320, 331, 344, 346, 365, 377, 389;
Band II, S. 73, 144, 220, 376.

5 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 177.

6 Burckhardt, loc. cit.

7 Bousquet, Le Japan de nos jours, 1877, t. I, p. 94; Griffis, The Mikado's
Empire.

8 Seligmann, op. cit., Band II, S. 104, 241, 329; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 40, 435,
438; Krauss, loc. cit.

9 Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 262, 264.

10 Seligmann, op. cit., Band II, S. 374.

11 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 465, 472.

11 Conway, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 217; Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 174, 175; Selig-
mann, op. cit., S. 34; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 382, 387.
1S Schleiden, op. cit., S. 79.
14 New York Times, November 10, 1889.

30

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

child's mouth on entering a stranger's house for the first
time. 1 Salt was also placed in the mouth of a new-born calf
for similar purposes as with children. 2

Salt has been extensively used for medicinal purposes.
It was believed to have the function of both preventing 3
and curing 4 diseases, as was already commented on by
Pliny, particularly those caused by occult influences. It is
possible that the Latin word "salus" (health), the earliest
connotation of which was "well-preserved", was originally
related to the word "sal".

Another important function of salt was its use in further-
ing fecundity. As this obviously cannot have been derived
from any natural property of the substance, it must repre-
sent some symbolic significance in harmony with the general
importance attached to it. Schleiden 5 makes the following
interesting remarks in this connection: "The sea was un-
questionably the fructifying, creative element. Leaving
aside the few marine mammals, the offspring of sea creatures
are to be counted by thousands and hundreds of thousands.
This was all the more easily ascribed to the salt of the sea,
since other observations believed to have been made were
connected with it. It was recalled that in dog-breeding the
frequent use of salt increased the number of the progeny,
and that on ships carrying salt the number of mice multi-
plied to such an extent as to give rise to the idea of
parthenogenesis, i.e., to the view that mice could beget
young without the co-operation of a male. The conviction
was thus formed that salt must stand in a close relation to
physical love, so that salt became the symbol of procreation"
It was used in this connection in two ways, to promote

1 Dalyell, op. cit., p. 96.

* Seligmann, op. cit.. S. 58; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 436, 443.
Wuttke, op. cit., S. 374.

4 Dalyell, op. cit., pp. 98, 99, 102; Lawrence, op. cit., p. 180; Seligmann,
op. cit., Band I, S. 278; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 336.

* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 92, 93.

31

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

fecundity and to avert barrenness or impotence. The latter
is illustrated by Elisha's action of throwing salt into the
fountain of Jericho (2 Kings ii. 21): "Thus saith the Lord,
I have healed these waters; and for the future they shall
not be the occasion either of death or barrenness." Gaume 1
states that salt has the specific function of promoting
fecundity, and its symbolic significance in this direction is
seen in the following Indian practice: 2 A woman who
wishes for a child, particularly for a son, fasts on the fourth
lunar day of every dark fortnight and breaks her fast only
after seeing the moon. A dish of twenty-one balls of rice,
one of which contains salt, is then placed before her, and if
she first lays her hand on the ball containing the salt she
will be blessed with a son. In this case no more is eaten;
otherwise she goes on until she takes the salted ball. The
ceremony may be observed only a limited number of times;
if in these she fails altogether to pick out the salted ball first
she is doomed to barrenness. In Belgium salt is mixed with
the food of a pregnant mare or cow so as to make the birth
easy; 3 in Normandy it is given to cows so as to ensure
plenty of butter. 4 In East Friesland 5 and Scotland 6 salt is
put into the first milk after calving with the object of secur-
ing a plentiful supply of good milk. In Bohemia a special
cake containing salt is given to a pregnant cow so that she
may bear a choice calf and yield plenty of milk. 7 In Ireland
when the seed is being sown the mistress of the house first
puts salt into the field, 8 and a similar custom exists in East

1 Gaume, L'Eau Bdnite an Dix-neuvieme Siecle, 1866, Cited by Con way.
1 Indian Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, p. 106.

8 Von Reinsberg-Duringsfeld, "Volksgebrauche in Kempen," Ausland, 1874,
S. 471-

4 Kuhn, M&rkische Sagen und Mftrchen, 1843, S. 388.

6 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 446.
Dalyell, op. cit., p. 101.

7 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 442.

8 Cough's Edition of Camden's Britannia, 1789, Vol. Ill, p. 659 and Vol. IV,
p. 470.

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

Prussia. 1 In Bavaria to obtain a rich harvest the first load
is sprinkled with salt and water. 2

It is only natural that the general importance attached
to salt should have been reflected in the sphere of religion,
and we find that this was so in a remarkable degree. Salt
was an essential constituent of sacrificial offerings in
Ancient Egypt, 3 as well as in Greece and Rome; 4 Brand
says of the latter: "Both Greeks and Romans mixed salt
with their sacrificial cakes; in their lustrations also they
made use of salt and water, which gave rise in after times
to the superstition of holy water." In Judaism we find
descriptions of three different usages taught by the Bible.
As in other countries, salt formed a necessary part of
sacrificial offerings: "Every oblation of thy meat offering
shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the
salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat
offering: With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt"
(Leviticus ii. ij). 5 A covenant, especially a religious
covenant, was ratified by means of salt : "It is a covenant of
salt for ever, before the Lord" (Numbers xviii. 19); "The
Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David
for ever, even to him, and to his sons, by a covenant of salt"
(2 Chronicles xiii. 5). The idea of a bond of loyalty through
eating salt also occurs : the passage "we have maintenance
from the king's palace" (Ezra iv. 14) means literally "we
are salted with the salt of the palace". 6 The salt sources
in Germany, which later became associated with the doings
of witches, had a considerable religious significance;

1 Seligmann, op. cit, Band II, S. 34; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 419.

1 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 423.

8 Arrian, De Expeditions Alexandra, lib. iii, cap. I.

4 Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 161.

1 In Job i. 22, the literal rendering of the passage "In all this Job sinned not,
nor charged God foolishly" is "In all this Job sinned not, nor gave God un-
salted". (Conway, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 150.)

' Lawrence, op. cit., p. 156.

33

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Ennemoser 1 writes of them: "Their yield was regarded as a
direct gift of the near Divinity, and the winning and dis-
tributing of the salt as a holy occupation probably
sacrifices and folk festivities were connected with the drying
of the salt."

In the Roman Catholic Church salt was introduced for
baptismal purposes in the fourth century 2 and has played a
prominent part there ever since. 3 In St. Margaret's Church
in Ipswich there is a font bearing the curious inscription
"sal et saliva", which must go back to some fecundity rite,
saliva being a typical unconscious symbol of the male fluid.
According to Schleiden, 4 this idea was derived from the
Jewish use of salt at the circumcision rite. The celebration
of baptism in Scotland by a layman was afterwards con-
firmed by a priest administering a particle of salt. 5 Gratian,
in his Decretalia, explains that the use of consecrated salt
in the mouth of one about to be baptised is to render the
rite more efficacious. 6 In the baptismal ceremonies of the
Church of England in medieval times salt was placed in
the child's mouth, and its ears and nostrils were touched
with saliva practices which became obsolete at the time of
the Reformation. 7 As a rule, however, salt is applied in the
dissolved state, the well-known "Salzstein", 8 composed of
salt and water that has been separately blessed beforehand.
The holy water thus constituted was extensively used in
both Catholic and Protestant countries, and for the identical
purposes for which simple salt and water had previously
been used by the common people, the only difference being

1 Ennemoser, Geschichte der Magie, Zweite Aufl., 1844, S. 839.

Pfannenschmid, Das Weihwasser im heidnischen und christlichen Cullus,
1870.

1 See Lawrence, op. cit., p. 182.
4 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 76.
1 Dalyell, op. cit., p. 97.

Cited by Dalyell, loc. cit.
7 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 176.

Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 322; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 142.

34

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

that the latter was not quite so efficacious as the conse-
crated mixture. Thus it was officially employed by the
Roman Catholic Church for profiting the health of the body
and for the banishing of demons, 1 by the English Church
to prevent the devil from entering churches and dwellings, 2
and by the Scottish Church for expelling demons, for
sanctifying religious rites, and to prevent new-born babies
from becoming changelings. 3 Holy water was also used, and
to some extent is still used, to avert the evil eye, 4 to prepare
for a journey, 5 to cure demoniac possession, 6 to make the
cattle thrive, 7 to prevent witches from turning the butter
sour, 8 and to ensure the fortunate delivery of a pregnant
cow. 9 In the same connection may be mentioned certain
African taboos concerning salt. A demon who inhabited a
lake in Madagascar was so averse from salt that whenever
any was being carried past the lake it had to be called by
another name, or it would all have been dissolved and lost. 10
A West African story relates how a man was told that he
would die if ever the word "salt" was pronounced in his
hearing; one day the fatal word was pronounced, and he
promptly died. 11

We may now consider another attribute of salt which
has given rise to many symbolic connotations namely, its
peculiar taste. Seligmann 12 says: "Salt is on account of its
piquant power a life-furthering material", and he associates

1 Gaume, loc. cit.; Moresin, op. cit., pp. 153, 154.

2 Ady, A Perfect Discovery of Witches, 1661.

8 Napier, Folk Lore, or Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within this
Century, 1879.

* Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 325; Band II, S. 315, 396.

* Wuttke, loc. cit.

6 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 178.

7 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 439.

Wuttke, op. cit., S. 448.

Wuttke, op. cit., S. 142.

10 Sibree, The Great African Island, 1880, p. 307.

11 Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, 1904, p. 381.
11 Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 278.

35

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

with this the beliefs in the influence exerted by salt when
it penetrates into other substances, e.g., bread, and also the
belief in its capacity to cure disease. This property of salt
has been especially connected with speech in various meta-
phorical ways. Lawrence 1 writes : "Owing to the importance
of salt as a relish, its Latin name sal came to be used
metaphorically as signifying a savoury mental morsel, and,
in a general sense, wit or sarcasm. . . . The characterization
of Greece as the 'salt of nations' is attributed to Livy, and
this is probably the origin of the phrase 'Attic salt', mean-
ing delicate, refined wit." A pungent or pithy remark or jest
is termed salt, 2 as in such expressions as "there is no salt in
his witticisms", though the use of the word in this sense is
becoming obsolescent in English; in French a similar one
obtains, in expressions such as "une epigramme sale", "il a
repandu le sel a pleins mains dans ses ecrits", etc. In the
Biblical passage (Epistle to the Corinthians iv. 6) "Let your
speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt" this con-
notation is probably present, as well as that previously
mentioned of wisdom or sense. The same metaphor is also
applied in a general way, apart from speech, as in denoting
an insipid man as "having no sense or salt", lacking in
piquancy or liveliness, just as in Latin the word insalsus
(=unsalted) meant stupid. This metaphorical attribute of
salt is evidently closely akin to the one previously men-
tioned of "essentialness".

A property of salt that has been extensively exploited
by the popular imagination is the ease with which it
dissolves in water. That a substance otherwise so durable
should disappear when put into water and, though leaving
no visible trace of its presence, should endow the water with
its peculiar properties (capacity to preserve from decay,
pungent taste, etc.) has always impressed the people as

1 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 161. See also Schleiden, op. cit., S. 91.
8 See Oxford English Dictionary, loc. cit.

36

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

being a remarkable characteristic, and is perhaps partly
responsible for the mysterious significance attaching to
holy water. One obvious practical application, of which
frequent use has been made, is to estimate the amount of
moisture in the atmosphere by the varying avidity of salt
for it. It has thus been quite rationally used to foretell the
weather* From this have been derived the following sym-
bolical uses of it for the same purpose. 2 An onion is cut into
twelve pieces, which are strewn with salt and named after
the twelve months ; the piece that becomes specially moist
denotes a wet month in the coming year. The same may be
done with twelve nutshells, which have to be examined at
midnight. Or a piece of salt is placed on each corner of the
table to denote the four seasons of the year; the one that
has collected most moisture by the morning indicates the
wettest season. The last-mentioned practice is also used to
find out if the coming harvest will be valuable or not. 3 This
foretelling capacity of salt has naturally been generalized
far beyond its original sphere. Thus, according as a par-
ticular heap of salt remains dry or not it is concluded
that a corresponding person will or will not survive the
coming year, that a given undertaking will be successful or
the reverse, and so on. 4

Water is not the only substance into which salt can be
absorbed with the production of peculiar changes. Indeed,
the capacity of salt to enter into combination with a second
substance may be regarded as one of its most salient char-
acteristics. The substance with which it is by far the most
often associated in this way is bread. The combination of the
two has been used for practically all the purposes enum-
erated above in connection with salt, and in folk beliefs the
two are almost synonymous. Thus bread and salt are both

1 Willsford, Nature's Secrets, p. 139.
Wuttke, op. cit., S. 231.
Wuttke, op. cit., S. 230.
* Wuttke, op. cit., S. 231.

37

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

absent from the devil's feasts; 1 the combination of them is
potent against witches, 2 and against the evil eye; 3 it guards
cattle against disease, 4 ensures a plentiful supply of milk, 5
and removes obstacles to the churning of butter. 6 It is
equally efficacious with adults and infants. It is carried into
a new dwelling to avert evil influences and to bring good
luck; 7 in Hamburg nowadays this custom is replaced by
that of carrying at processional times a cake covered with
chocolate, in the form of a bread roll, and a salt-cellar of
marzipan filled with sugar. The combination of salt and
bread has also been extensively used to confirm oaths, 8 and
is still so used in Arabia at the present day. 9

The mixture of wheat and salt was used for the same pur-
pose as that of bread and salt. It was an important part of
the Roman propitiatory sacrifices, 10 and also of the Jewish
oblations. 11 In Russia it was offered as congratulatory to
strangers, 12 as we have seen salt alone was in other countries.
In Ireland women in the streets, and girls from the windows,
sprinkled salt and wheat on public functionaries when they
assumed office. 13

Lastly may be mentioned the attribute of salt as a means
of purification. That salt water possesses this quality in a
high degree was observed at an early stage of civilization,

1 Grimm, op. cit., S. 877.

1 Seligmann, op. cit., Band II, S. 37, 52, 93, 94; Grimm, op. cit., Nachtrag,
S. 454; Wuttke, op. cit., S. 129, 282.

8 Wuttke, op. cit.. S. 282; Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 398; Band II, S. 37.
38, 93. 94. ioo. 250, 334-

* Dalyell, op. cit., p. 100.

* Seligmann. op. cit., Band II, S. 38; Dalyell, loc. cit.

6 Seligmann, loc. cit.

7 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 37.

8 Dekker's Honest Whore. 1635, Sc. 13; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,
Vol. I, p. 236; Lawrence, op. cit., p. 164.

f Lawrence, op. cit., p. 185.

10 Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 163 ; Dalyell, op. cit., pp. 99, 100.

11 Dalyell, op. cit., p. 99.
" Dalyell, loc. cit.

18 Brand, op. cit., p. 165 ; Dalyell, loc. cit.

38

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

and by Roman ladies it was actually regarded as a means of
attaining beauty. 1 Especially in regard to the sea this
feature has led to numerous poetical applications and also
to the development of many superstitions. It is intelligible
that this purifying attribute should have played an im-
portant part in the use of salt in religious cults, and this we
find was so, notably in Egypt and Greece. 2 We shall return
to the subject later on when discussing the relation of
purification to baptism.

II

We may now survey the facts just related. While it has
only been possible in the allotted space to give a relatively
few examples of the numerous ways in which ideas concern-
ing salt have played a part in folk belief and custom it
would need a special treatise to record them all it is
probable that the most prominent and typical of them have
been mentioned; at all events no special selection whatever
has been made, beyond relegating sexual ones to the back-
ground. It is hardly necessary to say that the grouping here
adopted is unduly schematic, being one of convenience in
presentation only; a given custom would mostly be dictated
by interest in other properties of salt as well as the one under
which it is here mentioned.

In regard now to the matter that formed our starting-
point namely, the superstitious fear of spilling salt it is
plain that here a significance is attached to an act which
does not inherently belong to it, and it is equally plain that
the same is true of most of the customs and beliefs related
above. There are two possible explanations that may be
offered for this state of affairs. The first would run some-

1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 84.
* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 84, 85.

39

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

what as follows. The present-day superstition has no mean-
ing beyond an historical one; it is simply an instance of the
tendency of mankind to retain traditional attitudes for no
intelligible reason, and is an echo of the time when the idea
of salt was properly invested with a greater psychical value
than it now is. In former times the significance attached to
the idea of salt that we now regard as excessive was not so,
being justified in fact and to be accounted for quite natur-
ally by the real importance of the substance. There is
undeniably a certain amount of truth in this view. Salt,
being a substance necessary to life and in some countries
obtainable only with considerable difficulty, 1 was inevitably
regarded as both important and valuable, though this con-
sideration must lose much of its weight in regard to most
parts of the world where the supply is plentiful. Again, the
curious properties of salt, its preserving capacity, its power
of penetrating other substances, etc., would naturally im-
press the primitive mind, and the view just described would
doubtless try to account for the belief in its magical powers
by pointing out that such minds work on a simpler plane of
thought than do ours. To this argument, however, com-
parative psychology could object that, although this type
of thought just as that of children certainly often differs
from what we term rational thinking, careful investigation
always shows that it is very far from being so bizarre and
unintelligible as it may at first sight appear; the formation
of illogical connections is not meaningless, but has a per-
fectly definite and comprehensible reason for it. The general
criticism, therefore, that must be passed on this explanation
is that while it adduces unquestionably important con-
siderations these are only partly capable of accounting for
the facts, and are inadequate as a complete explanation of
them. Other factors must have been operative in addition
to those just mentioned.

1 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 187.

4

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

The second explanation would supplement the first by
regarding the excessive significance attaching to the idea of
salt as an example of what Wernicke called an Vberwertige
Idee, that is to say, an idea overcharged with psychical
significance. Only some of this inherently belongs to the
idea itself, the rest being of adventitious origin. Such pro-
cesses are, of course, very familiar in daily life : a banknote,
for instance, is valued not for the intrinsic worth of the
paper but for the worth that extrinsic circumstances give it.
Psycho-analytic investigation has shown on the one hand
that such transference of affect from one idea to another
allied one is much commoner than was previously realized,
and on the other hand that very often the subject is quite
unaware of the occurrence. Thus a person may experience
an intense affect fear, horror, etc. in regard to a given
idea or object purely through the idea having formed
strong associative connections with another idea which is
justifiably invested with this affect; the intrinsic attributes
of the idea do not account for the strong affect attached to
it, this being in the main derived from a different source.
The most striking manifestations of this process are seen in
the psychoneuroses ; the patient has a terror of a certain
object which is not customarily regarded with terror, the
reason being that the idea of the object is unconsciously
connected in his mind with that of another object in regard
to which the terror is quite comprehensible. In such cases
the secondary idea may be said to represent or symbolize
the primary one. 1 The more bizarre and apparently unin-
telligible is the phobia or other symptom, the more strained
is as a rule the connection between it and the original idea,
and the stronger is the emotion investing the latter. Apart
from the neuroses instances of exceedingly strained connec-

1 On the precise distinction between symbolism and other forms of indirect
mental representation see Ch. VII of my Papers on Psycho- Analysis. 1918,
"The Theory of Symbolism".

41 D

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

tions are less common. What happens as a rule is that the
affect belonging to the two ideas, the symbolized and the
symbolizing one, is very similar, so that the affect trans-
ferred from the one to the other accounts for only part of the
affect accompanying the secondary idea. In this case the
intrinsic qualities of the idea account for some of the affect,
but not for all; the affect is appropriate in quality, but dis-
proportionate in quantity. Unless the cause of this exag-
geration is appreciated there is an unavoidable tendency to
overlook the fact itself on rationalistic grounds; then the
intrinsic qualities of the secondary idea are erroneously
regarded as constituting an adequate explanation of the
affect in question.

The main difference, therefore, between the two explana-
tions is this : the first assumes that the affect, or psychical
significance, attaching to the idea of salt was once not dis-
proportionate to its real value, whereas the second, regard-
ing the affect as disproportionate, maintains that some of it
must be derived from an extraneous source.

In seeking for this source we have two distinct clues to
guide us. In the first place, the universality of the beliefs
and customs under discussion, and the remarkably high and
even mystical significance that has been attached to the
idea of salt, indicate that any further idea from which this
may have been derived must be both a general one, com-
mon to all mankind, and one of fundamental psychical
importance. In the second place, the association between
the idea of salt and any further one must have been formed
through the resemblances, real or fancied, of the correspond-
ing qualities of the two ideas. It becomes necessary, there-
fore, to consider with closer attention the popular concep-
tion of these qualities that was described above.

This conception may be summarized as follows. Salt is a
pure, white, immaculate and incorruptible substance,
apparently irreducible into any further constituent ele-

42

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

ments, and indispensable to living beings. It has correspond-
ingly been regarded as the essence of things in general, the
quintessence of life, and the very soul of the body. It has
been invested with the highest general significance far
more than that of any other article of diet was the
equivalent of money and other forms of wealth, and its
presence was indispensable for the undertaking of any
enterprise, particularly any new one. In religion it was one
of the most sacred objects, and to it were ascribed all
manner of magical powers. The pungent, stimulating flavour
of salt, which has found much metaphorical application in
reference to pointed, telling wit or discourse, doubtless con-
tributed to the conception of it as an essential element; to
be without salt is to be insipid, to have something essential
lacking. The durability of salt, and its immunity against
decay, made it an emblem of immortality. It was believed
to have an important influence in favouring fertility and
fecundity, and in preventing barrenness; this idea is con-
nected with other attributes than the one just mentioned,
probably indeed with them all. The permanence of salt
helped to create the idea that for one person to partake of
the salt of another formed a bond of lasting friendship and
loyalty between the two, and the substance played an im-
portant part in the rites of hospitality. A similar application
of it was for confirming oaths, ratifying compacts, and seal-
ing solemn covenants. This conception of a bond was also
related to the capacity salt has for combining intimately
with a second substance and imparting to this its peculiar
properties, including the power to preserve against decay;
for one important substance namely, water it had in
fact a natural and curious affinity.

If we now try to discover what other idea these ideas
could arise in reference to, besides that of salt, the task is
surely not difficult. If the word salt had not been men-
tioned in the preceding description anyone accustomed to

43

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

hidden symbolism, and many without this experience,
would regard it as a circumlocutory and rather grandilo-
quent account of a still more familiar idea that of human
semen. In any case a substance possessing the attributes just
mentioned would lend itself with singular facility to such
an association. Indeed, the mere fact that salt has been
regarded as the emblem of immortality and wisdom is in
itself suggestive to anyone who is alive to such possibilities,
for the other well-known emblem of these two concepts is
the snake, which is in mythology and elsewhere the phallic
symbol par excellence. The surmise that the idea of salt
has derived much of its significance from its being uncon-
sciously associated with that of semen fulfils at least one
postulate of all symbolic thinking namely, that the idea
from which the excessive significance is derived is more
important psychically than the idea to which this is trans-
ferred; the radiation of the affect, like that of electricity, is
always from the site of more intense concentration to that
of less.

At the present stage of our investigation it is plain that
the inference just drawn cannot be regarded as being much
more than a surmise, or at the most a working hypothesis,
one which will appear more or less plausible according to
the experience of unconscious symbolism by which it is
viewed. It must next be tested by the ordinary rules of
science namely, by its capacity to predict and by its
power of satisfactorily reducing to simple terms a series of
disparate phenomena.

If the hypothesis is correct then one could foretell that
customs and beliefs would be found showing a direct
relation between the idea of salt on the one hand and such
ideas as those of marriage, sexual intercourse, and potency
on the other, as well as a larger number showing a plainly
symbolical relation between the two sets of ideas ; further,
that the ideas concerning salt and water mirror similar,

44

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

more primitive ones concerning semen and urine, and that
the partaking of salt would be connected with ideas relating
to sexual intercourse and impregnation. It will presently be
seen that anthropological and folk-loristic material provides
ample confirmation of these expectations.

The supposed action of salt in favouring fecundity and in
preventing barrenness has been mentioned above. It was a
classical belief that mice became impregnated through eat-
ing salt; 1 any objection to our hypothesis, therefore, that
the connection between the ideas of salt and semen is too
remote for them ever to have been brought together, except
artificially, at once falls to the ground, for here we have a
direct identification of the two substances. In the Pyrenees
the wedding couple before setting out for church put salt
into their left pocket to guard against the man's being
impotent. In Limousin, Poitou, and Haut-Vienne the bride-
groom alone does this, in Altmark the bride alone. In Pam-
proux salt is put into the clothes of the wedding couple with
the same motive. 2 In Germany salt is strewn in the bride's
shoe. 3 In Scotland on the night before the wedding salt is
strewn on the floor of the new home with the object of
protecting the young couple against the evil eye; 4 I have
elsewhere 5 shown that the idea of maleficium, with which
that of the evil eye is practically identical, mainly arises
from the pervading dread of impotence, and Seligmann 6
actually mentions the use of salt to counteract the "liga-
ture", i.e., the spell cast over the sexual functions by evil
influences.

1 Pliny, Nat. Hist.. X, 85.

2 The preceding examples are all taken from Seligmann, op. cit., Band II,
S. 35, 36, or from Schleiden, op. cit., S. 71, 79.

3 Schell, "Das Salz im Volksglauben", Zeitschrift des Vereinesfur Volkskunde,
Jahrg, XV, S. 137-

4 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 35.

5 Ernest Jones, Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des
mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens, 1912, S. 107, 108.

6 Seligmann, op. cit., Band I, S. 291.

45

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Frobenius 1 relates a folkloristic story told with the direct-
ness of peasant thought. A penis and vagina once went
together on a journey to buy salt. Each carried its portion.
On the way back it began to rain. The vagina said to her
comrade: "Our salt will get wet if we carry it on our heads.
Let us put it in my opening; then it will keep dry." They
did this, and there we have the reason why the penis ever
seeks the vagina since it contains the daintiest delicacy
(Le., salt), while the vagina always wants salt (i.e., semen)
from the penis.

Salt has often, especially in former times, been considered
to have an exciting influence on the nervous system, and it
was thus thought to possess the attribute of arousing
passion and desire. 2 Schleiden 3 writes: "The Romans
termed a man in love 'salax', (whence our 'salacious') and
this view still survives with us when we jokingly say that
the cook who has put too much salt into the soup must be
in love." In Belgium the custom of visiting one's sweetheart
in the nights after festivals is called "turning one's love
into salt". 4 Shakespeare evidently uses it in the same sense
in the passage "Though we are justices ... we have some
salt of our youth in us". 5 In some stories collected among
African natives by Frobenius 6 salt is referred to as a direct
equivalent of semen. Paracelsus, in his De Origine Morborum
Invisibilium? teaches that Incubi and Succubi emanate
from the sperma found in the imagination of those who
commit the unnatural sin of Onan, but that this is no true
sperma, only corrupted salt.

The following are two metaphorical applications of the

1 Leo Frobenius, Schwarze Seclen, 1913, S. 433.
1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 92.
* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 93.

4 Von Reinsberg-Diiringsfeld, op. cit., S. 472.

5 The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Sc. 3.

8 Frobenius, Schwarze Seelen (Privately printed), 1913, S. 433. Dr. Otto Rank
kindly informs me of this.

7 Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, 1667, p. 90.

4 6

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

same idea. Salt is used to keep the fire always burning, 1 and
there are examples, which need not be quoted, of the com-
bination of salt and fire being used for every purpose in
regard to which salt alone has superstitiously been used.
At the Osiris festivals in Egypt all those taking part had to
light lamps the oil of which had had salt mixed with it. 2
The idea of fire, however, in poetry as well as in mythology, 3
is constantly used to represent the ideas of the fire of life
and the fire of love. Again, lameness is often brought into
symbolic association with impotence (incapacity, inability),
and in Sicily salt is used specifically to prevent lameness. 4

The initiatory ceremonies universally performed by ruder
peoples at the age of puberty commonly include a sacrificial
or propitiatory act; circumcision is a replacement of such
ceremonies, having been put back to the age of infancy just
as baptism has been by most Christian Churches. In Egypt
salt is strewn when circumcision is performed. 5 In various
initiations, both earnest and jocular, at universities and
schools salt played a central part, and the phrase "to salt a
freshman" is still in vogue. 6 Of late years it has been
replaced in this respect by the more convenient alcohol,
another unconscious symbol for semen, 7 but the feeling-
attitude remains the same namely, that the young man
needs the administration of an essential substance before he
can be regarded as having attained full virility.

It is known that there exists an intimate connection be-
tween extreme abstinence attitudes of all kinds and excessive
sexual "repression"; over-great prudishness is apt to be
accompanied by a desire to abolish all alcohol from the

1 Miihlhauser, Urreligion des deutschen Volkes, 1860, S. 133.
1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 76.

Cp. Abraham, Traum und Mythus, 1909, S. 31, etc.
Pitr6, loc. cit.

Seligmann, op. cit., Band II, S. 37.

Cp. Brand, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 433-9.

7 Abraham, "Die psychologischen Beziehungen zwischen Sexualitat und
Alkoholismus", Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft, 1908, S. 449.

47

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

universe, as we see at the present day in America. In the
same way salt has been brought into manifold relation with
the idea of sexual abstinence. The workers in the salt-pans
near Siphoum, in Laos, must abstain from all sexual rela-
tions at the place where they are at work, the motive being
a purely superstitious one. 1 The celibate Egyptian priests
had at certain times to abstain wholly from the use of salt,
on the ground of its being a material that excited sensual
desires too much. 2 Abstinence both from sexual relations
and from the partaking of salt is enjoined for several days
on men of the Dyak tribes after returning from an ex-
pedition in which they have taken human heads, 3 and for
three weeks on a Pima Indian who has killed an Apache; 4
in the latter case the man's wife also has to abstain from
salt during the same period. 5 The full account of these
customs clearly shows that they constitute rites of purifica-
tion and expiation. Abstinence both from sexual relations
and from salt is also frequently prescribed during important
undertakings or on weighty occasions: thus on Lake
Victoria Nyanza while fishing, 6 and in the island of Nias
while traps are being laid for wild animals. 7 In Uganda any
man who has either committed adultery or eaten salt is not
allowed to partake of the sacred fish-offering. 8 In Mexico
the Huichol Indians undergo the same double abstinence
while the sacred cactus plant, the gourd of the God of Fire,

1 Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, 1885, p. 141.

* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 93.

8 Tromp, "Uit de Salasial van Koetei", Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indie, 1888, Vol. XXXVII, p. 74.

4 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, 1875, Vol. I, p. 553; Grossman,
in Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1892, p. 475.

8 Russell, "The Pima Indians", Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau
of American Ethnology, 1908, p. 204.

6 Frazer, The Golden Bough, Third Edition, Part II, Taboo, 1911, p. 194.

7 Thomas, "De jacht op het eiland Nias", Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-
Land- en Volkenkunde, 1880, Vol. XXVI.

8 Roscoe, "Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda",
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1902, Vol. XXXII, p. 56.

4 8

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

is being gathered. 1 Similar double observances obtain in
other countries in connection with the promotion of
fertility; in fact the last-named custom is related to this,
for the main benefits that the sacred cactus is supposed to
bestow are plentiful rain-supply, good crops, and the like.
The Indians of Peru abstain for as long as six months both
from sexual intercourse and from eating salt on the occasion
of the birth of twins ; one of the twins was believed to be the
son of the lightning, the lord and creator of rain. 2 Other
examples of the same double abstinence are: in Peru pre-
ceding the Acatay mita festival, the object of which is to
ripen the fruit, and which is followed by a sexual orgy; 3
in Nicaragua from the time that the maize is sown until it
is reaped. 4 In Behar in India the Nagin women, sacred
prostitutes known as "wives of the Snake-God", periodic-
ally go about begging and during this time they may not
touch salt ; half of their proceeds go to the priests and half
to buying salt and sweetmeats for the villagers. 5

Attention may be called to two features of the preceding
collection of customs. First that they occur in all parts of
the globe, instances having been cited from Europe, Africa,
Asia, and America, North, South, and Central. Secondly,
that to a great extent they duplicate the customs previously
described in connection with salt alone, thus in relation to
religion, to the weather, to important undertakings, and to
the production of fertility. Where in one country the
presence of salt is indispensable, in another one abstinence
from salt and at the same time from sexual intercourse
is equally essential. Both cases agree in regarding salt as an
important agent in these respects; whether this is for good

1 Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, 1903, Vol. II, p. 126.
1 Frazer, op. cit., Part I, The Magic Art, 1911, Vol. I, p. 266.
Frazer, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 98.
4 Frazer, op. cit., p. 105.

6 Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 1896, Vol. II.
p. 138.

49

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

or for evil is of secondary interest, the main point being its
significance. If, as is here suggested, the idea of salt is
generally connected in the unconscious mind with that of
semen, it is throughout intelligible that abstinence from
sexual relations should tend to be accompanied by abstin-
ence from salt as well (radiation of the affect) ; it is in perfect
accord with all we know of primitive, symbolic thinking.
The unconscious logic of the argument seems to be that
abstinence from sexuality is incomplete unless all forms of
semen, even symbolic forms, are abstained from.

This bipolar attitude of regarding salt as either exceed-
ingly beneficial or exceedingly harmful reminds one of two
current controversies namely, whether alcohol and sexual
intercourse respectively are beneficial or harmful to health.
Indeed, as with these, there have been at various times
propagandist movements started in which salt has been
denounced as the cause of numerous bodily evils. 1 In 1851
there was published a volume by a Dr. Arthur Howard
entitled: Salt, the Forbidden Fruit or Food "The Whole
Mystery now Revealed. Its Hurtful Effects on Man (chiefly
Woman) and on Animals, showing itself to be the Chief
Cause of Diseases of the Body and Mind of Man and of
Animals, as taught by the ancient Egyptian priests and
Wise Men and by Scripture, in accordance with the
Author's Experience of many years." It was described
by the Lancet as "worthy of immortality". As may be
imagined from the title, the author treats of salt as a most
obnoxious substance, abstinence from which is essential to
the maintenance of health. It is possible even that uncon-
scious associations of the kind under consideration may not
have been altogether without influence in relation to more
recent medical views. It had long been noticed that urine
contained solid constituents which were either evident as
such or could be recovered from their soluble state by means

1 Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 189-92.

5

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

of evaporation; these were regarded on the one hand as
comprising the essence of the fluid, being thus identified
with semen, and on the other as salts, which indeed they
mostly are. 1 The sufferings due to the excessive accumula-
tion of these salts, in the form of calculi, attracted a great
deal of attention and play a very important part in early
surgical writings. When the chemical constituents of urine
came to be carefully studied by exact methods there arose a
tendency, which reached its acme in the late 'eighties, to
attribute a considerable number of disorders to the pre-
sence in the system of an excessive amount of these con-
stituents. Thus, to mention only a few examples, gout was
thought to be simply a question of poisoning by uric acid,
uraemia to be poisoning with urea, diabetic coma (exhaus-
tion following on the continued loss of a vital substance)
poisoning by acetone (an occasional urinary constituent),
rheumatism poisoning by lactic acid (milk, a sexual secre-
tion, is almost constantly identified with semen in the
unconscious), and so on. It is interesting that the two
diseases in regard to which this idea was most firmly fixed
namely, gout and rheumatism are joint diseases, and
hence lend themselves to the series of unconscious associa-
tions "lameness incapacity impotence". Of late years
the tendency has taken at the same time simpler and more
complex directions. On the one hand there is a return to salt
itself, and a "salt-free diet" is vaunted as the sovereign
agent for the prevention of arterial disease and old age
(impotency), for the cure of epilepsy, and so on. It will also
be remembered how, when Brown-Sequard's attempt to
recapture youthful vigour by means of the injection of
canine semen shocked the medical profession in London,
efforts were made to substitute the more respectable,
because unconscious, symbol of this common salt. On the

1 The unconscious association between semen and urine on the one hand and
salt and water on the other will be dealt with at length later in this essay.

51

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

other hand there is a restless search for more complex
organic poisons, usually in the intestinal contents, which
are now being as extensively exploited as the urine was forty
years ago. The belief in the prime importance of organic
poisons is even generally extended to psychosexual
maladies, such as hysteria, "neurasthenia", and dementia
praecox. It may be questioned whether the important
advance in knowledge represented by the toxic theory of
disease would not have met with more resistance than it did
had it not appealed to a fundamental complex in the
human mind, in which, among others, the ideas of poison
and semen are closely associated.

A few derivative symbolisms concerning salt may next
be considered, which receive an added significance in the
light of the hypothesis put forward above. The power of
salt is enhanced when it is placed on an object resembling
the male organ. Cattle are thus protected by making them
step over a bar of iron, or a hatchet, which has been
sprinkled with salt; 1 the Esthonians cut a cross 2 under the
door through which the cattle have to pass, and fill the
furrows of it with salt to prevent evil spirits from harming
them. 3

According to Clement of Alexandria, in the rites that
celebrate the voluptuousness of the sea as a token of
Aphrodite's birth there a lump of salt and a phallus was
handed to the youths who are being initiated into the lore
of adultery. In their turn they present her with a coin, as if
they were her lovers and she their paid mistress. 4 A
similar meaning must originally have attached to the
Ancient Greek custom of tossing to the spectators of a

1 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 440.

* The phallic significance of the cross symbolism has been pointed out by
many investigators. See, for instance, Inman, Ancient Pagan and Modern
Christian Symbolism, 1874.

8 Frazer, op. cit., p. 351.

4 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Religion and Ancient Greek Folklore, 1910,
p. 581.

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

comedy barley cakes in the shape of phalli, mixed with
salt. 1

In Bohemia when a girl goes out for a walk her mother
sprinkles salt on the ground so that she may not "lose her
way" ; 2 this over-solicitous precaution becomes more intelli-
gible when we read Wuttke's 3 explanation that the object
of it is to prevent the girl from falling in love. A belief at
first sight quite foolish and meaningless is that a boy can
be cured of home-sickness by placing salt in the hem of his
trousers ( !) and making him look up the chimney. 4 We now
know, however, that excessive homesickness is due to over-
attachment, rooted in unconscious incestuous wishes, to
some member of the family, usually the mother, which has
the effect of "fixing" his powers of love and rendering it
incapable of being transferred in the normal way to a
stranger. To look up the chimney symbolizes the daring to
face another dark, inaccessible and dangerous passage (the
.very word "chimney" is derived from the Greek x<fctuvo<;=
oven, a common unconscious equivalent for the mother's
lap or womb). The belief, therefore, which means that if
someone can succeed in "making a man of him" he will be
freed from his homesickness, is not so unintelligible as it
appears, and is merely the clothing in symbolic language of
a fundamental fact in human nature. One may learn from
it how invaluable a knowledge of unconscious symbolism is
for the understanding of superstition, and how impossible
it is to comprehend it without this knowledge.

The Salt-cellar^ the receptacle of the salt, has been held
in as much superstitious reverence as its contents. 5 The
symbolism of it is usually a feminine one, 6 as indeed is

1 F. H. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, 1914, p. 102.
8 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 182.
8 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 367.
4 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 181.

6 Schleiden op. cit., S. 74; Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 196-205.
6 Though the late Dr. Putnam related to me the case of a man in whose
dreams a salt-cellar appeared as a symbol of the scrotum.

53

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

indicated by the Spanish compliment of calling a sweetheart
"salt-cellar of my love". 1 Salt-cellars, often of great mag-
nificence, were, and still are, favourite wedding-presents.
In Rome they constituted a special heirloom, the paternum
salinum, which was handed down from generation to
generation with especial care. In general it is just as evident
that an excessive amount of affect, of extraneous origin, has
been invested in the idea of a salt-cellar as it is in salt itself.
In classical times the salt-cellar partook of the nature of a
holy vessel, associated with the temple in general, and more
particularly with the altar. 2 To those who are familiar with
the female symbolism of the altar 3 this will be quite com-
prehensible. The etymology of the word "salt-cellar" is of
considerable interest in the present connection. The second
part "cellar" is derived from the French saliere (salt-cellar),
so that the whole is a redundancy, meaning salt-salt-
receptacle. We see here an instructive example of linguistic
assimilation, for a "cellar" (a dark chamber under the
house) has the same feminine symbolic meaning as saliere
itself. The sound resemblance of the words saliere and cellar
naturally made the assimilation easier, but the instinctive
intuition of the people was probably the underlying factor
in bringing it about.

The offering of salt as a special mark of favour, and as a
sign of hospitality, has been mentioned above ; we have now
to note the reverse of this. In England 4 and France 5 it was
considered unlucky to be helped to salt at table; this super-
stition still obtains in Anglican circles and finds popular
expression in the saying "Help me to salt, help me to
sorrow". In Russia the quarrel that would otherwise follow

1 Andre, Globus, 1867, Band XI. S. 140.
1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 74.

8 G. W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 1870, Vol. II, pp. 113-21;
Inman, op. cit., p. 74.

* Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 162.

* Brand, ibid., p. 163.

54

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

can be averted if one smiles amicably when proffering the
salt. 1 A clue to the original meaning of the superstition is
found in the attitude formerly obtaining in Italy, 2 where a
courtesy of this kind was thought to be a mark of undue
familiarity; when salt was offered by one man to the wife of
another it was a sufficient cause for jealousy and even
quarrel. This is perfectly intelligible in the light of the
hypothesis advanced above, but is hardly otherwise to be
explained.

In the North of England to give salt to someone is con-
sidered dangerous, for it puts the giver into the power of
the recipient; 3 the same belief also used to be held in
Russia. 4 In other places the act gives one possession or
power over the recipient, and with salt one can acquire
either men or knowledge; 6 this idea is probably allied to
those of loyalty and of the magical properties of salt (see
above). Light is thus thrown on the quaint saying: "To
catch a bird you must put salt on his tail." This is com-
monly accounted for with the obvious remark that to catch
a bird one must get near enough to it to be able to touch
it, but this does not explain why it should be just salt that
has to be applied, nor why it should be just to the tail.
Realization of the belief in the magical power of salt makes
the saying rather more intelligible, but the explanation thus
afforded is still only a general one; constructions of the
phantasy, including superstitious beliefs and sayings, are
determined not only generally, but precisely and in their
finest details. Additional help is furnished by an old legend
narrated by Lawrence, 6 in which a young man playfully

1 Revue des Traditions populaires, 1886, t. I; Sikes, op. cit., p. 329.

* Boyle, A Theological and Philosophical Treatise of the Nature and Goodness
of Salt, 1612.

8 Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England,
1879, p. 217.

* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 71.

6 Oxford Dictionary, loc. cit.

* Lawrence, op. cit., p. 179.

55

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

threw some salt on to the back of a woman who was sitting
next to him at table ; she happened to be a witch, and was
so weighted down by the salt that she was unable to move
until it was brushed away. We have here, therefore, again
the idea of salt brought into relation with that of weight
which prevents movement. Now witches were conceived to
be incorporeal beings, and in fact one of the chief ways of
finding out whether a given woman was a witch was by
weighing her j 1 the difference in weight made by a pinch of
salt was therefore quite considerable, or could metaphoric-
ally be imagined to be so. This attribute of witches was
closely related to their power of flying by night, and there-
fore with bird mythology altogether. The bird has always
been a common phallic symbol 2 sometimes quite con-
sciously so, as with the winged phallus charms of the
Roman ladies and the tail is a still more familiar one in
common speech; further the act of flying from the ground
is frequently associated in the unconscious with the pheno-
menon of erection. 3 The significance of salt (=semen) in
this connection is obvious; favouring and hindering are
treated as synonymous terms here as elsewhere in super-
stition, just as in the unconscious mind, the main point
being the significance.

Finally may be mentioned the belief that to see salt in
a dream indicates illness. 4 When one recalls the frequency
with which the ideas of nocturnal emission and of illness or
loss of strength are associated, it is not difficult to divine
the source of this particular belief.

1 Bekker, Die Bezauberte Welt, 1692, Theil I, S. 209.

1 Abraham, Traum und Mythus, 1909, S. 30, 63, etc.

8 Federn, Cited by Freud. Die Traumdeutung, Dritte Aufl., 1911. S. 204.

* Schleiden, op. cit., S. 80.

56

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

III

In the preceding section of this essay we dealt chiefly
with the adult roots of salt symbolism and superstitions,
and we have now to turn our attention to the deeper
infantile roots. The reason why the word "deeper" is used
here will presently become evident; it has to do with the
ontogenetic, as well as phylogenetic, antiquity of symbolism
in general.

Before passing to the next stage of the investigation,
therefore, it will be necessary briefly to refer to some aspects
of infantile mental life that without being realized play an
important part in adult life namely, certain views devel-
oped by young children concerning the begetting of chil-
dren. 1 These are forgotten long before puberty, so that the
adult is quite unaware of their existence and is extremely
surprised to hear of their great frequency in childhood life.
They survive nevertheless in the unconscious mind, and
exert a considerable influence on later interests and
views.

Early realizing, in spite of the untruths told him by the
parents, that a baby is born of the mother and grows inside
her, the child sets to work to solve the problem as best he
can, the full answer being concealed from him. Knowing
nothing of other organs he conceives of the "inside", par-
ticularly the abdomen, as simply a receptacle for food, a
view amply confirmed by his experience of indigestion and
other sensations. The baby, therefore, must have been
formed out of food, an inference that is largely correct.
Further, there being no other mode of exit possible at
least so far as he is aware the baby must have then
reached the exterior in the same way as digested food

1 See Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Zweite Folge,
1911, S. 159-64, "Uber infantile Sexualtheorien".

57 *

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(cloaca theory), as it actually does in all animals except
mammalia. There is thus established in the child's mind a
close connection between the ideas of food, faeces, and
babies, one that explains among many other things many
an hysterical symptom in later life.

The child next comes to the notion that, since food alone
does not in his personal experience have this result, a mix-
ing of two substances must be necessary. On the basis of
his excremental interests he observes that there are three
possible materials available, for it is only exceptionally that
he thinks the fertilizing material is of non-human origin.
The phantasy may combine these three materials solid,
liquid, and gaseous in different ways, the commonest of
which, in my experience and in that of other observers, are
in order: liquid solid, liquid liquid, solid solid, and
gaseous solid. A knowledge of these facts is indispensable
for the full understanding of salt symbolism. As the objec-
tion may be raised that they are artefacts of the psycho-
analytic method of investigation, it will be well to refer to
a little of the mass of purely anthropological evidence that
proves the universal occurrence of similar beliefs in what
corresponds with the childhood of the race. 1

The belief that fertilization, and even delivery, can take
place through some other orifice than the vagina has been
held in the most diverse countries of the world and is still
quite prevalent. Any orifice or indentation may be im-
plicated, the nostril, eye, ear, navel, and so on. An interest-
ing historical example was the medieval belief that the
Virgin Mary conceived through the ear, one widely held in
the Roman Catholic Church. 2 The mouth, however, was the

1 Since this essay was written a highly interesting paper of Otto Rank's has
appeared ("Vaikerpsychologische Parallelen zu den infantilen Sexualtheorien",
Zentr alblatt fiir Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. II, Heft 8) in which a large quantity of
additional data is given that both confirms and amplifies the conclusions here
enunciated.

8 See Ch. XIII of these Essays, which is devoted to an examination of this
belief.

58

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

orifice most frequently thought of in this connection, as is
apparent from the very numerous legends and beliefs in
which eating or drinking bring about pregnancy. The
peasantry in England still believe that peahens are im-
pregnated in this way 1 and similar views are entertained in
other countries in respect of different animals; we noted
above that according to which female mice are impregnated
by eating salt.

The belief that women can conceive as the result of eating
various articles of diet has existed in most parts of the
world; 2 usually the particular food is one to which some
sexual symbolism is attached, such as rice, fish, coco-
nuts, and so on. In the more civilized countries this has
been reduced to the belief that partaking of such substances
will cure barrenness in women or promote their fecundity ;
Hartland 3 relates a huge number of practices of this kind
carried out, mostly at the present day, for the purpose of
securing conception.

A digression must here be made on a matter of some
importance to the present theme namely, the association
between food as taken into the body and food as it is given
out, two ideas which are by no means so remote from each
other in the primitive mind, including that of the child, as
they usually are in that of the civilized adult. In the first
place many savage tribes have the custom of devouring
ordure of all kinds, including their own, and indeed seem
to partake of it with special relish; 4 a contemptuous refer-
ence to it may be found in 2 Kings xviii. 27. In more
civilized countries this has long been replaced by sausages 5
(a word, by the way, of the same etymological derivation as

1 Hartland, Primitive Paternity, igog, Vol. I, p. 151.
* Hartland, op. cit., pp. 4-16. Numerous examples.
8 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 32-41, 47, 48, 54-72.
4 Bourke, Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, 1891, pp. 33-7.
8 In England in the present generation the belief was acted on that a stolen
sausage had the power of curing barrenness (Hartland, op. cit., p. 56).

59

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

salt), and other products of abdominal organs. 1 The ordure
of sacred men has in many countries, e.g., Tibet, a high
religious significance, being used to anoint kings, to guard
against evil demons, and so on. 2 That it is not very rare for
insane patients to eat their own excrement is of course well-
known; 3 in such cases the long-buried infantile association
may come to open expression in the patient's remark,
pointing to the excrement, that he has just produced a
baby. Cases of stercophagy are occasionally met with apart
from any psychosis, as I know from personal experience of
several instances. An association is often formed between
the ideas of excrement and corpses, probably through the
common notion of decomposition of something that was
once a living human body, or part of one. Both ideas are
connected with that of fecundity. Hartland 4 refers to
"numerous stories wherein portions of dead bodies, given to
maidens and other women, render them pregnant." One of
the most widely-spread practices in India and elsewhere for
remedying sterility is to perform various symbolic acts in
relation to dead bodies : thus, to creep under the coffin, to
wash in the blood of decapitated criminals, to bathe over a
dead body or underneath a person who has been hanged,
and so on. 5 The Hungarians hold that a dead man's bone
shaved into drink and given to a woman will promote con-
ception, or if given to a man will enhance his potency. 6

1 The wife of the Elector of Hanover, in a letter to her niece, the sister-in-law
of Louis XIV, writes as follows:

Hanovre, 31 Octobre, 1694.

Si la viande fait la merde, il est vrai de dire que la merde fait la viande.
Est-ce que dans les tables les plus dedicates, la merde n'y est pas servie en
ragouts? Les boudins, les andouilles, les saucisses, ne sont-ce pas de ragouts
dans des sacs & merde ?

Bourke, op. cit., pp. 42-53.

8 According to Obersteiner (Psychiatrisches Centralblatt, 1871, Band III,
S. 95) this is true of one per cent of such patients, more often with men.
4 Hartland, op. cit., p. 77.
6 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 74-6.

Von Wlislocki, Aus dem Volksleben der Magyaren, 1893, S. 77.

60

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

It is clear that other factors also enter into these last-
mentioned beliefs, notably forms of ancestor-worship, but
we are concerned here only with the one element of the
association between putrefaction and fecundity, one which
has of course an extensive real justification in agriculture
(manure and fertility). The bone, being a rigid hollow tube
containing a vital marrow, 1 is a very frequent phallic
symbol in anthropological data and in the unconscious
mind generally: the following Egyptian myth also illus-
trates its power of impregnation. 2 A bone thrown on a
dung-heap ( !) grew up into so fine a tree (another familiar
symbol) that no one had ever seen its like. The daughter of
the man who had thrown the bone was desirous of seeing
this wonderful tree; when she witnessed its beauty she was
so entranced that she embraced it and kissing it took a leaf
into her mouth. As she chewed it she found the taste sweet
and agreeable and swallowed the leaf; at the same instant
she conceived by the will of God.

Mainly derived from the same source are the beliefs and
customs relating to the endless magical properties attaching
to dead bodies, and notably to their most putrefactive ele-
ments (saliva, excretions, etc.). 3 It would be out of place
to follow this subject further here, but mention may be
made of a West German belief to the effect that unless the
person who has clothed the dead body rubs his hands with
salt his limbs will go to sleep. 4 This is evidently akin to
sympathetic magic, the meaning being that close contact
with the corpse may transfer his state of deadness to the
person; the deeper meaning is that salt (=semen) will pro-
tect the member(s) from the risk of death, i.e., im-
potency.

A more constant unconscious association is that between

1 Cp. the curse, "May his bones lose their sap".

2 Oestrup, Conies de Damas, 1897, p. 26.

8 Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 1895, Vol. II, pp. 162-74, 3 I 3~3 2 e ^c.
4 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 463.

61

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the ideas of gold and faeces, 1 one of far-reaching significance
in mythology as well as in the reactions of every-day life.
Gold as fertilizing principle usually in conjunction with a
second sexual symbol is a favourite theme in mythology;
perhaps the best known instance is that of Danae being
impregnated by a shower of golden rain. Apples, fish, and
other objects, made of or resembling gold, are also familiar
instances of the same type of story. This association ex-
plains the extensive connection noted earlier between salt
and money or wealth (both being symbols of fertilizing
excrement), of which a few other examples may be given.
In Pomerania at the close of a wedding breakfast a servant
carries round a plate containing salt, upon which the guests
put money ; 2 the combination of the two substances plainly
symbolizes fertility. Seligmann 3 refers to a German custom
of carrying salt and money together in the pocket as a pro-
tection against impotence, so that here we have our surmise
directly confirmed as to the meaning of the combination.
A more complex variant is found in the Chemnitz saying:
"If one washes one's money in clear water and puts it with
salt and bread, the dragon and evil people cannot get
it." 4

Pregnancy has been brought about just as frequently by
drinking as it has by eating: all manner of fluids have been
efficacious in this respect, the sacred soma-juice milk, the
sap of grass, leaves and plants, the juice of roots, fruit and
flowers, and so on. 5 The idea of a liquid stimulus to concep-
tion thus stands in contrast with that of a solid one. The
practice of drinking various fluids for the purpose of aiding
conception is even more widely spread, and exists through-

1 Freud, op. cit., S. 136, 137; Ferenczi, Contributions to Psycho- Analysis,
1916, Ch. XIII, "The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money"; Ernest Jones,
Papers on Psycho- Analysis, 1918, pp. 676-8.

2 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 71.
8 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 38.

* Grimm, op. cit., Nachtrag, S. 434.

8 Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, Vol. I. Numerous instances.

62

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

out Europe at the present day. In every country women
wishing to have children drink water from various holy
springs or wells, the most potent of which is perhaps that at
Lourdes. 1 Apart from this numerous allied practices exist,
of which the following selection may be given. 2 In Thur-
ingia and Transylvania women who wished to be healed of
unfruitfulness drank consecrated (salt) water from the
baptismal font; in Riigen such water was efficacious if
poured before the door of a childless couple. In Hungary a
barren woman drinks from a spring that she has never
before seen. A Malagasy woman who has not been blessed
with issue is made to go on swallowing water until her
stomach is so full that it will not hold another drop. Masur
women in West Prussia make use of the water that drips
from a stallion's mouth after he has drunk.

As might be expected, more personal fluids are exten-
sively used for the same purpose, this being the primary
sense of the proceeding. In Bombay a woman cuts off the
end of the robe of another woman who has borne children,
steeps it, and drinks the infusion. Other women in India
drink the water squeezed from the loin-cloth of a sanyasi
or devotee. Saliva has been very extensively employed in
this connection, it being almost universally treated as a
seminal equivalent (hence the expression "he is the very
spit of his father"). Saliva in fact forms throughout in folk-
lore and superstition a regular duplicate of salt, bearing the
same relation to hospitality, friendship, compacts, baptism,
magical powers and charms, religious significance, and the
rest; 3 the theme cannot be further pursued here and
obviously needs separate exposition. Other fluids that may
be mentioned are: the milk of another woman, blood from
the navel of a new-born child, water in which the navel has

1 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 64-7.

2 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 67-71.

8 Hartland, Perseus, op. cit., pp. 258-75.

63

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

been soaked, the lochial discharge of a woman at her first
child-bed, water in which the placenta has been soaked,

water from the first bath of a woman after delivery. The
original sense of all these beliefs and customs is revealed by
consideration of the numerous myths and legends, which
recur in every part of the world without exception, describ-
ing how pregnancy followed the imbibing of semen,
deliberate or accidental.

A great part of our mental life, however, is the echo of
childhood thoughts, and the child knows nothing about
semen. To him the corresponding potent fluid is urine, a
topic which must next concern us. The prediction was
ventured above that the various ideas noted in regard to
salt and water would be found to mirror earlier correspond-
ing ones relating to semen and urine. Confining ourselves
for the present to the subject of salt water and urine, we
find that the resemblances between the ideas relating to
them are very striking. They may be considered by follow-
ing the order in which the properties of salt were enum-
erated at the outset.

The significance of salt for friendship, loyalty, hospitality,
and the ratifying of pacts, was dwelt on above: the same
customs and ideas can be duplicated in respect of urine.
Until about three centuries ago it was the vogue in Europe
to pledge a friend's health in urine, 1 exactly as we now do
in wine, and in the same circumstances; by this, perpetual
friendship and loyalty, or even love attachment, might be
ensured. The same custom still obtains in Siberia, where it
also signifies a pact of peace. 2 At a Moorish wedding the
bride's urine is thrown in the face of any unmarried man
or stranger on whom it is wished to bestow a distinguished
favour, 3 just as in other countries salt is presented with the

1 Bourke, op. cit., p. 129. Numerous references. ("Cobblers' punch" means
urine with a cinder in it.)

* Melville, In the Lena Delta, 1885, p. 318.

8 Mungo Park: Travels into the Interior of Africa 1813, pp. 109. 135.

6 4

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

same intention. In parts of Russia it was customary for the
bride to wash her feet and then use the water for sprinkling

the bridal bed and the assembled guests; it is probable, as
Bourke suggests, 1 that the water thus used represents a
survival of a former practice in which the aspersion was
with the urine of the bride. The old English custom of the
bride selling alcoholic liquor the so-called Bride-Ale on
the wedding-day 2 is also likely to be ultimately derived from
the same primitive source. The Jews still retain the follow-
ing allied custom at their weddings: A goblet of wine is
handed to the bridegroom by the best man, and after the
bridegroom has sipped from it he passes it to the principal
bridesmaid ; she hands it to the bride, who also drinks from
it. The following custom, related by Dulaure, 3 seems to be a
question both of hospitality and a test of friendship: "The
Tchuktchees offer -their women to travellers ; but the latter,
to become worthy of the offer, have to submit to a disgust-
ing test. The daughter or wife who has to pass the night
with her new guest presents him with a cupful of her urine ;
with this he has to rinse out his mouth. If he is brave
enough to do so, he is regarded as a sincere friend ; if not, he
is treated as an enemy of the family." It may be doubted
whether the construction Dulaure places on this is objec-
tively arrived at; at all events it is not likely to be the
original explanation.

The magical powers of salt are fully equalled by those of
urine. In connection with evil spirits and witches it played a
triple part. In the first place it was used actually to bewitch
people for evil purposes. 4 It is interesting to note that this
might occur even unintentionally. In Africa, for instance, it
is believed that "to add one's urine, even unintentionally,
to the food of another bewitches that other, and does him

1 Bourke, op. cit., p. 232.

* Brand, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 143 et seq.

8 Dulaure, Les DiviniUs Generatrices, 1825, p. 400.

4 Frommann, Tractatus de Fascinatione, 1674, p. 683.

65

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

grievous harm"; 1 this may be compared with the belief,
mentioned above, that to give salt to someone puts him in
one's power. Secondly, like salt, it was used for the detec-
tion of witchcraft and of witches. 2 Thirdly it was one of the
most potent charms against evil spirits and witches, and
was used as such throughout the Middle Ages. 3 In Ireland 4
urine, especially when combined with dung, was invaluable
in frustrating the mischief of fairies. It is still used against
witches by the Eskimos in disorders of childbirth. 5 The
Shamans of Alaska do the same to keep off evil spirits. 6
Os thanes, the magician, prescribed the dipping of our feet,
in the morning, in human urine, as a preventative against
evil charms. 7 It is still a practice in France to wash in urine so
as to guard against the devil and other maleficent influences. 8
In regard to disease there was still more extensive
application made of urine than of salt, both for diagnostic
and for therapeutic purposes. As is well-known, urinoscopy
was in the Middle Ages one of the principal means of recog-
nizing different diseases, and it was used for this purpose
not only in Europe but in Arabia, Tibet, and other parts of
the world; 9 for instance, in the index to the works of
Avicenna there are no fewer than two hundred and seventy-
five references to the appearance and other physical pro-
perties of urine in disease. As in the case of salt, this
divination was connected with ideas of urine, rain, and
weather prophesying in general. The use of urine in the
treatment of disease has been so remarkably comprehensive

1 Bourke, op. cit., p. 376.

* Bourke, op. cit., p. 397. Several references.

* Frommann, op. cit., pp. 961, 962; Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 13.
*Mooney, "The Medical Mythology of Ireland," Trans, of the American

Philosophical Society, 1887.
8 Bourke, op. cit., p. 378.

* Boas, Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. I, p. 218.
7 Quoted from Brand, op. cit., p. 286.

Luzel, "Le Nirang des Parsis en Basse Bretagne", Mttusine, Mai 1888;
Reclus: Les Primitifs, 1885, p. 98.
' Bourke, op. cit., pp. 272-4, 385, 386.

66

- THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

that it is impossible even to touch on the subject here; Bourke
has collected a vast amount of information dealing with it. 1
It may be added that sometimes we find salt combined
with urine for medical purposes, e.g., to get rid of a fever. 2

The importance of salt for fecundity is if anything
exceeded by that of urine. 3 It formed the essential con-
stituent of many love-philtres and magical procedures
having as their object the winning of affection. 4 Pliny
describes the aphrodisiac properties of the urine voided by
a bull immediately after copulation ; it may either be drunk
or used to moisten earth which is then rubbed into the groin.
Characteristically enough, urine can also be used as an
anti-aphrodisiac or as a charm against love-philtres. 6 At
Hottentot weddings the priest urinates over the bride and.
bridegroom, and the latter, receiving the stream with
eagerness, makes furrows with his nails so that the urine
may penetrate the farther. 6

The practice described by Pliny, referred to above, has
also been recommended as a remedy for the cure of im-
potence. The sovereign cure for this, however, consisted in
urinating through the wedding-ring, i.e., into an exquisite
female symbol. This practice is mentioned by most of the
older writers, 7 and has persisted among the German
peasantry until the present generation. 8 Pliny 9 states that
the urine of eunuchs was considered to be highly beneficial

1 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 277-369, 375, 384.

1 Wuttke, op. cit., p. 354.

8 See Walter Gallichan, Golden Urine: The Elixir of Life.

4 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 216, 217, 223.

6 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 224-7.

6 Cook, in Hawkesworth's Voyages, 1773, Vol. Ill, p. 387; Kolbein, in
Knox's Voyages, 1777, Vol. II, pp. 399, 400; Thurnberg, in Pinkerton's
Voyages, 1814, Vol. XVI, pp. 89, 141.

7 Reginald Scot, op. cit., p. 64; Frommann, op. cit., p. 997; Brand, op. cit.,
Vol. Ill, p. 305.

8 Birlinger and Buck, Sagen, Marchen und Volksaberglauben aus Schwaben,
1861, S. 486.

XXVIII. 18.

67

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

as a promoter of fruitfulness in women. In Algiers a woman
seeks to cure barrenness by drinking sheep's urine. 1
Schurig 2 describes as a method of inducing conception the
use of a bath of urine poured over old iron, with which
may be compared the magical properties mentioned above
as being ascribed to the combination of salt and iron.
Finally two Asiatic legends narrated by Bab 3 may be
referred to, in which the symbolical equivalence of urine
and semen appears in the most unmistakable manner. In
the first one, from Siam, a man urinated daily on to a
certain apple-tree, with the result that it bore especially
large fruit. A princess ate one of the apples and thereupon
became pregnant. In the other, from Cambodia, a hermit
had the habit of urinating on to a hollowed-out stone. A
girl who had got lost in the woods (her mother had evidently
omitted to strew salt as she left the house) drank the liquid
out of the stone, and likewise became pregnant.

The use of salt at initiation ceremonies can also be
paralleled with that of urine. A young Parsee undergoes a
kind of confirmation during which he is made to drink a
small quantity of the urine of a bull. 4 At the Hottentot
initiation ceremony one of the medicine-men urinates over
the youth, who proudly rubs the fluid into his skin. 5
Corresponding with the Christian and Jewish displacement
of their initiation ceremonies (baptism, circumcision) from
the time of puberty to that of infancy we find a similar
displacement in respect of urine ceremonies. The Calif ornian
Indians give their children a draught of urine as soon as
they are born, 6 and this custom is also in vogue amongst
Americans in the country districts ; 7 these are of course not

1 Ploss, Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde, 1891, Bd. I, S. 443.

2 Schurig, Chylologia, 1725, Vol. II, p. 712.

Bab, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, 1906, Band XXXVIII, S. 281.

Monier Williams, Modern India, 1878, p. 178.

Kolbein, op. cit., pp. 202-4; Thurnberg, loc. cit.

Bancroft, op. cit., p. 413.

Trumbull, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 240.

68

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

pure examples of initiation. The In jit child selected to be
trained as an Angekok was bathed in urine soon after birth
as a religious ceremony. 1 When Parsee children are invested
with the Sudra and Koshti the badges of the Zoroastrian
faith they are sprinkled with the urine of a sacred cow
and they also have to drink some of it. 2

The interest aroused by the taste of salt may be compared
with that taken in the peculiar taste of urine, a matter that
played a considerable part in medical urinoscopy. All
bodily fluids, including tears, semen, sweat, blood, etc.,
owe of course most of their taste to the presence of salt in
them. The natives of Northern Siberia habitually drink
each other's urine. 3 The African Shillooks regularly wash
out their milk vessels with urine "probably", so Schwein-
furth 4 thinks, "to compensate for a lack of salt" ; this is also
done by the natives of Eastern Siberia. 5 The Obbe 6 and
other 7 natives of Central Africa never drink milk unless it
is mixed with urine, the reason given being that otherwise
the cow would lose her milk; we have here a counterpart of
the custom of mixing salt with the milk so as to ensure a
plentiful supply. "Chinook olives" are acorns that have
been steeped for five months in human urine. 8 Of interest
is the relation of urine to the manufacture of intoxicating
drinks, it being thus an equivalent to alcohol, as we have
noted above. When the supply of alcohol runs short in
Siberia the natives eke it out by making a mixture of equal
parts of urine and alcohol. 9 In Queensland there is an edible
nut of a particular species of pine, which is prepared for

1 Re"clus, op. cit., p. 84.

a Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop, 1869, p. 164.

8 Melville, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 38.

4 Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa. 1872, Vol. I, p. 16.

5 Melville, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 200.

6 Baker, The Albert Nyanza, 1869, p. 240.

7 Long, Central Africa, 1877, p. 70.

8 Kane, An Artist's Wanderings in North America, 1859, p. 187.

9 Melville, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 39.

6 9

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

consumption in the following way: clay pans are formed
in the soil, into which the men urinate; the nuts are then
steeped in this, when a fermentation takes place. The eat-
ing of the nuts causes a temporary madness, and even
delirium tremens. 1

We have next to note the analogies between the sig-
nificance of salt and that of urine in regard to religious
performances. In both cases the substance might be either
swallowed or applied to the surface of the body, and con-
cerning the latter practice it is expedient to make a few
preliminary remarks. The religious practice of sprinkling or
baptizing with a holy fluid (salt and water in the Roman
Catholic Church, plain water in the Protestant Church) has
evidently two principal meanings. In the first place it sym-
bolizes purification, particularly from sin. Probably the
simplest and most accurate expression for the psychological
meaning of baptism, as perhaps for that of any religious
rite, is "purification through re-birth". The earthly inces-
tuous libido, which is now known to be the deepest source
of the sense of sin in general, 2 is overcome and purified in a
homoeopathic manner by passing through a symbolic act of
heavenly incest. Purification by fire is a distorted form of
the more original purification by water. It will be noticed
that in baptism the liquid symbolises both the father's
urine (or semen) and the mother's uterine waters, satisfying
thus both the male and the female components of the libido.
The oldest association between the ideas of liquid and
purification is of course the child's experience of urine wash-
ing away faeces, thus cleansing dirt (the deepest source for
the objectionableness of sexuality). 3

In the second place baptism imbues the participant with
the mystic properties conveyed by, or belonging to, the holy

1 Mann, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 38.

* Freud, Totem und Tabu, 1913, S. 144, 145.

8 Freud, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Band IV, S. 49, 50.

70

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

fluid. This meaning, which was probably the original one of
the two, is well illustrated in the Hottentot rite described
above, where the participant scratches his skin so as to
absorb as much as possible of the precious fluid. At all
events we find that the acts of ablution 1 and of swallowing
are throughout treated as though they were identical.
Where one is performed in one country the other is in
another country in exactly corresponding circumstances,
and in numberless instances the two are regarded as
equivalent. For example, the practice of imbibing water,
particularly holy water, for the cure of barrenness, as
described above, is throughout paralleled by the equally
common one of bathing in water for the same purpose, and
often at the same place; Hartland 2 has collected an enor-
mous number of instances of this from every part of the
world and shows that it is to-day as frequent as ever.

All the evidence, from comparative religions, from
history, anthropology and folk-lore, converges to the con-
clusion, not only that Christian and other rites of baptism
symbolize the bestowment of a vital fluid (semen or urine) on
the initiate, but that the holy water there used is a lineal
descendant of urine, the use of which it gradually displaced.
Strange as this conclusion may seem it is definitely sup-
ported by the following facts selected from a vast number
of similar ones.

To begin with, it is known that salt and water has
historically replaced urine in various non-religious or semi-
religious usages. Bourke 3 writes: "We shall have occasion
to show that salt and water, holy water, and other liquids
superseded human urine in several localities, Scotland

1 It should not be forgotten that the original form of Christian baptism
was complete immersion; the relatively modern custom of christening, or
sprinkling, is a later replacement of this, and is still repudiated by, for instance,
the Baptist sect.

1 Hartland, Paternity, op. cit., pp. 77-89.

* Bourke, op. cit., p. 211.

71

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

included." The following is an example of this. One of the
superstitious uses of urine was to wash the breasts of a
woman after delivery, no doubt with the aim of securing a
good supply of milk. Jouan 1 reports from personal experi-
ence that this was still customary in France so late as in
1847. In Scotland the custom widely prevailed of washing
the breasts with salt and water in the same circumstances
and for the same object. 2 Again, whenever the supply of
salt falls short in a given country, particularly in an un-
civilized one, the natives are apt to resort to urine as a sub-
stitute. Gomara 3 states that human urine served as salt to
the Indians of Bogota. The Latookas of the White Nile
make salt from the ashes of goat's dung, 4 which again illus-
trates the conception of salt as the essence of excrement,
particularly urine. Pallas 5 says that the Buriats of Sibera,
in collecting salts from the shores of certain lakes, are care-
ful as to the taste of the same: "They employ only those
which have a taste of urine and of alkali"; Bourke, 6 refer-
ring to this, adds : "This shows that they must once have
used urine for salt, as so many other tribes have done." The
Siberians gave human urine to their reindeer in place of
salt, 7 presumably to improve their yield of milk. They also
used urine to obtain water from snow by melting it, just
as we use salt to prevent the formation of ice on our door-
steps. The Dinkas of Central Africa use the urine of cows
for washing and as a substitute for salt, but here other
motives also enter in, for with them cattle are sacred
animals. 8 Urine has been used for a very great number of
industrial purposes, in many of which it has since been

1 Jouan, Quoted by Bourke, loc. cit.

1 Black, Folk-Medicine, 1883, p. 23; Napier, op. cit., pp. 36-37.

8 Gomara, Historia de las Indias, p. 202.

* Baker, op. cit., p. 224.

* Pallas, Voyages, 1793, Vol. IV, p. 246.

* Bourke, op. cit., p. 193.

7 Cochrane, Pedestrian Journey through Siberian Tartary, 1824, p. 235.

8 Schweinfurth, op. cit., p. 58.

72

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

superseded by salt; 1 it is not necessary to enumerate them
here.

One of the earliest uses of salt was for cleansing purposes.
In Ancient Rome salt and water was used instead of toilet
paper, every latrine containing a bucket of it. 2 The use of
urine as a fluid for washing the body has been reported
from the most diverse parts of the world: thus, in Alaska, 3
in Iceland, 4 in Ounalashka (in Russia), 5 amongst the Cali-
fornian Pericuis, 6 the Siberian Tchuktchees, 7 and the Van-
couver Indians. 8 The custom persisted in Spain until quite
recent times, and even in the present generation it was to
be traced among the Spanish settlers in Florida. 9 Petroff 10
states that the peasants of Portugal still wash their clothes
in urine, and German, Irish and Scandinavian immigrants
in the United States persist in adding human urine to the
water to be used in cleansing blankets. 11 The use of urine
as a mouth-wash is also very prevalent. Baker 12 writes :
u The Obbo natives wash out their mouths with their own
urine. This habit may have originated in the total absence
of salt in their country." The Basques and some Hindus
do the same, and the custom used to obtain in England and
Germany; in Spain and Portugal it persisted until the end
of the eighteenth century. 13

We may now return to the religious aspects of the

1 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 177-200.

2 Bourke, op. cit., p. 135.

3 Coxe, Russian Discoveries, 1803, p. 225, quoting Krenitzin.

4 Hakluyt, Voyages, 1599, Vol. I, p. 664.
6 Solovoof, Voyages, 1764, p. 226.

6 Clavigero, Historia de Baja California, 1852, p. 28; Bancroft, op. cit., p. 559.

7 Lisiansky, Voyage round the World, 1811, p. 214; Melville, In the Lena Delta,
loc. cit.; Gilder, quoted by Bourke, op. cit., pp. 202, 203.

8 Swan, "The Indians of Cape Flattery," Smithsonian Contributions to
Knowledge, No. 220, p. 19.

Bourke, op. cit., pp. 203, 205. Many references.

10 Petroff, Trans, of the American Anthropological Society, 1882, Vol. I.

11 McGillicuddy, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 205.
18 Baker, op. cit., p. 240.

13 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 203-5.

73 ,

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

subject. The Romans held a feast to the mother of all the
Gods, Berecinthia, at which the matrons took their idol and
sprinkled it with their urine. 1 Berecinthia was one of the
names under which Cybele or Rhea, the primal earth God-
dess, was worshipped by the Romans and by many nations
of the East. Juvenal (Sixth Satire) describes how in the
rites of the Bona Dea her image used to be sprinkled with
copious irrigations of urine. In the early days of Christianity
the Manichaean sect used to bathe in urine. 2 It is related of
an Irish king, Aedh, that he obtained some urine of the
chief priest, bathed his face in it, drank some with gusto, and
said that he prized it more highly than the Eucharist itself. 3
In modern religions of civilized peoples, however, human
urine is never used, having been replaced by water, salt
and water, or cow's urine. The sacred drink hum of the
Parsees has the "urine of a young, pure cow" as one of the
ingredients. 4 In the Bareshnun ceremony the Parsee priest
has to undergo certain ablutions wherein he applies to his
body cow's urine, 5 and to rub the nirang (cow's urine) over
his face and hands is the second thing every Parsee does
after rising in the morning. 6 The latter ceremony is by no
means a simple one; for instance, he is not allowed to touch
anything directly with his hands until the sacred nirang
has first been washed off with water. In India the urine of a
cow is a holy water of the very highest religious significance.
It is used in ceremonies of purification, during which it is
drunk. 7 Dubois 8 says that a Hindu penitent "must drink
the pancbakaryam a word which literally signifies the five
things, namely, milk, butter, curd, dung, and urine, all

1 Torquemada, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 394.

a Picart, Cofitumes et Ce're'monies Religieuses, 1729, p. 18.

3 Mttusine, Mai 5, 1888.

4 Max Miiller, Biographies of Words, 1888, p. 237.

6 Kingsley, Quoted by Bourke, op. cit., p. 211.
* Max Miiller, Chips, etc., op. cit., p. 163.

7 De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Engl. Transl., 1872, Vol. I, p. 95.

8 Abbe" Dubois, The People of India, 1817, p. 29.

74

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

mixed together," and he adds: "The urine of a cow is held
to be the most efficacious of any for purifying all imaginable
uncleanness. I have often seen the superstitious Hindu
accompanying these animals when in the pasture, and
watching the moment for receiving the urine as it fell, in
vessels which he had brought for the purpose, to carry it
home in a fresh state; or, catching it in the hollow of his
hand, to bedew his face and all his body. When so used it
removes all external impurity, and when taken internally,
which is very common, it cleanses all within." Moor 1
similarly writes: "The greatest ... of all purifiers is the
urine of a cow. Images are sprinkled with it. No man of any
pretensions to piety or cleanliness would pass a cow in the
act of staling without receiving the holy stream in his
hand and sipping a few drops." Hindu merchants at
Bokhara mix with their food, that it may do them good,
the urine of a sacred cow kept in that place. 2 At the Poojah
sacrifice the Brahmans prepare the room by sprinkling the
floor with cow's urine. 3 In one of the Hindu fasts the
devotee adopts as his food the excreta of cows, the urine
being allowed as a beverage for the fourth day. 4 The
antiquity of urine rites in India is shown by the fact that
they are frequently referred to in the oldest of their
canonical books. The Brahminical authors of the Maha-
Bharata describe how, at the coronation of a Maharajah,
Krishna brings the urine of the sacred cow and pours it over
the King's head. 5 In the Shapast la Shayast much stress is
laid on bull's urine as a purifier. 6 These rites exist not only
in India proper, but also on the slopes of the Himalayas, 7

1 Moor, The Hindu Pantheon, 1810, p. 143.
8 Erman, Siberia, 1848, Vol. I, p. 384.
8 Maurice, Indian Antiquities, 1800, Vol. I, p. 77.
4 Maurice, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 222.
8 Wheeler, History of India, 1867, Vol. I, p. 371.
Sacred Books of the East, Vol. V, Part I.

7 Short, "Notes on the Hill Tribes of the Neilgherries," Trans, of the
Ethnological Society, 1868, p. 268.

75

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

and from India they were introduced into Persia; the
Kharda Avesta has preserved the formula to be recited by
a devotee while he holds in his hand the urine of a cow,
preparatory to washing his face with it. 1

We need not discuss the various cloud, moon, and other
supposed symbolisms of the rites in question, for it is no
longer tenable that these are anything more than secondary
developments of more primitive interests. After dealing
with the subject of animal sacrifice, and showing that this
is a later development of the original human sacrifice, a
conclusion amply confirmed by the work done since his
time, Bourke 2 pertinently asks : "If the cow have displaced
a human victim, may it not be within the limits of prob-
ability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine are
substitutes, not only for the complete carcass, but that they
symbolize a former use of human excreta ?" This question
we can to-day with a high degree of probability answer in
the affirmative, for both anthropological and psycho-
analytical research agree in the conclusion that excessive,
e.g., religious, interest in any animal is only a substitute for
a corresponding interest in some human being. There can
be no doubt that the cow, for instance, is a typical mother-
symbol, just as the Lamb of God in Christian mythology is
a symbol of Christ, i.e., of the son.

From this point of view the devil's custom of using his
urine to baptize, and bless, his worshippers at the witches'
Sabbath 3 must be regarded, not as the medieval theo-
logians indignantly thought as constituting a wanton
caricature of the Christian rites, but as a reversion to the
most primitive form of these. Caricature, like wit, is often
really a reversion to the unconscious source of the cari-
catured idea. An example of it may be quoted from another

1 De Gubernatis, op. cit., pp. 99-100.
* Bourke, op. cit., p. 125.

8 Thiers, Traite des Superstitions, 1741, Vol. II, p. 367; Picart, op. cit.,
Vol. VIII. p. 69.

7 6

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

field, one which also depends on the symbolic equivalent of
urine and holy water: In a caricature by Isaac Cruikshank,
dated I7th March, 1797, of Napoleon giving audience to the
Pope, a French grenadier is represented urinating into a
chamber-pot which is labelled Holy Water. 1

The almost universal custom of rubbing a new-born child
with salt, or bathing it in salt and water, has been noted
above. In some parts of the world the original fluid, urine,
which has been so widely displaced for this purpose by salt,
is still in use, or was in historical times. 2 Soranus discusses
at length the Roman custom of bathing infants with the
urine of a boy who has not reached puberty (thus a pecu-
liarly innocent and pure fluid). The Hottentots use fresh
cow's urine for this purpose, while the Indians in Alaska
employ horse urine.

The association between urine rites and religious dancing
is especially close in many parts of the world. Bourke 3 gives
a detailed account of the "urine dance" of the Zunis in
New Mexico, and draws an instructive analogy between it
and the famous Feast of Fools in medieval Europe. 4 In a
painstaking analysis of the circumstances in which dancers
in Alaska bathe in urine he has further established the
religious significance of this custom there also. 5 The same
association exists as well in various other parts of the
world, in Africa, Siberia, North America, etc. 6 The ideas
that are connected together in these ceremonies are: alco-
holic or other intoxication, religious ecstasies, urine rites
(drinking and bathing), and sexual excitement. In this con-
nection I venture to throw out the suggestion that perhaps
philological research might establish an etymological rela-

1 Broadley, Napoleon in Caricature, 1911, p. 94.

2 Numerous instances are related by Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der
Vo'lker, Zweite Aufl., 1911.

8 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 4-10.
4 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 11-23.
6 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 206-8.
Bourke, op. cit., pp. 208-10.

77

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

tionship between the Latin word sal and the verbs saltare
and salire ( = to leap or dance). 1 From saltus ( = leap)
comes the English saltier (St. Andrew's cross), the sub-
stantive salt (meaning sexual desire, especially of animals),
and the adjective salt ( = lecherous); 2 further words from
the same source are assault (adsaltare), assail (adsalire)
sally, exult and salient, all of which stand in a psychological
relationship to the present subject. The idea of dancing is
of course, now as formerly, 3 closely connected with eroti-
cism, and often also with religion. 4

Something will now be said about the symbolic signific-
ance attaching to the mingling of two liquids, which is
ultimately derived from the infantile idea, mentioned above,
that the sexual act consists in the combining of the urine of
two people. In various customs and beliefs urine has, quite
comprehensibly, been replaced by other bodily fluids, par-
ticularly the vital ones such as blood. Salt and water has
also played an important part in this way.

The interchange of blood as a means of binding two
people together with lasting ties is a very general rite.
Hartland 5 says of it : "The Blood-Covenant, as it is called,
is a simple ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be
made in the neophyte's arm and the flowing blood sucked
from it by one of the clansmen, upon whom the operation
is repeated in turn by the neophyte. . . . Sometimes the
blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with water or wine.

1 Since writing the above I find that Schleiden (op. cit., S. 17) expresses a
similar thought, suggesting that sal and salire are both derived from the
Sanscrit 'sar', a root which will be considered later in this essay.

2 Cp. Shakespeare's "salt as wolves in pride" (Othello, Act III, Sc. 3).

3 Brill, "The Psychopathology of the New Dances," New York Medical
Journal, April 25, 1914.

4 Bourke, op. cit., p. 24.

5 Hartland, Perseus, op. cit., pp. 237, 238. See in general pp. 236-58, also
Strack, Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit, 1900.

78

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the
blood. 1 Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds
together, so that the blood of both parties is mixed and
smeared upon them both. Among the Kayans of Borneo
the drops are allowed to fall upon a cigarette, which is then
lighted and smoked alternately by both parties. But, what-
ever may be the exact form adopted, the essence of the rite
is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is mentioned by
classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the Lydians, and
Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the Medes. Many
passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian Book of the
Dead) are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab his-
torians are full of allusions to it. Odin and Liki entered into
the bond, which means for us that it was customary among
the Norsemen as we know, in fact, from other sources. It is
recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of his day. It is described
in the Gesta Romanorum. It is related of the Huns or
Magyars, and of the medieval Rumanians. Joinville ascribes
it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi
Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the
twelfth century, found it there. In modern times every
African traveller mentions it ; and most of them have had to
undergo the ceremony. In the neighbouring island of Mada-
gascar it is well known. All over the Eastern Archipelago,
in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the Karens, the
Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian
empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the
wild tribes of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the
Bedouins, and among the autochthonous peoples of North
and South America, the rite is, or has been quite recently,
in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in Europe by the
Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the Abruzzi.
The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken

1 The resemblance of these two last-mentioned customs to the Eucharist
of the Christian Churches is unmistakable.

79

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

up a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in
this way. Most savage peoples require their youths at the
age of puberty to submit to a ceremony which admits them
into the brotherhood of the grown men, and into all the
rights and privileges of the tribe. Of this ceremony the
blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is also,
either actually or by symbol, in the initiation-rite not only
of the Mala Vita, but of almost all secret societies, both
civilized and uncivilized."

The giving of blood, therefore, exactly like that of salt,
symbolizes friendship, loyalty, compact, and initiation into
manhood. More than this, in many countries it is closely
connected with marriage, and may actually constitute the
marriage ceremony. The marriage rite of the Dusuns, in
Banguey, consists in transferring a drop of blood from a
small incision made in the calf of a man's leg to a similar cut
in the woman's leg. 1 The marriage of the Wukas, a tribe of
New Guinea, is performed by mutual cuts made by the
husband and wife in each other's forehead. 2 Among the
Birhors of India the wedding ceremony consists entirely in
drawing blood from the little fingers of the bride and bride-
groom, and smearing it on each other; 3 a similar, though
more complicated, ceremony is performed by the Kayasth,
or writer caste of Behar.

Among several races of India, in the wedding ceremony
known as sindur dan y the substance used is red lead, which
the bridegroom smears on the bride's forehead with his little
finger or a knife; Hartland 4 has shown that this is a later
development of the more primitive custom, the red lead
simply replacing the blood. In some instances the two are
combined: in the Kewat caste the sindur dan rite is first
carried out, and then blood is drawn from the little finger

1 Hartland, op. cit., p. 339, The original references may be found there.
8 Hartland, loc. cit.

3 Hartland, op. cit., p. 336.

4 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 334-6.

so

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

of the bridegroom's right hand and of the bride's left; the
blood is mingled in a dish of boiled rice and milk, and each
person eats the food containing the other's blood. 1 Similarly
in the Rajput ritual the family priest fills the bridegroom's
hand with sindur and marks the bride's forehead with it ; on
the next day each of them is made to chew betel with which
a drop of blood from the other's little finger has been
mixed. 2 Among the Kharwar, and also the Kurmi, the
bridegroom smears the bride with a mixture of his own
blood and of paint. 3 Blood rites of the same kind were also
performed at Finnish and Norwegian marriages. 4

More or less elaborate symbolisms of the primitive rite
are frequent enough. An Australian bridegroom spits on
his bride, and then streaks her with red powder down to
the navel. 5 A Carib will sometimes betroth himself to an
unborn babe, conditionally on its being a girl, by making a
red mark over the mother's womb. 6 In the East Indies, in
Borneo, and in parts of Southern India, fowl's blood is used
instead of human blood. 7 Blood, like urine, has also been
extensively used in Europe as a love charm or philtre, 8 of
which custom one example will suffice : lovers who wished
to heighten the affections of their mistresses used to trans-
fuse their own blood into the loved one's veins. 9 An example
of condensed symbolism is afforded by a Mexican saga,
according to which a dead man's bone (i.e., the phallus of an
ancestor, or father) when sprinkled with blood produced the
father and mother of the present race of mankind. 10

1 Hartland, op. cit., p. 337.

* Hartland, loc. cit.

8 Hartland, loc. cit.

4 Hartland, op. cit., p. 341.

6 Hartland, op. cit., p. 342.

6 Hartland, loc. cit.

7 Hartland, op. cit., p. 343.

8 Numerous examples are given by Hartland, op. cit., pp. 124, 125.

9 Flemming, De Remediis ex Corpore Humano desuntis, 1738, p. 15.

10 Southey's Commonplace Book, Edited by Waiter, 1850, Vol. IV, p. 142.

81

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

We see from the facts just quoted that blood, like urine,
has all over the world been treated as an equivalent of salt,
as a vital or holy material. The thesis that external applica-
tion is symbolically the same as drinking is confirmed in this
case as well. Customs and beliefs very similar to those just
mentioned could be collected in respect of various other
bodily fluids, of which only one or two instances will be
given. The sweat of the Finnish deity Wainemoinen was a
balm for all diseases, and the same was true of the Egyptian
God Ra. 1 The Scandinavian Frost-Giants were born of the
sweat of the Giant Ymir. 2 It is probable that the salt taste
of sweat has always struck the observation of mankind.
This is certainly so with tears, where literary allusions to
their saltness abound: thus in King John (Act V, Sc. 7):

Prince Henry: 0, that there were some virtue in my tears,

That might relieve you!
King John: The salt in them is hot.

The interest in the combination of salt and water has
naturally been extended to the sea, which has always played
an important part in the birth fancies of mankind. The
association is evident in the use of the Greek word <&<;
(Latin sale) to express both "salt" and "sea". The contrast
between fire and water has often been seized upon to
represent the contrast between male and female elements
respectively. The relation between salt and fire is much
more extensive than we have here described; most of the
customs and beliefs mentioned above could be paralleled by
similar ones in which it is necessary to throw salt into the
fire in order to produce the desired effect. 3 In mythology the

1 Lenormant, Chaldean Magic: Its Origin and Development, Engl. Transl.,
1877, p. 247.

Hartland, Paternity, op. cit., p. 2.
8 The etymological aspects of this relationship will be discussed later.

82

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

combination of fire and water (male and female elements) is
symbolized with especial frequency by alcohol, which
presumably was the essential constituent of the various
sacred drinks of which we read; with singular appropriate-
ness the North American Indians refer to alcoholic bever-
ages as "fire-water".

The association between the ideas fire salt sea are well
shown in the following myths. From the mythical lore of
Finland we learn that Ukko, the mighty God of the sky,
struck fire in the heavens ; a spark descended from this was
received by the waves and became salt. 1 This example is
especially instructive for more than one reason. In the
first place we here have salt directly derived from fire, thus
confirming our previous surmise of the symbolic equival-
ency of the two. In the next place, as Abraham 2 has clearly
demonstrated, heavenly fire descending upon earth,
e.g., lightning, is mythologically only another variant of the
various divine foods (soma, ambrosia, nectar) that sym-
bolize the male fertilizing fluid; this is in obvious accord
with the view here maintained of the seminal symbolism
of salt.

In another myth we have the Prometheus-like bringer of
salt regarded as a Messiah. Lawrence 3 writes : "The Chinese
worship an idol called Phelo, in honour of a mythological
personage of that name, whom they believe to have been
the discoverer of salt and the originator of its use. His
ungrateful countrymen, however, were tardy in their
recognition of Phelo's merits, and that worthy thereupon
left his native land and did not return. Then the Chinese
declared him to be a deity, and in the month of June each
year they hold a festival in his honour, during which he is
everywhere sought, but in vain; he will not appear until he

1 Quoted from Lawrence, op. cit., p. 154.

2 Abraham, op. cit., S. 49, 62, etc.

3 Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 154, 155.

83

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

comes to announce the end of the world." The Prometheus
theme of a God bringing an all-precious substance as a gift
to mankind 1 is here worked into a form that closely
resembles the Jewish conception of a Messiah that has to be
sought and the Christian one of a prophet who was not
received when he delivered his message, but who will return
to announce the end of the world.

Tacitus 2 refers to the belief that salt is the product of the
strife between fire and water, a belief evidently mirroring
the infantile sadistic conception of coitus, but one that
happens to have an objective basis in regard to the evap-
orating action of the sun's heat. On a lowlier plane we may
refer to the connection between fire and water as shown by
some practices carried out for the purpose of obtaining
children. A Transylvanian Gipsy woman is said to drink
water into which her husband has cast hot coals, or, better
still, has spit, saying as she does so: "Where I am flame,
be thou the coals! Where I am rain be thou the water!" 3
A South Slavonic woman holds a wooden bowl of water
near the fire on the hearth. Her husband then strikes two
firebrands together until the sparks fly. Some of them fall
into the bowl, and she then drinks the water. 4 Of the many
instances of association between the ideas of fire and urine
one only need be mentioned : At the yearly ceremony held
by the Eskimos for the purpose of driving out an evil spirit
called Tuna, one of the performers brings a vessel of urine
and flings it on the fire. 5 The ideas, therefore, of fire-salt,
fire-water, and fire-urine are thus seen to be closely related
in the primitive mind, a fact which stands in full harmony
with the clinical psycho-analytic finding that the ideas of

1 See Abraham, op. cit., for a full analysis of the Prometheus myth.
8 Cited by Schleiden, op. cit., S. u.

3 Ploss, Das Weib, loc. cit.

4 Krauss, Sitte und Branch der Siidslaven, 1885, S. 531.

5 Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Washington,
1885, p. 42.

8 4

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

fire, water, urine, and semen are interchangeable equi-
valents in the unconscious, fire being a typical symbol for
urine.

Leaving now the subject of fire we have to note a few
more beliefs concerning salt and water, particularly in a
female sense (receptive urine). In the cosmogenical myths
of the islanders of Kadiack it is related that the first woman
"by making water, produced the seas". 1 In South Africa it
is also believed that the sea was created by a woman, 2
doubtless in the same way. In the creation myth of the
Australians, on the other hand, it is a God, Bundjil, who
creates the sea by urinating over the earth for many days. 3
Among the Mexican Nahuas, again, the sea is of female
origin : there the women and girls employed in the prepara-
tion of salt dance at a yearly festival held in honour of the
Goddess of Salt, Huixocihuatl, whose brothers the rain-
gods, as the result of a quarrel, drove her into the sea,
where she invented the art of making the precious sub-
stance. 4 In European mythology the sea is conceived of as
either male or female, though much more often as the latter.
It stands in especially close association with the various
love Goddesses, Aphrodite, Astarte, and the rest. Jennings
writes: 5 "Blue is the colour of the 'Virgin Maria'. Maria,
Mary, mare, mar, mara, means the 'bitterness', or the 'salt-
ness' of the sea. Blue is expressive of the Hellenic, Isidian,
Ionian, Yonian (Yoni Indian), Watery, Female, and
Moonlike Principle in the universal theogony. It runs
through all the mythologies." As is well known, Friday is
holy to this Goddess in most religions, and is named after
her in all European languages. On Friday, the day of the
Virgin Mary, salted meat must not be eaten by strict

1 Lisiansky, op. cit., p. 197.

* Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1887, Vol. I, p. 91.

8 Smyth, The Aborigines of Australia, 1878, Vol. I, p. 429.

4 Bancroft, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 353.

6 Hargrave Jennings, The Rosicrucians, 1887, Vol. I, p. 57.

85

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Catholics (compare this with the ascetic abstinence from
salt noted above), and, further, the staple food is, appro-
priately enough, fish. There exists in the South of England
a spell for turning the heart of a recalcitrant lover, which
consists in throwing a little salt into the fire on three
successive Friday nights; on the third one the lover is
expected to return. 1 That the spell has to be carried out just
on Friday illustrates very well how detailed is the deter-
mination of superstitions, and how careful one should be
before concluding that any minor feature of one is devoid of
meaning.

As might have been expected, bathing in the sea has been
recommended for most of the purposes for which the com-
bination of salt and water has been used. The following
instances are characteristic. In Sardinia to drink from, or
especially to bathe in, the sea is held to be a cure for child-
lessness. 2 Among the negroes in Guinea when a woman is
pregnant for the first time she has to go through an elab-
orate ceremony of being purified in the sea. 3 Probably the
original sense was to ensure an easy and successful labour.

The whole subject of the relation between salt and water
may be concluded by referring to two practices that have
nothing to do with the sea. A method of curing disease in
Germany is to throw a handful of salt into water while these
words are being repeated: "I strew this seed ( !) in the name
of God; when this seed grows I shall see my fever again." 4
A superstition in Bohemia says that when milk is being
carried over water one should throw some salt into the
water, otherwise the cow will be harmed. 5 It was remarked
above that milk has the same symbolic significance as salt
and here we see the two substances treated interchangeably.

1 Henderson, loc. cit.

1 Rivista delle Tradizioni Populari Italiane, 1894, Vol. II. p. 423.

' Bosnian, In Pinkerton, op. cit., Vol. XVI, p. 423.

4 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 335.

6 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 447.

86

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

In this connection it is of interest that Browning, in his
"Pietro of Abano", changes the usual belief that sorcerers
cannot tolerate salt by describing how a magician dare not
drink milk; the poet's insight reveals the meaning of this:

All's but daily dry bread : what makes moist the ration ?
Love, the milk that sweetens man his meal alas, you lack:

In several of the varieties of the Cinderella theme (e.g., in
No. 179 of Grimm's fairy tales) salt is equally plainly taken
to be equivalent of love : the third daughter, on being asked
by her father to describe her love for him, likens it to salt.

We have next to consider the female, recipient substance
conceived of as a solid : namely, beliefs developed from the
liquid-solid and solid-solid hypotheses of childhood that
were mentioned above. The substance most frequently used
in this respect is bread, which, from its consistence and
food-value, readily lends itself to symbolic purposes. Many
of the superstitious beliefs in which it is concerned have
already been referred to. Its fertilizing powers may be
illustrated by the Indian practice, performed for the cure of
barrenness, of "eating a loaf of bread cooked on the still
burning pyre of a man who was never married, and who
was the only or eldest son in his family, and so received the
fullest possible measure of vitality". 1 The association be-
tween bread and excrement is even more plainly shown in
the following Slavonic beliefs. The spirits of fruit fulness
were supposed to dwell in the dung-heaps, and offerings
used to be made to them there. In later times witches were
believed to hold their revels there, and it was not safe for
a peasant to relieve himself on the spot without having in
his mouth a piece of bread as a charm. 2 In England the

1 Census of India, 1901, XVII, p. 164.

1 Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1908, S. 71.

87

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

people used to throw wheat on the bride's head as she
returned from the church, 1 evidently a precursor of the
more modern fertility (seminal) symbol of rice.

The wide-spread use of the combination of salt and bread
for all the purposes for which salt alone is used (confirming
oaths, warding off evil, etc.) has been previously described.
The sexual significance of the combination comes to open
expression in the following instances. In Waldenburg the
bride secretly places salt and bread in her shoe so that she
may be blessed with children ; 2 the fecundity significance of
the shoe, which is a typical yoni symbol (hence the throw-
ing of it at weddings), has been fully described by Aigre-
mont. 3 In the Potsdam Kreis betrothed couples place salt
and bread in their shoes, 4 with of course the same meaning.
In Russia salt and bread are the first articles to be carried
into the dwelling of a newly married pair. 6 Among the
Southern Slavs the combination in question is used as a love
charm, 6 while in the more pious canton of Berne it has the
function of fortifying against temptation the person who
carries it. 7 Going back to Ancient Rome we find that Ceres,
the grain Goddess, and Neptune, the sea God, were wor-
shipped together in the same temple ; 8 the wife of Neptune,
however, was called Salacia 9 (compare our word "salacious"
= libidinous).

Other substances than salt were used together with bread
at times, with a similar significance. Perhaps the commonest
of these was cheese. The combination is very potent against

1 Moffet, Health's Improvement, 1655, p. 218.

"Aigremont, Fuss- und Schuk-Symbolik und Erotik, 1909, S. 55; Wuttke,
op. cit., S. 370.

8 Aigremont, op. cit., S. 42-64.
4 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 38.

6 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 185.

Krauss, op. cit., S. 169.

7 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 182.

8 Frazer, op. cit., Second Edition, 1907, Part IV, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris,"
p. 412.

Plutarch, op. cit.

88

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

the evil eye, especially when carried round the neck; 1 it
was also used to protect children from witches and malig-
nant spirits. 2 In an old Welsh legend bread and cheese is
used as a love charm to seduce the Lady of the Lake. 3 In
this combination cheese is evidently the active element,
while in others it is treated as the passive, recipient one.
This is so in the various customs relating to what is called,
from its association with child-birth, the "Groaning Cheese"
or "Groaning Cake"; pieces of this, tossed in the midwife's
smock, or placed under the pillow at night, cause young
women to dream of their lovers. 4 The same is true of the
custom, which still occasionally obtains in Europe, of using
urine in the manufacture of cheese. 5 Urine is also used in
some countries in bread-making, and there is reason to
think that this was so even in Europe prior to the intro-
duction of barm and yeast; 6 in 1886 a baker in Paris
"regressed" so far as to be detected in using water-closet
refuse in the preparation of bread, which was said to
deteriorate in quality as soon as the practice was put an end
to. 7 The theme of moisture and dryness of bread plays a
central part in an interesting Welsh legend : 8 A young man
who had fallen desperately in love with a Lake Maiden
sought, on his mother's advice, to woo her with the offer of
some bread a naive proposal which would be simply
foolish if taken literally, but which when read symbolically
is seen to be full of meaning. The maiden rejected the offer
on the ground that the bread was too hard-baked. He
returned, again on his mother's advice, with some unbaked

1 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 38, 94.
8 Brand, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 79.

8 Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 1901, Vol. I, Ch. I, "Undine's Cymric Sisters."
pp. 3, 17, 18.

4 Brand, op. cit., p. 71.

8 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 181-2.

8 Bourke, op. cit., p. 39.

7 Bourke, op. cit., p. 32.

8 Rhys, op. cit., pp. 4-6, 27, 28.

80 O

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

dough, but was once more unsuccessful for the opposite
reason to the previous one. On the third attempt, having
achieved the proper consistence, he was successful. In
another version of the same group of legends the suitor was
enabled to capture the maiden through the magic power he
had attained to by eating a piece of moist bread that she
had allowed to float ashore. 1 In the Bible (Ezekiel iv. 15)
it is stated that the Lord commanded the Jews to prepare
their bread with cow's dung instead of with human
ordure.

Finally in this connection may be mentioned the com-
bination of sweat and bread. This was believed to have
powerful aphrodisiac properties, doubtless an extension of
the exciting effect that the odour of sweat has on many
people, and at the time of the witches women were accused
of rubbing dough on their bodies and giving it to men to
eat in whom they wished to arouse satanic love. 2 We prob-
ably have here, as Aubrey suggested, 3 the explanation of
the ancient game of cockle-bread, 4 in which the players,
young women, go through the pretence of moulding bread
with their back. It is a Negro, as well as a Belgian, super-
stition that if you give a dog some bread soaked in your
sweat he will follow you to the ends of the earth: he is
yours. 5 We have here a repetition of the loyalty idea so
characteristic of salt, the bond, however, being cemented
here by the combination of the male and female elements in
place of the male alone.

Nor is bread the only recipient substance in such customs.
Of the many other combinations may be mentioned: milk
and resin, 6 curds and beans 7 both of these combinations

1 Rhys, op. cit., p. 17.

2 Paton, Folk-Lore, Vol. V, p. 277.

3 Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisms (1686), 1881 Edition, p. 43.

4 See Brand, op. cit., p. 413.

5 Hartland, Perseus, op. cit., p. 124.

6 North Indian Notes and Queries, Vol. Ill, p. 96.

7 Sacred Books of the East, XXIX, p. 180.

9

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

are cures for sterility salt and meal 1 a charm to enable
girls to see their future lover in a dream sweat and cake 2
used throughout Northern and Central Europe as a love
charm blood and cake 3 used in Transylvania for the
same purpose and blood mixed with the excrement of a
dead person 4 a cure for impotence. The reverse of the
same idea is presented in the superstition that if one eats an
egg without salt one will get a fever, 5 significance being
evidently attached to the combination. The erotic meaning
of this is indicated by association in the saying that "to kiss
a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without
salt". There is of course an extensive nativity symbolism
attaching to eggs, especially in religion. In Bavaria and else-
where an egg will guard against the evil eye. 6 A Devonshire
cure for ague was to bury an egg in earth at the dead of night. 7
The act of partaking of the same food has constantly
been used to symbolize a more intimate union, representing
the solid-solid infantile hypothesis described above. It is a
Scandinavian saying that if a boy and girl eat of one morsel
they grow fond of each other. 8 In many parts of the East
Indies the betel-nut is employed as a love charm, is given
as a love pledge, and the chewing of one quid by both
parties is the essential part of the wedding ceremony. 9
Among the Manchus a dumpling is brought into the bed-
chamber, when the bride and bridegroom each partake of a
piece so as to ensure numerous offspring. 10 In Ancient Greece
the bride and bridegroom used to eat of a quince together. 11

1 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 244.
a Hartland, op. cit., p. 123.

3 Hartland, op. cit., p. 124.

4 Von Wlislocki, op. cit., S. 140.

5 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 311.

6 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 330.

7 Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 298.

8 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, Vol. II, p. 108.

9 L'Anthropologie, Vol. Ill, p. 194.
10 Folk-Lore, Vol. I, p. 488.

" Plutarch, Solon, XX.

9 1

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

With many Hindoo tribes a woman never eats together
with a man throughout her whole life, with the sole excep-
tion of the wedding-day, when after the sindur dan cere-
mony described above she sits at table together with her
husband. Hartland 1 records a very large number of in-
stances, from all parts of the world, in which eating to-
gether, particularly from the same dish, constitutes an
important or even essential part of the wedding ceremony,
and there is no need for us to enumerate any more of these.
The best known is the confarreatio ceremony of the Romans
in which the man and woman ate together of the sacrificial
cake, the panis farreus. Our own wedding-cake is a survival
of these customs. 2

The religious significance of the act, as illustrated by
wedding ceremonies, is of considerable interest. In Christi-
anity there has been a close association between it and the
rite of the Holy Eucharist. In the old Parisian marriage
ceremony the priest, after saying mass, blessed a loaf and
wine ; the loaf was bitten and a little of the wine drunk by
each of the spouses, one after the other, and the officiating
priest then taking them by the hands led them home. In a
Yezidi wedding a loaf of consecrated bread is handed to the
husband, and he and his wife eat it between them. The
Nestorians require the pair to take the communion. Indeed,
until the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer the
Church of England commanded that "the newly married
persons the same day of their marriage must receive the
Holy Communion", a practice that continues to be recom-
mended. 3

The material of the Eucharist, like all other consecrated
substances, has been endowed with various non-religious
powers, such as ability to ward off the evil eye, to cure

1 Hartland, op. cit., pp. 343-53 ; See also Rhys, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 649, 650.
8 Brand, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 101, 102; Hartland, op. cit., pp. 351, 352.
8 The preceding instances are quoted from Hartland, op. cit., p. 347.

92

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

sterility, 1 and so on. A curious example, full of symbolism,
is the Welsh tradition that "flying snakes" 2 originated in
ordinary snakes that had become transformed by drinking
the milk of a woman and eating the bread of the Holy
Communion. 3 We have traced above the underlying sig-
nificance of the Catholic salt and water baptism, and also
that of the various customs and beliefs relating to bread.
It is interesting that in Italy the combination of salt and
bread is known as "lumen Christi", and is of course endowed
with magical properties. 4

Consideration of the symbolism dealt with above, par-
ticularly the equivalency of salt and wine and the aliment-
ary connotations of bread, makes it plain that the deeper
significance of the Eucharist and Holy Communion is
throughout a sexual one. This sexual meaning forced itself
into open expression with some of the Christian sects. Thus,
according to St. Augustine, the Manichaeans prepared the
sacred host by incorporating the Eucharistic bread with
human semen, and their descendants, the Albigenses and
Catharistes, preserved this custom. 5 Here, as elsewhere,
heresy, by unveiling the symbolism of a given aspect of
religious dogma or ritual, has uncomfortably compromised
the religion it caricatures, just as the perversions of a
brother often disclose the meaning of his neurotic sister's
symptoms which are merely disguised manifestations of the
same tendencies.

It need hardly be said that demonstration of the sexual
origin and meaning of the materials used in a given religious
ritual is far from explaining even the unconscious basis of
that ritual. To do so with the Eucharist, for example, it
would be necessary to discuss a number of other matters not

1 Hartland, Paternity, op. cit., p. 7.

8 The armorial emblem of Wales is a dragon.

8 Owen, Welsh Folk-Lore, 1887, p. 349.

4 Seligmann, op. cit., S. 38.

8 See Bourke, op. cit., p. 220, where full references are given.

93

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

directly connected with the present inquiry, particularly the
incestuous basis of the union implied in the ceremony, its
relation to theophagy and anthropophagy, and so on.

I wish here to say something about an interesting feature
of superstition in general, and of salt symbolism in par-
ticular namely, its ambivalency. It has often puzzled
observers of superstitions to note that the very same custom
or happening is supposed in one place to bring luck, in
another ill luck, in the one place to lead to fertility, in
another sterility, and so on. The explanation is to be found
in the ambivalent attitude of consciousness to the content
of the unconscious, the source of all superstitions. If the
affect, which is always positive, that accompanies the
unconscious idea finds a passage-way into consciousness,
as happens, for instance, in the process known as sublima-
tion, then the attitude towards the conscious representative
of this idea (i.e., towards the symbol) will be correspond-
ingly positive, and the symbolic idea will be considered the
source of all good. If, on the contrary, it is the affect belong-
ing to the "repressing" tendencies that gets attached to the
symbolic idea, then the latter will come to be the sign of all
that is unlucky or dangerous. The same ambivalency is seen
in regard to all products of the unconscious, for instance in
totemism whether of the race or of the individual; the
same animal can be loved in infancy and unreasonably
feared in later childhood. So, as was remarked earlier in this
essay, it is really irrelevant whether a given superstition is
met with in a positive or a negative sense, the essential
point being the evidence given by both of an excessive
significance derived from the unconscious.

This ambivalency can be well demonstrated in salt
superstitions. One finds that practically every attribute
described above as being attached to the idea of salt may

94

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

in other places be replaced by its exact opposite. We may
illustrate this feature by selecting a few examples of con-
trasting pairs.

1 . Fruitfulness Unfruitfulness.

The remarkably close association between the ideas of
salt and fecundity was dwelt on in detail in the earlier part
of this essay (pp. 31, 32, 45, 46), and a few examples
were also quoted in which the former idea was related to
that of barrenness. This latter seems to have been more
especially common in Eastern countries, and is repeatedly
referred to in the Bible (e.g., Deuteronomy xxix. 23; Job
xxxix. 6; Jeremiah xvii. 6; Psalms cvii. 33, 34, etc.); it is
also remarked on by Pliny, Virgil, and other classical
writers. 1 A real ground for it was no doubt the frequent
sight of salty deserts and waste places where an excess of
salt had prevented all growth. This real justification for
the association between salt and barrenness makes still
more striking the far commoner one between it and fer-
tility, and again shows how the latter belief must have
been caused by a false association of ideas, as has been
maintained above.

The analogy is again evident here between the ideas of
salt, of which either the absence or the excess prevents
fruitfulness, and sexuality, concerning which the same is
widely believed. It is thus appropriate that Lot's wife, as a
punishment for regretting the (homosexual) sins of Sodom,
should have been turned into a pillar (phallus) of salt.

2. Creation Destruction.

This antithesis is of course closely allied to the last one
and might also be expressed as the contrast between im-
mortality and death. It has at all ages been a common
custom to add strength to a curse by strewing salt as a

1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 94.

95

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

symbol of destruction; historical examples are: after the
destruction of Sichem by Abimelech, of Carthage by the
Romans, of Padua by Attila, and of Milan by Friedrich
Barbarossa. The custom seems to have had especial refer-
ence to the overpowering of a town (a mother symbol),
another hint of the unconscious association between crea-
tion and destruction (compare the beliefs in the fructifying
and the destroying sun).

3. In the same connection may be mentioned the anti-
thesis between the use of salt and the abstention from salt.
This has been discussed above in relation to religious
observances and the question of sexual abstinence (pp.

47-9)-

4. Value Worthlessness.

The extraordinarily high sense of value often attached to
the idea of salt, and also the close relation between it and
that of money or wealth, has been described above (pp. 27,
28, 62), and we have now to note the opposite of this.
Schleiden, 1 after quoting passages from Homer and Theo-
critus to the same effect, says : "A grain or two of salt thus
became an expression for the most worthless thing that one
could name. We still say, when we want to denote anything
trifling: 'With that one couldn't even earn the salt for one's
bread'." The same attitude of depreciation is shown in the
joke of the traveller who after partaking of an extremely
poor meal at an inn called the landlord to him and said:
"There was one thing in this meal that I have not seen
surpassed in all my travels." On the expectant landlord
inquiring what it was, the traveller crushingly answered:
"The salt."

5. Health Unhealthiness.

We have noted above (pp. 31, 50, 51) the discussion

1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 101.

96

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

whether the partaking of salt is especially a health-bringing
procedure or the exact opposite.

6. Purity Impurity.

Salt has always served as an emblem of immaculateness
and purity. Pythagoras says in this connection: "It was
begotten of the purest parents, of the sun and the sea"
(another example, by the way, of the signification of fire
and water that was pointed out above). The important part
salt has played, e.g., in religion, in regard to purification
need not again be insisted on. The extraordinarily close
association between the ideas of salt and of the excretions,
i.e., dirty processes, on the other hand, has been pointed out
in detail above, and we shall presently have to note the
same thing in connection with the etymological history of
the word. There is thus here the sharpest contrast between
two opposite conceptions.

7. Friendliness Unfriendliness.

Whereas the offering of salt is generally a sign of friendly
intentions, we have also noted examples of the exact
opposite (pp. 24, 25, 54, 55).

We have already discussed the significance of this striking
ambivalency. It is a characteristic of all ideas that have
deep unconscious roots, and may roughly be said to corres-
pond with the antithesis of "the repressing" and "the
repressed" as well as that between love and hate. The
obverse of this statement is also true, that an idea which
shows pronounced ambivalency in its affective values
must have important associations in the unconscious.
From the fact alone, therefore, that the idea of salt shows
such marked ambivalency it could have been surmised
that it has been invested with extrinsic significance of
unconscious origin. One also gets here a further clue as

97

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

to the meaning of ambivalency : it is evidently related to the
contrast between on the one hand the over-valuing of
sexuality in general, and the excremental aspects of sexu-
ality in particular, in the unconscious and in infantile life,
and on the other hand the under-valuing of these in con-
sciousness and in adult life. An individual analysis, how-
ever, of the infantile origin of all the separate attributes
belonging to the salt idea, e.g., the relation of purification
to fertilization, though of considerable importance, cannot
be undertaken here, for it would lead us too far from the
main theme of the work.

We may now pass to another aspect of the subject, the
etymological one. It is becoming more and more realized by
psycho-analysts that symbolisms gradually formed through
"repression" during the progress of civilization leave traces
of their original meaning as word-deposits. It is even prob-
able that the correctness of the interpretation of a given
symbol, such as the one attempted in this essay, could be
accurately tested by being submitted to a sufficiently ex-
haustive comparison with the etymological and semantic
history of the words denoting the ideas in question. From
this point of view it becomes desirable, therefore, to say a
little about the history of the word "salt", though a lack of
expert knowledge will necessarily render the present con-
sideration of it very incomplete.

It seems to be definitely established that the names for
salt in nearly all European languages find their earliest
expression in an old Celtic word which meant "water" or
"bog". Schleiden 1 writes as follows: "The Celts brought
with them from their original Indo-Germanic sources some
form of the root 'sar', which in Sanscrit meant in the first
place 'to walk', 'to go', 'to flow 5 , etc., and then in a derived

1 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 15, 16.

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

form as 'sara' also 'river', 'water', 'sea', 'pond'. No such
word meaning salt is to be found in the Vedas, in the
Avesta, nor in any of the cuneiform writings, but in
Armenian it occurs as 'agh' (gh is a common substitute for
/), thus constituting a bond between 'sara' ( = water) and
the Greek t&<; 1 ( = sea-water and salt). . . . Many words that
are either truly Celtic or else have passed through the Celtic
language still recall the original meaning of this root word
as 'sea', 'lake', 'pond', 'pool', 'puddle'. In Old Irish 'sal'
means moor or swamp; 'salach' is Old Irish, 'halou' Old
Welsh for dirty; 2 the Old High German, Middle High
German, and Anglo-Saxon 'sol' means a puddle or pool; the
sporting words in German 'suhl' ( = slough) and 'suhlen'
( to wallow), which are used in regard to wild swine; the
Low German 'solig', meaning dirty, the French 'sale'
( = unclean, impure). . . . The word has always retained a
specially close association with the idea of water. 3 In Greek
the word 'hals' with an altered gender, feminine, practically
means the sea, just as 'sal' did with the Latin poets. Also
the rivers which contained salt water or which passed by
sources of salt are called by names that in all probability are
all related to 'salt'." (Schleiden then gives a long list of such
rivers and places.)

Hehn 4 suggests that adtXos ( = salum), meaning "bog",
"lagoon", "brackish water", belongs to the same series. It
originally signified the sea outside the harbour, and thus
also the swell of the sea within the harbour; we get here
perhaps another hint of the relation between "sal" and
"salire" mentioned above.

It has been suggested 5 that this root word "sar" was

1 The initial s has been replaced by h only in Greek and Welsh.

2 So the Old Welsh "halog" (= contaminated, impure) and "halou"
(= faeces).

3 In New Persian also "neme" (=salt) originally meant "moist".

4 Hehn, op. cit., S. 25.

6 Schleiden, op. cit., S. 17.

99

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

applied to salt to indicate the crackling or spurting of salt
when thrown into fire or water, and in support of this it
may be added that in the only European languages where
the word for salt does not proceed from this root (Lithu-
anian "druska", Albanian "kripe") 1 a word signifying "to
strew" is used to denote it. This suggestion is not, however,
accepted by any philologist, and it seems certain that the
main reason for the use of "sar" was the connotation of the
latter as "flowing", "bog", etc., and the resemblance of this
to salt-water.

It is thus plain that the original signification of the word
was "a dirty fluid". The facts just adduced are certainly
striking, and, especially in view of the derivative words that
bear the closest relation to the idea of excrement, they may
be regarded as an extrinsic confirmation of our conclusion
one which would hardly have been suspected without a
detailed investigation that the idea of salt and water is
inherently allied to that of excretion, particularly urine.
What was once a conscious association has in the course of
centuries become more and more concealed, but though it
has disappeared from sight it has in so doing by no means
disappeared from existence.

IV

After this somewhat prolonged excursion we may now
return to our original starting-point, namely, the super-
stitious belief that to spill salt at table is unlucky. The
belief is practically universal and was as prevalent in
Ancient Greece and Rome as in Modern Europe. 2 It has
been applied to other precious substances besides salt : for

1 Hehn, op. cit., S. 29.

* Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 167, 168.

100

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

instance, in China it is unlucky to spill the contents of an
oil-jar. 1 In Germany even to play with salt is unlucky, 2 and
for every grain spilt one will have to wait a day (or a week)
before heaven's gate. 3

It has been thought that the superstition in question
arose from the over-spilling of the salt by Judas at the Last
Supper, 4 a rationalistic explanation on a level with that
which traces the superstitions concerning the number
thirteen to the presence of thirteen at the same meal. Folk-
beliefs of this order have a far wider and older range than
purely Christian ones. The evidence adduced above points
unequivocally to a quite different explanation, one which
may be indicated by comparing the unlucky act in question
with that of Onan described in Genesis (xxxviii. 9). In the
light of it attention may be directed to the following
features of the superstition. Although the spilling of salt is
supposed to bring ill-luck in general, 5 its specific effect is to
destroy friendship 6 and to lead to quarrelling; 7 moreover it
brings ill-luck to the person towards whom the salt falls 8
as much as to the one who has spilt it. It acts, in other
words, by disturbing the harmony of two people previously
engaged in amicable intercourse. From what has been said
above about the unconscious symbolism of eating in com-
pany it will be intelligible why the spilling of a vital sub-
stance at such a moment should be felt to be, somehow or
other, a peculiarly unfortunate event. To the unconscious,
from which the affective significance arises, it is equivalent
on one plane to ejaculatio praecox, and on a more primitive
plane to that form of infantile "accident" which psycho-

1 Marian Cox, An Introduction to Folk-Lore, 1904, p. 10.
* Wuttke, op. cit., S. 311.
8 Wuttke, loc. cit.

4 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 166.

5 Brand, op. cit., Vol. Ill, pp. 160, 162.

6 Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 169-71.

7 Brand, loc. cit. ; Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 166, 167.

8 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 166; Brand, op. cit., pp. 161, 162.

101

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

analysis has shown 1 to be genetically related to this unfor-
tunate disorder. The original meaning of the superstition
is hinted at in the Prussian belief 2 that to spill salt at a
wedding betokens an unhappy marriage, and in the opinion
of the "antiques", 3 who

"thought love decay'd
When the negligent maid
Let the salt-cellar tumble before them".

It is probable that the ill-luck was formerly conceived
of as rendering the salt-spiller susceptible to the malevolent
influences of evil spirits, 4 and the throwing of salt over the
left shoulder, with the idea of averting the ill-luck, 5 has
been thought to have the object of hitting the invisible
demon in the eye and so disabling him. 6 This apparently
wild suggestion has its proper meaning, which we need not
go into here, but it is more likely that the true object of
the proceeding was to make a propitiatory offering to the
demon; 7 it has a suspicious resemblance to the Burmese
custom of throwing food over the left shoulder in order to
conciliate the chief spirit of evil. 8 The maleficium of evil
beings is predominantly concerned with interference with
sexual relations and disturbances of the sexual functions;
I have elsewhere pointed out in detail that the dread of it
comes from the fear of impotence. 9 Counter-charms against
maleficium largely consist of symbolic acts which either
assert the person's potency or serve to re-establish it;

1 Abraham, "t)ber Ejaculatio praecox," Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psycho-
analyse, 1916, Bd. IV, S. 171.
8 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 210.

3 Brand, op. cit., p. 163.

4 Lawrence, loc. cit.

5 Dallyel, op. cit., p. 101.

6 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 167.

7 Dalyell, loc. cit. ; Lav/rence, loc. cit.

8 Lawrence, loc. cit.

9 Der Alptraum, loc. cit.

IO2

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

instances of both kinds may be found in connection with
the averting of evil due to the spilling of salt. In the latter
class may be counted the procedure of throwing some of the
spilt salt, over the left shoulder, into the fire, 1 the symbol of
virility; this custom is still practised in America. 2 To the
former class belong the counter-charms of throwing some of
the salt out of the window, 3 and of crawling under the table
and coming out on the opposite side : 4 to throw something
through an aperture, or to crawl through one, symbolizes in
folk-lore, dreams, and mythology, the effecting of the sexual
act, a symbolism which has given rise to a large group of
beliefs and customs. 5 The explanation of why the salt has
to be thrown backwards, and why precisely over the left
shoulder, would open up themes too extensive for us to
enter on here; it is one of the many respects in which the
analysis offered in this essay remains incomplete.

Two alternative hypotheses were set forth above con-
cerning the origin of the excessive significance that has so
widely been attached to the idea of salt, and it is main-
tained that the evidence detailed establishes an enormous
balance of probability in favour of the second one. Accord-
ing to this a great part of the significance is derived, not
from ideas relating to salt itself, but from ideas with which
these have been unconsciously associated. Significance has
been unconsciously transferred to the subject of salt from
emotional sources of the greatest importance to the per-

1 Brand, op. cit., p. 161.

8 Johnson, What they say in New England, 1896, p. 92.

3 Wuttke, op. cit., S. 312.

4 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 170.

5 R6heim, "The Significance of Stepping over," International Journal of
Psycho- Analysis, 1922, Vol. III. *

103

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

sonality. The natural properties of salt, which in themselves
can account for only a part of the feeling with which the
salt-idea has been invested, are of such a kind as to render
the association of it with another substance, of universal
import, an easily-made, if not an inevitable one. The
significance naturally appertaining to such an important
and remarkable article of diet as salt has thus been strength-
ened by an accession of psychical significance derived from
deeper sources. Freud's view that superstitions always have
a hidden logical meaning, that they constitute a betrayal of
unconscious mental processes, is thereby fully confirmed in
this particular example, as it has been with all the other
superstitions I have investigated. This hidden meaning has
the characteristic attributes of the unconscious, notably in
its ambivalency, its typically sexual nature, and its close
relation to infantile mental processes.

The conclusion reached, therefore, is that salt is a typical
symbol for semen. But semen itself is ontogenetically not a
primary concept, being a replacement of an earlier one
concerning urine, and we have correspondingly been able to
trace the roots of salt symbolism to an older source than the
seminal one. There is every reason to think that the primi-
tive mind equates the idea of salt, not only with that of
semen, but also with the essential constituent of urine. The
idea of salt in folk-lore and superstition characteristically
represents the male, active, fertilizing principle.

An intuitive appreciation of the truth of this last sentence
is afforded by the following panegyric paragraphs taken
from the daily press, where they were headed: Man as "Salt
of the Earth", Science versus Suffragists.

"Whilst the suffragists are loudly claiming equality with
man if not superiority it has been left to scientists to
establish that man is literally the 'salt of the earth'. Two
famous French savants have just announced the result of a
long series of investigations, which convinces them beyond

104

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

all question of doubt that woman is unalterably man's
inferior, because of the smaller percentage of chloride of
sodium in her blood.

"In other words, the blood of the male is more salt than
that of the female, and observations of animal life show
that the more salt there is in the blood the higher the
intelligence and general development. The indictment does
not end there, for these savants declare that their combined
physiological and psychological investigations have proved
that woman is inferior to man in everything intelligence,
reason, and physical force. The facial angle of the female,
they add, more closely resembles that of the higher animals
than the male, while woman's senses are less keen than those
of man and she feels pain less.

"The scientific explanation is that the blood of the
female is poorer in red blood corpuscles, and therefore
relatively poorer in brine, which has been found to be the
important factor in the development of the individual."

The fact that the customs and beliefs relating to salt are
exactly parallel to those relating to sexual secretions and
excretions, the complex and far-reaching way in which the
salt-idea is interwoven with matters of sex, particularly
with potency and fertilization, the universality of the beliefs
in question, the faultless illumination that every detail of
the customs and beliefs relating to salt receives as soon as
their symbolic signification is recognized, and the im-
possibility of adequately explaining them on any other
basis, are considerations that render it exceedingly difficult
to contest the hypothesis here sustained; in fact this can
hardly be done except by ignoring the facts adduced above.
The validity of the hypothesis rests on the grounds that it
completely fulfils both canons of scientific reasoning: it

105 H

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

enables one to resume disparate phenomena in a simple
formula that renders them more comprehensible, and to
predict the occurrence of other, previously unknown pheno-
mena in a way that is susceptible of verification.

The only opposing position that can seriously be main-
tained is that, however important the association in ques-
tion may have been in the past, it is no longer operative
except possibly among primitive peoples, so that the only
agent responsible for the persistence of the superstition in
modern times is the force of meaningless tradition. This
raises an extremely important general problem namely,
how far ancient symbolisms are still operative in the minds
of civilized people. The tendency of the average layman
would be to regard such symbolisms as merely relics from a
distant past, and to look upon knowledge concerning them
as having no direct bearing on matters of present-day
life.

The importance they have, however, is far from being a
simply antiquarian one. 1 Psycho-analytic investigation has
shown not only that symbolism plays a much more exten-
sive part in mental functioning than was previously imag-
ined, but also that there is a pronounced tendency for the
same symbolisms to recur quite independently of the influ-
ence of other people. This is in entire accord with modern
mythological and anthropological research, 2 since it is

1 Roughly speaking it may be said that owing to the action of "repression"
the sexual meaning of such symbolisms retreats from view during the develop-
ment of civilization in much the same way as it does during the development
of the individual. In both cases, however, the retreating from view means only
a disappearance from consciousness, not from existence.

2 It will be gathered from the whole tone of the present essay that the author
attaches especial importance to the inter-relation of psycho-analytic and
anthropological research. The anthropologist's material is rendered much more
intelligible by psycho-analysis, and his views can there be submitted to veri-
fiable tests with actual individual minds, while on the other hand through this
material the psycho-analytical conclusions receive extensive confirmation,
correction, and amplification . The comparative study of both fields is mutually
instructive, and much is to be expected in the future from the work of men such
as R6heim who are equally trained in both fields.

1 06

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

known that identical symbolisms occur in different parts of
the world, and in different ages, in circumstances that pre-
clude the possibility of their having been merely trans-
mitted from one place to another. There appears to be a
general tendency of the human mind to symbolize objects
and interests of paramount and universal significance in
forms that are psychologically the most suitable and avail-
able. That these stereotyped forms of symbolism are pro-
duced quite spontaneously is a matter capable of direct
demonstration. One finds, for instance, a country farmer
unconsciously exhibiting in his dreams, in his mental re-
actions and in his psycho-neurotic symptoms the identical
symbolisms that played a part in the religions of Ancient
India or Greece, and in a way so foreign to the conscious
life of his environment as to exclude with certainty any
course in either suggestion or tradition. In my observations
of the seminal symbolism of salt, for instance, with actual
patients I have come across reactions indicating uncon-
scious attitudes of mind exactly comparable to that im-
plied in many of the antiquated practices detailed earlier in
this essay.

The most that these external influences can accomplish
is to direct the unconscious process into a given form, but it
cannot maintain this direction of interest unless the form of
symbolism assumed becomes linked with a spontaneous
interest of the individual. Thus, a person brought up in a
society that took no interest in a given superstition would
be less likely to develop the superstition himself than if
brought up in a different society though he might easily
do so, nevertheless, especially if he were of the obsessional
type of mind; but and this is the important point a
person brought up in however superstitious a society would
not develop a given superstition unless it was of such a kind
as to be capable of being associated to his personal mental
complexes. This association is a purely individual one, and

107

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

without it the superstitious belief fails to appeal; it need
hardly be said that the process, particularly in civilized
communities, is most often entirely unconscious. To put the
matter more concretely: what is meant is that with every
person who has made his own a superstitious practice
regarding salt, who follows it from an inner motive, from a
"superstitious feeling" even though he might consciously
maintain that he did not believe in it analysis would show
that the idea of salt was symbolizing the idea of semen
(or urine) in his unconscious mind, that this association was
a personal one of his own.

The reason why certain superstitions are so widely
prevalent is because the ideas are such as to render easily
possible the forging of associations between them and
personal ideas of general interest and significance. The
conditions, however, have their definite limitations: the
forging of the associations must not be either too easy or
too difficult. From this point of view one may venture to
suggest that the general decline of superstition among
educated classes is not entirely due as is commonly
thought to the more enlightened intelligence of such
classes, but is also in part due to their greater cultural
inhibition of symbolical thinking in general, and of sexual
symbolism in particular.

A superstition such as that of salt-spilling is usually
dismissed either as being too trivial to warrant the dignity
of an explanation, or else with one that is obviously super-
ficial and inadequate. Even in the opinions on the subject
enunciated in psychological text-books the writer often
gives the impression of having dispensed with an investiga-
tion sufficiently detailed to establish their validity. On the
other hand, attentive consideration of any given super-
stition reveals how much we have to learn about the subject,
and demonstrates that it is often, as in the present instance,
connected with aspects of the human mind that are of

108

THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SALT

fundamental importance. A psychology of religion, for
example, is impossible without an understanding of super-
stition. Here, as elsewhere, Freud has shown that a by-way
in psychology may lead to country that yields an unex-
pectedly rich harvest.

109

Ill

BELIEFS CONCERNING THE NIGHTMARE 1

THERE is perhaps no sharp line to be drawn between the
nightmare and other intense anxiety dreams, but the
typical one is characterized not only by the overwhelming
awfulness of the terror but also by a sense of oppression on
the chest as of a heavy body lying there, with a consequent
dread of suffocation. Intense apprehension and helpless
paralysis may persist for hours after waking. The usual
somatic accompaniments of morbid anxiety are also
present, such as cold sweat, polyuria, and so on. Altogether it
is one of the most distressing experiences that can be endured.
The beliefs, medical, theological and popular, concerning
the meaning of nightmares are of peculiar historical interest,
and it is only recently that a theory has been evolved which
can discriminate between the admixture of truth and error
in each of them. 2 The problem is evidently related to that
of "morbid anxiety" in general, i.e., anxiety disproportion-
ate to actual stimuli. In the past twenty or thirty years
the extensive investigations of Freud and his co-workers
have made important contributions to the pathology of
morbid anxiety. They have revealed that the disproportion
in question is only apparent. The anxiety is disproportion-
ate only to the stimuli coming from the outer world, the
only ones generally recognized, but not disproportionate
to certain instinctual stimuli proceeding from within the
organism. These are capable of evoking anxiety only when

1 Read before the Royal Society of Medicine (Section of the History of
Medicine), 6th April, 1932.

2 I have dealt with this extensively in a book, On the Nightmare, 1931.

110

BELIEFS CONCERNING THE NIGHTMARE

they are in a state of repression and so belong to the
system of the unconscious. They are always sexual in
nature, often with marked algolagnic components.

In early days all illness and suffering was believed to
arise from malignity, proceeding either from an enemy or a
hostile spirit. The development of scientific medicine meant
the de-moralizing of pathology. In this laudable endeavour
medicine has, however, made the old mistake of emptying
the baby with the bath, for there remains an important
group, nowadays recognized as neurotic suffering, where
moral factors play an essential part. Repression of certain
instinctual impulses is usually effected by agencies that
may broadly be called moral, although they are much
cruder than what perhaps should properly be so termed.
Few problems illustrate this better than the pathology of
the nightmare.

The popular view, dating from prehistoric times and
accepted by the Christian Church, has till relatively lately
been that both erotic dreams and nightmares represented
sexual assaults on the part of some lewd demon, male or
female according to the sex of the victim (Incubi or Succubi
respectively). This view was supported by the interesting
clinical observation that no sharp line of distinction can be
drawn at any point in the following series : entirely agree-
able erotic dreams with seminal emission (not common in
this pure form) pleasant erotic dreams with emission
accompanied by a varying amount of anxiety and distress
(the more usual kind) unpleasant erotic dreams with
emission accompanied or preceded by considerable anxiety
anxiety dreams with emission where it is not easy to trace
any erotic element in the dream nightmares with emission
nightmares without emission. As one proceeds along this
series the erotic element, so evident at first, becomes in-
creasingly, and finally altogether, extinguished from con-
sciousness by the emotions of anxiety and distress, the

III

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

explanation being that the (moral) repression of that
element is increasingly great. The person at the beginning
of the series may enjoy the embrace of the welcome demon;
later on the situation becomes one of rape and finally of
physical assault.

A permanent feature of this popular belief, and probably
the point of it, was the disavowal of personal responsibility
for any of these experiences. Had the lewd demon not put in
an appearance nothing would have happened; it was
entirely his doing. During the witchcraft epidemic in the
closing centuries of the Middle Ages, when the Church had
assimilated these experiences to matters of heresy and devil-
lore, ecclesiastics began to get suspicious of this plea of
innocence. Some of their investigations resembled a modern
judicial inquiry into a charge of rape, and the subjects were
closely examined to determine whether they had willingly
submitted to the demon or had been tormented by him
entirely against their will. The series described above shows
that this was a very nice question, hence the difficulty in
answering it.

pIThe alternative to this spirit origin of dreams was that
they originated in the body, a view which shared with its
opposite the advantage of disclaiming any personal respon-
sibility for whatever happened in them. It is older than is
generally thought. The suggestion, for instance, that night-
mares are provoked by gastric disturbances now the com-
monly accepted opinion may be found in the works of
Galen, and it was also supported by Paulus Aegineta. This
medical, somatic aetiology prevailed over the popular
demon view by the sixteenth century in the case of erotic
dreams, full seminal vesicles taking the place of the demon,
but with nightmares it did not succeed until the eighteenth
century. The delay with the latter was doubtless due to the
lingering r .belief in witchcraft, with which, as was mentioned
above, the whole subject had become interwoven.

112

BELIEFS CONCERNING THE NIGHTMARE

With Freud's work on dream life at the turn of the
present century an entirely different light was thrown on
the whole matter. Without settling the vexed ethical ques-
tion of moral responsibility for the ideas and actions
occurring in dreams, his conclusion that they are the dis-
guised expression of repressed (i.e., unconscious) wishes
brings them back into the sphere of personal mental life
from which both the theologians and the physicians had
conspired to divorce them. The psycho-analytical conclu-
sion about nightmares is that the causative sexual wish so
evident in most erotic dreams is subject to an exceptional
degree of repression, the reason for this being that they
always originate in an incestuous wish. The attacking
animal, demon, or vague pressure really represents the
parent. It is probable that the extreme classical form of
nightmare occurs only in persons with a considerable maso-
chistic element in their constitution.

For the history of medicine the feature of special interest
is the unwitting co-operation of the physicians with the
theologians, although on apparently opposite lines, in the
aim of directing thought away from the personal mental
origin of these phenomena and thus ensuring that the
repressed (incestuous) source of them should not be dis-
covered. The physicians were right in maintaining that
these experiences arose from within, but wrong in thinking
that "within" could mean only the body. The theologians
were right in maintaining the spiritual origin of the experi-
ences and their purposive, intentional nature, but wrong in
ascribing it to outside entities instead of those within the
personality.

IV
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 1

WHEN a worker in one field presents to those in another
field some of his conclusions in the hope that they may be
of interest and use when applied to other data, it behoves
him to do so in a duly tentative and modest spirit. This
attitude is particularly called for when his sphere of activity
possesses such peculiar characteristics as does that of
psycho-analysis, where he knows that he can count only on
incredulity and opposition from those not familiar with the
subject. The instinctive resentment, however politely dis-
guised, which is felt towards an intruder who ventures to
make suggestions concerning the work of a strange group
can only be intensified when these suggestions are as unwel-
come and unflattering as so many psycho-analytical ones
are. The present occasion possesses, however, one feature
which may prove to be of historical interest; it is, I believe,
the first time that the doctrines of psycho-analysis have
been propounded before an anthropological audience.

Three considerations encouraged me to accept our
President's invitation to say something about the work on
which we are engaged, and to point out the bearing which I
conceive it to have on anthropological studies. In the first
place, a psychologist has after all a certain claim to be
represented in such studies, inasmuch as the mental data
there investigated form a part of his own province. Indeed,
in appraising the interpretation of mental data, and in com-
ing to some judgement on their meaning and significance,

1 Read before the Royal Anthropological Institute, igth February, 1924.
Published in the Journal of the Institute, Vol. LIV.

114

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

the psychologist should really have as much to say as the
collector of the data ; that he has had so little say in the past
has depended more on the backwardness of his own science
than on the logic of the situation. The earlier authorities on
anthropology, such as the founders of this Institute, had
two deficiencies so apparently overwhelming that the dis-
tance to which they were able to proceed in spite of them
must compel our deep respect. For they had not observed
themselves the mental phenomena which they studied, nor
were they trained in the psychological interpretation of such
phenomena. Anthropologists have freely recognized this
state of affairs, and the members of the younger generation
have taken practical steps to remedy at least the first of the
two deficiencies just mentioned. As a result the field-worker
to-day has an unquestioned advantage over those to whom
in overweening pride he sometimes refers as "arm-chair
anthropologists". He also starts fair with the psychologist,
each possessing one advantage and one defect. In these
circumstances the two can only profitably approach each
other in a spirit of mutual benevolence and co-operate
together in their work until they are both superseded by a
race of anthropologists who are experienced in field-work
and also trained in the methods of modern psychology. The
first member of this race, however, has yet to make his
appearance. 1

In the second place, the similarity of the data investi-
gated by anthropologists and by psycho-analysts is often
so striking and unexpected as positively to call out for
explanation, so that it becomes one's duty at least to draw
the attention of anthropologists to the fact. In our laborious
investigations of the hidden recesses of the mind we come
across some group of ideas, some implicit belief, some mode
of mental functioning which is altogether alien to our ex-
perience of the conscious mind as we know it, and for which

1 Since this was written he has appeared, in the person of Dr. Geza R6heim.

"5

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

no counterpart is to be found in our experience of life.
The findings are so unequivocal that we have to accept them
empirically even when we may not be able to relate them to
any previous knowledge. Further, certain features accom-
panying them lead us to infer that they represent a more
archaic layer of the mind than those we are accustomed to,
one which has been passed and covered over by the latter in
the course of development. Then to our amazement we read
that identical beliefs or forms of thought have been recorded
either in the folk-lore and mythology of bygone days or in
savage races of the present time. What are we to think of
this ? To begin with, it must confirm our conclusion that the
findings were not artefacts of our observation, and also that
they represent some more primitive stage of mental devel-
opment. But the obvious question of the relation of the two
sets of phenomena to each other at once raises some of the
most obscure problems of biological psychology, and opens
up the whole subject of culture and inheritance. Of the
innumerable examples that could be brought forward I will
cite only one, but it should be enough to indicate the sort of
thing with which we have to deal. In his investigations of
the sources of "dream thoughts", the thoughts that lie be-
hind the "manifest content" of dreams, Freud made the
astonishing discovery that they never contain a negative,
so that a positive idea and its exact opposite are treated as
being identical. To put it plainly, contrasting ideas like
"big" and "little", "strong" and "weak", "old" and
"young" are treated as if they were interchangeable iden-
tities, and it is only from the context that one can discover
which of the two is meant in any given case. It would be
hard to imagine anything more senseless or more remote
from our ordinary mental processes, but repeated con-
firmations of the finding forced Freud to accept it empiric-
ally, although he could give no reason for its existence. It
was only many years later that the matter became some-

116

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

what more comprehensible to him 1 on coming across a work
by a philologist, Abel, dealing with just the same pheno-
menon in the early stages of the oldest languages, Egyptian,
Arabic and Indo-Germanic, and showing that the present
differentiation has proceeded from an original identity of
opposite ideas. There are interesting traces still left even in
modern languages, such as with the German "schau" and
the English "show". This example is one of a mode of
thought, not content, and alike ones could be quoted
relating to definite beliefs or other groups of ideas.

The third of the considerations referred to above is the
gradual convergence of anthropological and psycho-
analytical points of view. Psycho-analysis, being from the
start concerned with obviously human and individual prob-
lems, has not had the chequered career that we have seen
with anthropological interpretations, nor the same oppor-
tunity and temptation to take flight into the abstract and
remote. Myths, rituals, and the other data studied by the
social anthropologists have in the past been read in terms
of very recondite mental pursuits which were imagined to
be the chief preoccupation of primitive man. I need hardly
mention the engrossing interest in the forms of clouds, the
rounds of the moon, the movement of the sun, the construct-
ing of calendars, and purely linguistic exercises which have
at times been supposed to prepossess mankind to the exclu-
sion of more mundane matters. Sir James Frazer, it is true,
brought man nearer to earth by positing his absorption in
the phenomena of agriculture, and other workers have
tracked him still nearer home. The news brought to Europe
at various times in the last century that man in other
continents seemed to manifest an unseemly interest in the
organs and functions of sex was quickly re-interpreted in a
more becoming way, and the flicker of agitation induced in

1 Freud, "t)ber den Gegensinn der Urworte," Jahrbuch der Psycho- Analyse,
1910.

7

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

this Institute by the phallicists of the seventies, Burton,
Fergusson, Furlong, Jennings, King, Sellon, Staniland
Wake, and Westropp, was soon quenched by more sedate
reflections. But voices continued to be raised in favour of
the view that man has always been moved by motives
similar to those that occupy our own deepest thoughts, by
the topics of birth, love, and death, and the most recent
authorities in this country, such as Elliot Smith, Malin-
owski, Perry, and Rivers, have made considerable contribu-
tions to what may be called the humanization of primitive
man. This theme will take up the greater part of my paper
this evening, so that I can leave it for a moment at this point.
I have now to return from these reflections on anthro-
pology to consider more closely the subject of psycho-
analysis, but before I can indicate any of the bearings it
may have on anthropological studies it will obviously be
desirable to say something about psycho-analysis itself. 1
The name is properly applied to the special method devised
by Freud for investigating the deeper regions of the mind,
and to the findings thus made. The subject-matter of
psycho-analysis is quite exceptionally complex, and thus
the task of presenting any adequate account of it in the ten
minutes or so at my disposal for the purpose is clearly an
impossible one. In addition, there is an even greater diffi-
culty in the way than this merely quantitative considera-
tion. The most significant discovery made by psycho-
analysis is that there exists in the human mind a region,
known as the "unconscious", which is split off from con-
sciousness. Much of it, indeed the most important part, is in
what is technically called a state of "repression"; that is, as

1 The literature in English most apposite in the present connection is as
follows: Abraham, Dreams and Myths', Ferenczi, Contributions to Psycho-
Analysis', Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho- Analysis, and Totem and
Taboo', Ernest Jones, Papers on Psycho- Analysis, and (more advanced) Essays
in Applied Psycho-Analysis', Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero; Rank
and Sachs, The Significance of Psycho- Analysis for the Mental Sciences.

118

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

regards both content and form it is incompatible with the
conscious mind, its constituents are powerfully inhibited
from entering the latter, and its very existence is vehe-
mently denied by the conscious ego. Any attempt at
introducing them into consciousness evokes an instinctive
resistance which manifests itself as incredulity, violent
opposition, or strong antipathy. Those who follow the easy
path of yielding to this instinctive resistance spare them-
selves a great deal of trouble, but they thereby forfeit the
right to express any opinion about psycho-analysis, for this
subject may well be defined as the study of the unconscious
mind.

This is not the place to enter into the perfectly arid dis-
cussion of whether processes of which we are not conscious
can properly be called "mental", one which in my opinion
is nothing but a quarrel about words, 1 and I will therefore
ask you to allow me to describe what I have to say in the
only possible terminology, namely, psychological. The main
point is this: Our investigations (inaugurated by Freud)
show that various processes, which can only be described in
mental terms, go on in the personality without the conscious
self having the very faintest idea of their existence. We call
them "unconscious" because man is totally unconscious of
their existence, and I wish to lay stress on the completeness
of his ignorance; the subject not only has no suspicion of
them, but if they were mentioned to him he would regard
them as exceedingly remote and alien to himself, and would
greet with incredulity or horror the possibility of their
being actually vivid constituents of his own personality. In
fact, I know of no way of anyone's appreciating the reality
and significance of these unconscious processes except by
experiencing the analytic bringing to awareness of ideas
whose existence he had never before recognized. This state

1 See Freud, Das Unbewusste, Sammlung Kleiner Schriften, 46 Folge, 1918,
S. 294-301.

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

of affairs raises two obvious questions : Can any generaliza-
tions be made about the nature and meaning of these
unconscious processes, and if so what reason is there for
thinking that such generalizations have a wide validity out-
side the small group of individuals actually investigated by
these methods ?

The answer to the first question is in the affirmative, and
I propose presently to relate a selection of the generaliza-
tions that have been made. As to the second question, the
following are some of the reasons for believing that these
generalizations possess a wide validity outside the sphere
that of neurotic disorder in connection with which they
were originally made. Though the actual number of indi-
viduals thoroughly investigated by means of psycho-
analysis is relatively small, only a few thousand, yet
certain features warrant the expectation that they do not
differ from the rest of mankind in fundamental structure.
In the first place, the investigations have been made, with
a general uniformity of result, in many countries of every
continent, among widely differing races, and by very
different types of observer. The main selecting element has
been the presence of neurotic disorder in the majority,
though by no means all, of the persons investigated, but in
estimating this fact certain popular misconceptions have to
be borne in mind. Modern clinical psychology has shown
that neurotic disorder is not a disease or defect in the
ordinary sense, but on the contrary simply one particular
mode of expression of certain social difficulties and conflicts
arising within the emotional and instinctual life; they are
merely one way among several of responding to human
conflicts and impulses of a kind that are common to all
people. The reactions are not even very peculiar, being
merely magnifications of the normal and not qualitatively
different; apart from the fact that most people exhibit
some form of neurosis, more or less pronounced, these

120

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

neurotic reactions fade imperceptibly into what are called
character-formations and idiosyncrasies. No person is
entirely neurotic, so that we have the opportunity of exam-
ining in the same person both normal and neurotic reactions
to the same conflicts and impulses. Further, the control
experiment has been performed a good number of times of
carrying out a psycho-analysis on so-called normal people,
and the fundamental conclusions are just the same. Then,
again, once one is familiar with the manifestations of uncon-
scious activity, one observes other indications of similar
processes in the most various spheres of everyday life. Let
me take the simplest example. A psychologist may dis-
cover, perhaps to his great astonishment, that the dreams
of his patients show that they, without ever having been
consciously aware of the fact, have associated, for instance,
the ideas of penis and banana so closely that the idea of the
latter can in certain contexts be treated as quite equivalent
to the latter. He is thus no longer surprised when he
observes that, again given a certain context, a whole
music-hall audience can consciously recognize an allusion
to the first idea when the second alone is mentioned. Slang,
anecdotes, folk-lore and superstition are fields in which one
meets with special frequency associations and beliefs the
existence of which may have to be laboriously excavated
from a part of the mind where they are in a state of repres-
sion. The final answer to the question raised above, how-
ever, lies in the nature of the findings themselves. These are
of such a fundamental character that, roughly speaking,
they can only be true of mankind in general or else not true at
all. If a similar question had been put to Harvey: "You
have demonstrated the circulation of the blood by a
detailed examination of five thousand animals, but how do
you know that they are not all exceptions in this respect ?"
I imagine he would have answered such a question only by
shrugging his shoulders.

121 I

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Something must now be said about the nature of the
unconscious mind. It possesses quite peculiar features in
both its form and its content, though these need not, of
course, be present with every single unconscious process.
Common to all features is some indication of their belonging
to a primitive mental level, and here comes in the import-
ance of these studies for anthropology, for we have in them
one of the possibilities of ascertaining at first hand what
primitive mental levels really are. The term "primitive
level" is used here in two senses: first, as indicating an
earlier and more lowly stage in mental evolution, one out
of which further, more elaborate and more highly differ-
entiated forms of thought demonstrably develop; and,
secondly, in direct reference to individual growth. For we
find that the features in question, both those of form and
of content, approximate in kind far more nearly to those of
infantile mental life than to those characteristic of adult
life; in fact, we are frequently in a position to trace the
gradual development of the former into the latter. This
evolution has been an imperfect one in the case of the
neuroses, so that we often connect neurotic reactions with
what are called "fixations" or excessive attachment to
primitive, i.e., infantile, modes of mental functioning. Put
in a more figurative way, we may say that the neurotic
reactions are like residues or deposits from earlier times,
and the interesting question arises how far this may be true
phylogenetically as well as ontogenetically.

It was pointed out above that the unconscious mind is
unconscious, i.e., unknown to consciousness, mainly because
of its being in a state of repression, that is, of being incom-
patible with the conscious ego and intolerable to it. To
describe it in more dynamic terms: the relationship be-
tween the two mental systems is the expression of serious
intrapsychical conflicts. Now the importance of the uncon-
scious in actual life is not merely that it is a system of the

122

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

mind which can function in an autonomous way, but that
all mental functioning originates in it; all our thoughts,
interests, and conscious impulses leading to conduct have
their source in the unconscious. The conscious mind con-
tributes nothing beyond criticism, control and direction;
the part it plays is essentially obstructive. Unconscious
processes can come to external expression only under one
of two conditions; either they undergo a transformation of
such a kind as to render them acceptable to the conscious
ego, into which they are then assimilated; or their true
nature is disguised in certain characteristic ways, such as,
for instance, when unavowed personal feelings find a vent
in excessive acerbity under the guise of scientific criticism.
Neurotic symptoms, incidentally, belong entirely to the
second class; the dynamic impulses giving rise to them are
primitive, i.e., untransformed, and merely disguised.

Out of a large number of features characteristic of the
unconscious I now propose to call your attention to two or
three of a general, formal nature and two or three relating
to its content. The first one can perhaps best be described
as an attitude of excessive belief in the value and sig-
nificance of psychical processes in general. Psychical causa-
tion is felt to be more real than physical causation, the
latter being merely the agent of the former. This registers
itself most clearly in what is called belief in the "omni-
potence of thoughts", or, more accurately, of wishes. In the
unconscious, little distinction is drawn between intention
and the carrying out of the act ; intent and performance are
treated as identical. If the intention is pleasurable, the
pleasure is already tasted; for the wish passes immediately
into fulfilment, as to some extent it can in conscious
phantasy. Similarly, if the intention is dangerous or repre-
hensible, the punishment is already felt. Perhaps the most
striking example of this mode of thought is that of those
death wishes that are in a state of repression because of

123

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

their being directed against a loved object. On the occasions
when the imaginary fulfilment of this wish coincides with a
real fulfilment brought about by some accident in the
outer world, the person feels unconsciously just as respon-
sible for the death, and just as guilty, as though he had
actually committed murder. The effect in consciousness
then is a greatly exaggerated sense of self-reproach for
various minor sins of omission and commission relating to
the deceased person. I have several times known this state
of affairs to be followed by ghostly visitations accompanied
by acute dread of the ghost's hostility, this evidently being
an idea of retribution for the supposed murder.

These repressed but all-powerful wishes are dealt with in
many different ways, of which one only will be mentioned
here. On the basis of a preliminary identification, usually
with a person, but occasionally with an animal or inanimate
object, the wishes are "projected" outwards and then are
consciously believed to belong only to the other person.
The most glaring example of this is, of course, in the
delusions of the insane, where the irrational beliefs held
about other people can often be traced to unconscious
beliefs held by the subject about these same people.

One result of this unconscious over-estimation of the
power of thought is a tendency to ascribe external happen-
ings to spiritual forces and to depreciate the significance of
physical factors, just as a truly religious man must logically
ascribe everything immediately to God's will and has only
a limited interest in the rest of the causative chain. Its con-
summation is a perfectly animistic state of mind, of which
we see plain traces in our children when they get angry with
the table for being so wicked as to injure them.

Now I feel confident that what I have just been relating
will sound a good deal less novel to anthropologists familiar
with savage races than it does to the average European.
Case after case could be quoted from the literature where

124

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

savages have held one another just as responsible for their
intentions as for their deeds, and on reading the descriptions
given I for one cannot avoid the impression that they must
at times possess a high capacity for divining the unconscious
thoughts of their neighbours. Their judgements are there-
fore often psychologically accurate, even when objectively
unjust. The extraordinarily objective significance they often
attach to dream processes is a part of the same phenomenon
and, as Freud has shown, 1 it really underlies the whole of
the practice of magic. It seems clear that savages live to a
much greater extent than we do in a mystical or super-
natural world. They constantly manifest beliefs in various
occult forces, influences and activities that are impercep-
tible to sense, but which are nevertheless obviously and
unquestionably real to them ; this is not a matter of infer-
ence and explanation so much as direct intuition. It is
practically certain that many of these supposed purposive
agents in the outer world are projections from the uncon-
scious mind. The remarkable extent to which savages seem
to be preoccupied with thoughts about wizardry, witchcraft,
and evil spirits of all kinds inevitably makes a psycho-
analyst suspect that their unconscious minds must contain
specially intense wishes of a hostile nature, which have been
extensively projected into the outer world.

A word on the vexed question of symbolism in its relation
to the unconscious. 2 It can often be observed that in certain
circumstances various ideas or objects may be treated
identically in consciousness, the points of distinction be-
tween them being ignored for the time being, and just the
same is true of the unconscious. But a further process has to
take place before we can speak of true symbolism. That is
the repression of one member of the equation, and the sub-

1 Freud, Totem und Tabu, 1913, Ch. III.

2 See my essay on the "Theory of Symbolism", reprinted in Papers on
Psycho- Analysis, Fifth Edition, 1949.

125

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

stitutive use of the other member to "symbolize", i.e., carry
the significance of, the first. One half of this equation is
practically always more important psychically than the
other, the important one being the repressed and symbolized
part. From the nature of things, therefore, symbolism is a
unilateral process only; A can symbolize B, but B cannot
symbolize A. Almost all unconscious symbolism is confined to
the themes of birth, love and death, and to thoughts about the
body and the nearest relatives from which we infer that
these must comprise the fundamental interests of mankind.
The two groups of ideas I shall select from the content of
the unconscious are those relating to incest and death
respectively. Perhaps the most vital discovery made by
psycho-analysis, and certainly the source of most of the
hostility it has met, was that every young child passes
through a phase of incestuous attachment, mostly to the
parent of the opposite sex, and that the ideas relating to
this constitute throughout life a nuclear content of the
unconscious. To the individual's reaction to this "complex"
they would ascribe a very great part of his character-
formation, especially on the moral and social side, and very
many of his conscious reactions to life his interest, con-
duct, and so on. To put the matter in its crudest terms so
that there may be no misapprehension, we believe that
every man cherishes in his unconscious the wish for sexual
intimacy with his mother and the desire to remove by
death any disturbing rival, particularly his father; the con-
verse applies equally to the woman, the term "QEdipus
complex" being used in both cases. Such a statement,
abhorrent as it must sound, is nevertheless the core of
psycho-analysis and inseparable from it. For the evidence
in support of this apparently grotesque hypothesis I can
only refer you to the extensive psycho-analytical literature
dealing with it, nor could I have any hope of demonstrating
its truth and convincing you of it in the few minutes at my

126

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

disposal. My reason for mentioning it here at all is to point
out that, if it is true, it is bound to throw a flood of light
on some of the most obscure problems in anthropology. To
take but one of them : the almost universal horror of incest,
and the extraordinarily complicated and fierce laws that
have been devised in the most varied parts of the world
with the object of preventing it. It is well-known that
previous explanations of this have proved most unsatis-
factory, and no one has answered Frazer's 1 convincing
argument that laws of this order are made only for crimes
towards which a strong and widespread temptation exists.
The argument ends in a non possumus; incest could not be
forbidden so stringently unless there were a general inclina-
tion towards it; but the laws do exist and there is no
inclination. Psycho-analysis, on the other hand, points out
that the strong and universal inclination towards incest,
which is logically implied in the argument, does really exist,
only that for the most part it is repressed in the uncon-
scious; it is an inclination of which we are mostly quite
unaware, but it is none the less real and important. Time
forbids me to enter on the endless ramifications that lead
from this idea, but anthropologists know how numerous
and important are the problems that relate, directly or
indirectly, to incest. I can do no more than mention one or
two; the endless initiation rites and ceremonies of both
savage and civilized races, 2 the numerous myths and cos-
mogonies where the content is either openly or symbolically
incestuous, and the vast problems of totemism itself. 3

The second group of ideas in the unconscious of which I
wish to say something, namely, those relating to death, will
be discussed presently in connection with some current
anthropological views. After this absurdly imperfect sketch

1 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. IV, p. 97.
8 See Reik, Problems of Religious Psychology, Ch. III.
8 See Freud, op. cit., Ch. IV, and a forthcoming work on the subject by
R6heim.

127

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

of the psycho-analytical theory we must turn to the bearing
of it on anthropological problems, and here too I can offer
only the briefest of outlines.

It is an easily made observation that the ire of anthro-
pologists is almost as readily aroused by the assertion that
savages cannot be compared with children as by the
opposite one that they can be so compared. Similarly, one
invites contradiction by maintaining either that a vast gulf
exists between savages and ourselves, or that there is no
appreciable difference between us. I trust, therefore, that I
shall be striking a peaceful note when I suggest that there is
truth in all of the four statements though a more profound
truth than is sometimes recognized. The reason why this
diplomatic attitude is possible is because the psycho-
analytical view of both children and civilized adults differs
in some important respects from the usual one. We find, on
the one hand, that the two modes of thought that for
present purposes may be called infantile and adult respec-
tively corresponding roughly with unconscious and con-
scious thinking differ from each other very profoundly
indeed, far more so than might ordinarily be imagined ; but
on the other hand that children and adults manifest the two
modes of thought in no very dissimilar measure. Thus there
is more of the infant in the adult than is commonly recog-
nized, and also more of the adult in the child. Or, to put it
in another way, there are enormous differences, but these
are not so much between child and adult as between two
modes of thinking which are present in both. Stated in
terms of values, this results in a greater respect for the mind
of the child and a less respect for that of the adult.

Now I surmise that very much the same may prove to be
true as regards the relationship between savage and civilized
peoples. If so, this would mean two things. First, that much
of the supposed deficiency of primitive peoples in such func-
tions as concentration, reason, powers of discrimination and

128

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

logic, and so on, is not due to the lack of these qualities so
much as to a different orientation of emotional interest from
our own, as Hocart 1 has brilliantly demonstrated in his
study of the Fijian language; recognition of this would lead
to a greater approximation of the savage mind to our own.
Secondly, however, the difference between primitive emo-
tional thinking and logical reason uninfluenced by sub-
jective factors must be regarded as very great, and it is
quite possible that there is a quantitative difference be-
tween savages and civilized peoples in this respect, just as
there is after all between children and adults. In other
words, it is possible that the conscious thinking of savages
is more directly and extensively influenced by unconscious
factors than is that of civilized peoples, just as is so with the
child. In making this suggestion I wish to guard myself
against the charge of underestimating the complexity of the
relationship in question. Naturally there is no thought of
mental evolution having progressed in a uniform and
orderly manner, without any retrogressions and other com-
plications, nor do I imagine that there is anything more
than the very grossest correspondence between this evolu-
tion and the ethnological grading that may be effected in
regard to the present races of mankind.

I come next to the convergence of psycho-analytical and
modern anthropological views to which reference was made
earlier in this paper. The most important point of corre-
spondence is the tendency in both cases to interpret data in
terms of purely human and self-centred motives of a kind
which critics might dub materialistic. Few anthropologists
to-day would expect savages to be primarily concerned
either with ethical abstractions or with lofty philosophical
speculations about the universe. Those who used to imagine
this did not recognize the more lowly nature and origin of

1 Hocart, "The Psychological Interpretation of Language," Brit. Journal of
Psychology, 1913, Vol. V.

129

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

their own interests. The primitive interests of mankind lie
nearer home, in his own breast, and that must be as true of
the savage as psycho-analysis has shown it to be of our-
selves. Man is primarily concerned with his immediate
personal interests; to these everything else is really second-
ary. The world is originally viewed from within out, and our
inmost thoughts and interests are projected on to it as on a
vast screen. Elliot Smith, for instance, declares the leit
motif of man's civilization to be his desire for continuous
self-preservation, in both this life and the next, and he
holds that from the search for the various objects which
were supposed to ensure this resulted much of man's cul-
tural endeavour. This view will be considered more closely
in a moment, and I only wish to remark here on its agree-
ment with the psycho-analytical theory in attaching im-
portance to the more human, personal, and indeed ego-
centric motives as being the fundamental ones. His tre-
mendous generalization, further, that "all the beliefs of
primitive man concerning the nature of life can ultimately
be referred back to the story of his own origin, his birth or
creation," 1 is one that would meet with extensive support
from the side of psycho-analysis and is quite on the lines of a
recent important study by Otto Rank. 2

Another field in which the convergence of conclusions is
very striking in many ways is that of symbolism, and I
venture to think that the correspondence would be even
closer were it not for the confusion that exists about what
actually constitutes symbolism. For us the expression
denotes the process whereby one idea is used (mostly un-
wittingly) as a substitute for an unconscious idea. The
number of unconscious ideas is relatively small, far smaller
than that of the symbolizing ideas. From the interpretation
side the two questions are: when is a given idea being used

1 Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon. 1919, p. 45.
1 Otto Rank, Das Trauma der Geburt, 1924.

130

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

symbolically? a matter that cannot be gone into here; and
which unconscious idea or ideas is it symbolizing ? It should
be remembered that none of the psycho-analytical con-
clusions about symbols and the interpretation of them were
derived from familiarity with anthropological data, but
from laborious studies carried out on individuals. The
circumstance makes the correspondence with anthro-
pological data especially interesting. 1 can give here only a
few examples of this, and for the sake of uniformity will
choose them from the writings of two members of the same
school, Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry. Psycho-analysts have
long remarked that objects possessing a fancied resemblance
to the female pudenda, as cowry shells are supposed to, can
function as symbols of the latter. Elliot Smith 1 quotes two
eighteenth-century writers, Rumphius and Adanson, who
pointed out this attribute of cowries, and comes to the con-
clusion that the whole of the complex shell-cult was based
on this circumstance. The cowry, being thus a symbol of the
female pudenda, became endowed with various life-giving
powers. But Elliot Smith has made two further steps in this
connection, both on purely psycho-analytic lines. A com-
mon mode of unconscious representation is by the mechan-
ism known as pars pro toto, when a part is used to represent
the whole, as with an allusion. A much more curious one is
the exact opposite of this, when the whole is used to
represent a part, such as when a little man appears in a
dream as a symbol of the male organ itself, or a woman as a
symbol of the female organ. Now, Elliot Smith, after point-
ing 2 out how the cowry "came to be identified with, or
regarded as, the mother and creator of the human family",
then becoming personified in the figure of the Great Mother
Goddess, states it as a fact that this "Great Mother was

1 Elliot Smith, Introduction to Wilfred Jackson's Shells as Evidence of the
Migrations of Early Culture, 1917, p. in.

* Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, p. 26.

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

nothing more than the cowry shell". 1 We should describe
this same fact by saying that the Goddess was here func-
tioning as a symbol of the womb, or, put in another way,
that the only interest in the Great Mother in this particular
context resided in her genital organ. Thirdly, in just the
same sense as I insisted above that unconscious association
was really actual identification, he writes : 2 "The cowry was
not merely an amulet to increase fertility: it was itself the
actual parent of mankind, the creator of all living things."
The identification of the Mother Pot with the Great Mother,
or rather with her womb, is a similar example of what we
mean by true symbolism, and Elliot Smith points out some
of its extraordinary ramifications: "At first, it was merely
a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became a
witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font
in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water
here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or
the organ of birth." 3 Yet another familiar group of symbols
in psycho-analytical work is a portal, door, or gateway as
unconscious representatives of the vaginal opening, and
here also Elliot Smith 4 is in full accord with us. One of the
most recent discoveries in our field is that the spider or
octopus may function as a symbol for the Mother, 5 but I
find that Elliot Smith had already independently pointed
this out, though the way he suggests the symbolism arose 6
(cowry Red Sea "spider shell" octopus) is assuredly not
the only one possible, unless we are to suppose that our
patients have all inherited memories of their ancestors'
sojourn by the Red Sea.

An unexpected psycho-analytic finding was that animals,

1 Idem, op. cit., p. 216.

* Idem, op. cit., p. 151.
3 Idem, op. cit., p. 181.

* Idem, op. cit., p. 188.

5 Abraham, "The Spider as a Dream Symbol," Internal. Journ. of Psycho-
Analysis, 1923, Vol. IV, p. 313.

* Elliot Smith, op. cit., p. 169.

132

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

in dreams or neurotic symptoms, most often symbolize one
or other parents or else children, and that the thoughts to
do with them were often connected with ideas about birth.
Perry 1 tells us that in Egypt "the cow was regarded as a
form of the Great Mother, because she feeds children with
her milk" ; and, of course, endless similar examples could be
quoted from mythology and folk-lore. This one discovery
opens up a large chapter in anthropology, particularly in
relation to totemism, as Freud 2 has shown in detail.

Another remarkable discovery of psycho-analysis was
that every individual passes in early life through a phase of
bisexuality, and that the unconscious always retains im-
portant traces of this stage in development. This means
that, although the masculine and feminine principles can be
fairly clearly differentiated, neither of them is anything like
so definitely confined to the appropriate sex as is commonly
thought. The unconscious not only interchanges the two
sexes with an astonishing freedom, but other curious traces
are left of the primitive attitude towards sex. 3 Ample
evidences of the same free interchange are to be found in
anthropological data. A characteristic bisexual symbol may
be mentioned in this connection, that of water. We find that
water plays a very extensive part in dream symbolism, and
other products of the unconscious, in connection with ideas
of birth, 4 and that it plays the same part here as the
amniotic fluid does in reality. From Elliot Smith 5 we hear
that in Ancient Egypt "a bowl of water became the symbol
of the fruitfulness of woman. 6 Such symbolism implied that

1 Perry, The Origin of Magic and Religion, 1923, p. 19.

* Freud, ibid.

* This word is used here in a narrower sense than "sexuality".

4 The late Dr. Rivers (Folk-Lore, 1922, Vol. XXXIII, p. 20 et seq.) showed
considerable misconception of the psycho-analytic views on this point in his
unsuccessful attempt to controvert them.

* Elliot Smith, op. cit., p. 152.

e In my opinion, it would be more accurate to say here that it was a symbol
of the pregnant womb and was only a metaphor for the idea of fruitfulness.

133

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which the
seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being
emerged in a flood of amniotic fluid", and he adds else-
where 1 that water became an essential part of any act of
ritual (i.e., symbolic) rebirth. He points out further 2 the
womb origin of the Mother Pot conception, and that a bowl
of water was the hieroglyphic sign for the female principle
in the words for vulva and woman. On the other hand, we
find in psycho-analysis that water, rain, etc., are also com-
mon unconscious symbols for the male fertilizing fluid,
whether this is regarded as semen or, in infantile language,
as urine. Perry 3 tells us that Osiris differed from the Mother
Goddesses in one important particular, namely, that he
presided over irrigation, and Elliot Smith 4 says that it is not
surprising in consequence that Osiris "should have had
phallic attributes, and in himself have personified the virile
powers of fertilization"; he also comments 5 on the equival-
ency of the ideas of spilling water on or irrigating the earth
and the act of coition. As is well known, ideas concerning
water constituted one of the respects in which the attributes
of the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses respectively became
extraordinarily confounded one with the other, and I would
suggest that this process was greatly facilitated by the
existence of a primitive stage of bisexuality.

An interesting relic of this stage is derived from the
primitive belief that women, particularly the Mother, are
similar anatomically to men, and that there is no note-
worthy difference between the clitoris and the penis. This
idea plays a huge part in the psychology of neurotic disorder
in both sexes, and is one of the sources of the dread of the
"terrible Mother", which may of course exist side by side

1 Idem, op. cit., p. 33.

* Idem, op. cit., pp. 178, 182, 183.

8 Perry, op. cit., p. 28.

4 Elliot Smith, op. cit., p. 30.

6 Idem, op. cit., pp. 28, 29.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

with profound affection. This plays also an extensive part
in mythology, as witness the many portals with phallic
emblems, the male attributes ascribed to Mother Goddesses
in Egypt and elsewhere (uraeus, vulture, papyrus, etc.) and,
as Freud has shown, 1 it is the ultimate basis of the wide-
spread taboo of virginity.

I come finally to the famous "self-preservation" theory
of the modern British school of ethnology, and will begin by
quoting a discerning passage from Elliot Smith, 2 who I
understand is the author of the theory: "The interpretation
of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less cultured
modern peoples indicate that our expressions: 'to give
birth', 'to give life', 'to maintain life', Ho ward off death',
'to insure good luck', 'to prolong life', 'to give life to the
dead', 'to animate a corpse or a representation of the dead',
'to give fertility', 'to impregnate', 'to create', represent a
series of specializations of meaning which were not clearly
differentiated the one from the other in early times or
among relatively primitive modern people." Now I would
submit that this vagueness and imperfect differentiation
relate rather to the conscious apprehension and expression
of these peoples than to the facts themselves on which the
ideas were based, so that it may not be a hopeless task for us
to attempt to distinguish the relative strength of the actual
motivating forces. If we were to ask the authors and sup-
porters of the self-preservation theory to effect this differ-
entiation, I am inclined to think that their answer could be
summed up in the statement that the strongest motive in
the group they are considering, or possibly even in all man-
kind, was the wish to overcome death. This includes both
the desire to ward off death (i.e., to prolong life, to maintain
life, etc.) and the desire to perpetuate life beyond the grave,

1 Freud, Das Tabu der Virginitdt, Sammlung kleiner Schriften, 46 Folge,
1918.

* Elliot Smith, op. cit., p. 25.

135

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

which, as we know, was effected by a ritual of rebirth (the
central idea of mummification). We have thus to inquire
into the primordial conception of death and life after death,
and here also I will take a passage from Elliot Smith 1 as a
text. "From statements in the earliest literature that have
come down to us from antiquity, no less than from the views
that still prevail among the relatively more primitive
peoples of the present day, it is clear that originally man did
not consciously formulate a belief in immortality. It was
rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of
the unpleasant idea that death would come to him person-
ally, that primitive man refused to contemplate or to enter-
tain the possibility of life coming to an end. So intense was
his instinctive love of life and dread of such physical
damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his
belief in the continuance of life cannot be regarded as the
outcome of an active process of constructive thought. . . .
It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people
could fail to recognize the reality of death in the great
majority of cases. The mere fact of burial is an indication of
this. But the point of difference between the views of these
early men and ourselves was the tacit assumption on the
part of the former that in spite of the obvious changes in his
body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence
not unlike that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat
duller, less eventful and more precarious. He still needed
food and drink as he did before, and all the paraphernalia of
his mortal life, but he was dependent upon his relatives for
the maintenance of his existence."

There are two chapters in this matter of preserving life
after death, according to whether it is a question of our own

1 Idem, op. cit., pp. 145, 146.

136

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

life or someone else's. The latter part of the problem appears
to have been unduly subordinated by the British school of
ethnology, and for that reason I will omit discussion of it
here. But I would express my belief that it is highly im-
portant, and that a clue to its meaning is given by the fact
that the significance attached to the second person's sur-
vival is much greater when he is a king, chief, elder or other
great person 1 (i.e., a father substitute). 2 We will, however,
confine ourselves to the problem of what may be called self-
survival, which is an integral part of the self-preservation
theory.

To those who have followed the argument of this paper
so far it may be of interest to hear what ideas concerning
death are to be found in the unconscious. In one sense it
may be said that there are none, for the unconscious con-
ceives of this idea in quite a different way from the conscious
mind. The nearest approach it makes to the latter is when
it is a matter of other people's death. This it regards, as
does the child, simply in the light of a removal or absence,
more or less prolonged, the question of eternity hardly
entering in. One's own death, on the other hand, in the sense
of the extermination of life, is absolutely inconceivable to
the unconscious, and, indeed, the idea is hard fully to
realize in consciousness. In the context where one would
expect it to occur one of two other ideas appears in its stead.
In the first place, the idea of dying really of being killed
may be taken in the sense of being severely injured in a vital
part, i.e., castrated, and this idea of being castrated (in
either sex) is always regarded as the punishment for inces-
tuous wishes. The second, and deeper, way in which the
unconscious regards death is as a reversal of the birth act,

1 See Freud, Totem und Tabu, Ch. II.

2 This is an illustration of the quite one-sided nature of the argument in the
latter part of this paper, for it deals only with the individual's relation to the
Mother and omits consideration of the almost equally important relation to the
Father.

137 K

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

leading to a return to the pre-natal existence within the
maternal womb. It is plain that this must have relation to
the innumerable rituals or rebirth symbolism, both in
heathen religions and in Christianity, as the sovereign
measure for conquering death and securing immortality;
endless myths and folk beliefs, which I have no time to
quote here, bear witness to this primitive conception of
death as a return to the womb, to the conviction that life
can only return to the bourne whence it set forth. Both the
ideas mentioned, therefore, are related to the act of entering
once more through the maternal portal, whether partly, as
in coitus, 1 or wholly, as at birth. It is noteworthy, further,
that these two acts are regarded as equivalents by the
unconscious, another example of the extraordinary extent
to which it differs from our conscious thinking.

If our findings are correct, and no one qualified by
personal investigation has any doubt on the matter, then
we should be in a position to supplement the self-preserva-
tion theory in a number of important respects, of which I
shall briefly indicate three. The first has to do with the
maternal symbols used in the ritual of rebirth. I imagine
that Elliot Smith and his colleagues would be inclined to
regard these somewhat as follows. Believing that the womb
was either the creator or, at all events, the source of life, the
ancients effected an abstraction of the idea and used various
tokens possessing some resemblance to the female pudenda
as representatives of this abstract idea. They would present
these to the dead body as much as to say: "This is the sort
of thing that will enable you to achieve re-birth and con-
tinued existence." To us, on the contrary, the symbolism is
much more literal and concrete. The metaphorical and
abstract side of it is purely secondary and conscious, and the

1 In the woman this idea is replaced by that of incorporating the father in
the act of sexual union, so that she becomes permanently pregnant, this being
equated to being in the mother's womb by the familiar mechanism of reversal.

138

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

real meaning is much more definite. The cowry, to take this
example, is not merely an emblem of creativeness in general,
or of wombs or Mother Goddesses in general, but is a symbol
of the actual womb of the mother of the individual dead
person, and the sense of the ritual is as follows: "As you
know in your deepest heart, the only hope of attaining
immortality is to penetrate into the Valley of the Shadow
of Death, to pass once more through the portals of your
mother's womb, to undergo a second birth that will annul
the effects of the first 1 and will thus enable you to re-enter
Paradise: here is her womb."

1 Re-birth is really de-birth. The symbolism is an example of the mechanism
of reversal, and really means passing into the womb instead of out of it ; it thus
annuls the original birth.

Recently this symbolism of the return to Mother Earth was portrayed by
Thomas Hardy with a quite final precision and delicacy in his poem on the
death of Sir Frederick Treves, and I cannot refrain from quoting it here, with
his permission.

IN THE EVENING
(Dorchester Cemetery)

In the evening, shortly after he was dead,

He lay amid the dust and hoar
Of ages, and to a spirit attending said,
"This chalky bed?

I seem to have been here before?"

"Oh yes. You have been here. You knew the place,"

The sprite replied, "long ere your call;
And if you cared to do so you might trace
In this white space

Your quality, your substance, and your all."

Thereat he said: "Why was I called away?

I felt no trouble or discontent.
Why did I not prolong my ancient stay
Herein for aye?"

The sprite looked vague. "None knows! You went.

"True, Time has not as yet revealed to you

Your need to go. But, some men tell,
A marvellous deftness called you forth to do
Much that was due.

Good. You have returned. And all is well."

139

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

In the second place, we can throw further light on the
fact that for the re-animation of the Egyptian corpse
various male symbols, both phallic and seminal (the
serpent-shaped wand, the adze of the Anubis who invented
mummification, libations, saliva, red ochre and other blood
equivalents), are necessary in addition to the female ones
discussed above. It may be correlated with the astonishing
fact mentioned previously, that in the unconscious the two
ideas of sexual union (particularly incest) and of re-birth
(i.e., return to the mother's womb) are regarded as equiva-
lents; the distinction is hardly drawn between the whole
person entering the mother's body or only that part of him
known in legal phraseology as his "person", i.e., penis. In
this way it comes about that (re-)birth and coitus are
equivalent ideas when the object is the mother, and it is
thus comprehensible that rituals symbolizing either of these
acts have the power of restoring life. This is also the reason
why bisexual symbols, notably water, play such a promi-
nent part in these rituals, for they are connected with the
ideas of both coitus and birth. Here, as so often, we may fall
back on Elliot Smith 1 in support of our conclusions : "The
study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it abundantly
clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing
no clear distinction was made between fertilization and
vitalization, between bringing new life into being and re-
animating the body which had once been alive. The process
of fertilization of the female and animating a corpse or a
statue were regarded as belonging to the same category of
biological processes. The sculptor who carved the portrait-
Compare also Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality",
which expresses a similar idea; and the well-known passage from Shelley's
"Adonais":

"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die,

If thou wouMst be with that which thou dost seekl"

1 Elliot Smith, op. cit., p. 25.

140

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called sa'nkb, 'he who
causes to live', and 'the word 'to fashion 5 (ms) a statue is
to all appearances identical with ms, 'to give birth'."

This brings us to the elixir of life, in connection with
which I shall quote the following text : l "In delving into the
remotely distant history of our species we cannot fail to be
impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the
whole of his career, man (of the species sapiens) has been
seeking for an elixir of life, to give added 'vitality' to the
dead (whose existence was not consciously regarded as
ended), to prolong the days of active life to the living, to
restore youth, and to protect his own life from all assaults,
not merely of time, but also of circumstance. In other words,
the elixir he sought was something that would bring 'good
luck' in all the events of his life and its continuation. Most
of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky trinkets,
the averters of the 'Evil Eye', the practices and devices for
securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or
mental distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a con-
tinuation of existence after death, are survivals of this
ancient and persistent striving after those objects which our
earliest forefathers called collectively the 'givers of life'."
Essentially, therefore, the elixir procures two desiderata;
immortality in the next life and the restoration of youth in
this, and I shall point out presently the intimate association
between the two. Long before the era of Steinach, psycho-
analysts had recognized this concern about 'youth' to be a
euphemism for concern about virile powers, and Abraham 2
and Rank 3 have shown that the various magical fluids
possessing the virtue of restoring it are all seminal symbols ;
such are the divine mead, soma, ambrosia, nectar and so on.
Now a very remarkable clinical observation bears on this

1 Ibid, p. 145.

2 Abraham, op. cit.

8 Rank, "Volkerpsychologische Parallelen zu den infantilen Sexualtheorien,"
reprinted in his Psychoanalytische Beitr&ge zur Mythenforschung, 1919.

141

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

double function of elixir, its powers of restoring youth on
the one hand and of securing immortality on the other.
When a patient consults us with the complaints that he has
an undue dread of death (thanatophobia) or of the next
world, that life feels to him so short and that youth is
rapidly passing away, i.e., the two complaints which the
elixir of life is designed to cure, then we know something
about his inner mind with absolute certainty, for the
analysis of such symptoms always leads to the same con-
clusion. He is suffering from a (conscious or unconscious)
dread of impotency, and this dread always comes from the
fear of being castrated as a punishment for his incestuous
wishes. Since we have reason to think that these wishes are
the main source of fear and guilt in general, and that the
dread and horror of them was even stronger in primitive
man, it is little wonder that the search for magic objects
whose phallic or seminal attributes would counteract such
terrors has played a tremendous part in the history of our race.
The third, and perhaps the most important, supplement
to the self-preservation theory I would propose is that a
more equal balance should be restored between the ideas of
life and death. This theory would seem to be based on a
somewhat morbid over-estimation of the part played by
the fear of death, important as this undoubtedly is. The
motives we have been considering apply just as much to the
positive side of life as to this negative side. The desire for
unbounded virility probably plays a greater part than the
desire for indefinite existence, for the latter is often taken
for granted by the primitive mind, and always by the un-
conscious mind, 1 whereas experience is constantly placing
limits on both the capacity and the exercise of the sexual
functions. Clinically both dreads, of impotency and of
death, always indicate the action of castration fears in

1 Eternity is really a negative concept and simply means the timelessness so
characteristic of unconscious thinking, and therefore of pre-natal existence.

142

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

relation to incestuous wishes, while the man who is not
troubled by either is the man who has overcome his dread
of incest. 1

The two means of re-union with the mother, part or whole
(penis or body), are each accompanied by corresponding
horrors; the first by impotence, i.e., castration, and the
second by having to experience once more the terrible
passage of the womb canal in the transit through death to
paradise. What is astounding is that the two desires are
equated in the unconscious mind, as are the two horrors.
Yet these two desires or shall we decide to call them one,
as the unconscious does ? are the supreme driving force of
our life, and their fulfilment its final goal.

The nearest approach to the gratification of this prim-
ordial desire is achieved in a happy sexual union with a
loved object, and this explains the value of this act as an
affirmation of life and a denial of the horrors of castration
and death. Yet this only avails in so far as the primal wish
to re-enter the womb as a whole is exchanged for the
incomplete form of union represented by coitus, and in so
far as the primal love-object (the mother) can be exchanged
for a permissible and accessible one. It would seem that
neither of these exchanges is ever completely accomplished
at least in the unconscious so that man is condemned
to an imperfect satisfaction of his deepest desires. Hence
his restless and insatiable strivings for some other sub-
stitute for his heart's desire. Hence the astonishing wander-
ings and explorations of the Ancient Egyptians related to
us by modern ethnologists. Surely somewhere there is to be
found a wonderful Isle of the Blest, 2 with beautiful maidens,

1 E.g., by transforming the desire, transferring it to another woman than his
mother and satisfactorily gratifying it with her.

* For the peculiar womb symbolism of this, see the chapter on "The Island
of Ireland" in Vol. I, Chap. VIII. I hope to deal in a future paper with the
interesting "El Dorado" theme, which Perry (Folk-Lore, 1921, Vol. XXXII,
p. 150) has shown to be so interwoven with it.

H3

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

golden fruit, and a fountain of "youth". But there are
limits to man's powers of searching in the outer world, and
every few hours even he has to have recourse, in the state of
sleep, to what psycho-analysis teaches us is an imaginary
re-establishment of pre-natal existence. 1 And when faced
by the grim fact of death, though he may shrink in fear
from the thought of the painful re-birth it unconsciously
symbolizes, nevertheless the deepest part of his being
cannot refuse the wild hope that once this final struggle is
over he may, in spite of all his disappointments, enter at
last into the longed-for haven (or heaven) of peace and
partake yet again of the lost bliss of Nirvana.

1 Incidentally, here is the solution of the problem raised by Perry (The
Origin, etc., op. cit., p. 46) of whether the crouching position in which bodies
were placed in caves is to be related to the attitude during sleep or during intra-
uterine life. The answer is, to both, for the two are psychologically the same.

144

MOTHER-RIGHT AND THE SEXUAL
IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES 1

Introduction Explanations of Mother-right A Psycho-Analy-
tical Theory of Mother-right The Relation of Mother-right to
Father-right.

I. INTRODUCTION

EVER since the appearance, in 1861, of Bachofen's famous
work Das Mutterrecht, which was based largely on the
study of classical literature, steadily increasing attention
has been paid to the views of early man there revealed,
until at the present day they constitute one of the central
themes of anthropological interest. It may be said that
subsequent research, although it has had to modify exten-
sively some of his conclusions, has nevertheless amply con-
firmed many of them, and has shown that they hold good
over a far larger field than he was able to investigate.

For reasons that will presently be indicated, however, the
subject is apt to arouse intense emotional reactions, so that
bias in the conclusions reached, and probably also in the
observations made, is only too common. There are certainly
fanciful elements in some of the pictures drawn of what is
alleged to have been the primordial "matriarchal" state.
A highly coloured description of it, for instance, will be
found in Vaerting's The Dominant Sex, where we are
introduced to an extreme inversion of the relation between
the sexes. According to the account given there, not only
do the children belong solely to the mother, the father
being quite unrelated to them either in blood or in kinship,

1 Read before the British Psycho-Analytical Society, igth Nov., 1924.
Published in the International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, Vol. VI.

H5

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

but property belongs only to the women and is inherited
only through them. The woman is the active wooer, has as
many husbands or lovers as she pleases and as long as she
pleases; she can at any time divorce her husband, but he
cannot divorce her; he comes to her abode to live there as a
guest ; in fact he exists only for the sexual pleasure he gives
her, and the work he can do at her bidding, being in all
other respects merely tolerated very like a drone in a bee-
hive. The woman has a correspondingly dominating position
in society, in counsel and in government. The description
reads like a feminist's wish-fulfilment dream, a vision of a
paradise out of which she has been driven by the protesting
male, but to which she hopes one day to return.

Very little knowledge of sex psychology or of mam-
malian biology is needed to cast doubt on the authenticity
of the account just mentioned, and the cold facts of an-
thropology only go to attenuate its ardour. Scepticism is at
once aroused by the assumption that in savage times men
were more docile than now, and that the growth of civiliza-
tion has been accompanied by a great increase in fierceness
towards his womankind on the side of the brutal male. On
the contrary, if one examines the institutions of existing
savages, and still more if one submits these to an analytic
scrutiny, one cannot resist the conclusion that these people
have, in order to make social life possible at all, to maintain
much more elaborate and formidable devices than we do in
order to help them in securing some degree of control over
their cruel and sadistic impulses, including those specific-
ally directed against their womenfolk; we may refer, for
instance, to Reik's study of the pseudo-maternal couvade, 1
as well as to the general experience of explorers. One may
appropriately quote here the following passage from
Frazer's Golden Sough: 2 "In order to dissipate misappre-

1 Reik, Probleme der Religionspsychologie, 1909, Chap. II.

2 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Vol., II, pp. 208-9.

146

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

hensions which appear to be rife on this subject, it may be
well to remind or inform the reader that the ancient and
widespread custom of tracing descent and inheriting pro-
perty through the mother alone does not by any means
imply that the government of the tribes which observe the
custom is in the hands of women ; in short, it should always
be borne in mind that mother-kin does not mean mother-
rule. On the contrary, the practice of mother-kin prevails
most extensively amongst the lowest savages, with whom
woman, instead of being the ruler of man, is always his
drudge and often little better than his slave. Indeed, so far
is the system from implying any social superiority of
women that it probably took its rise from what we should
regard as their deepest degradation, to wit, from a state of
society in which the relations of the sexes were so loose and
vague that children could not be fathered on any particular
man. When we pass from the purely savage state to that
higher plane of culture in which the accumulation of pro-
perty, and especially of landed property, had become a
powerful instrument of social and political influence, we
naturally find that wherever the ancient preference for the
female line of descent has been retained, it tends to increase
the importance and enhance the dignity of woman; and her
aggrandizement is most marked in princely families, where
she either herself holds royal authority as well as private
property, or at least transmits them both to her consort or
her children. But this social advance of women has never
been carried so far as to place men as a whole in a position
of political subordination to them. Even where the system
of mother-kin in regard to descent and property has pre-
vailed most fully, the actual government has generally, if
not invariably, remained in the hands of men. Exceptions
have no doubt occurred; women have occasionally arisen
who by sheer force of character have swayed for a time the
destinies of their people. But such exceptions are rare and

H7

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

their effects transitory ; they do not affect the truth of the
general rule that human society has been governed in the
past and, human nature remaining the same, is likely to be
governed in the future, mainly by masculine force and
masculine intelligence."

There are few themes, if any, that arouse more emotional
prejudice than the comparison of male and female, particu-
larly if it includes the question of the respective parts
played in life by the father and the mother. Without the
insight gained into the characteristic complexes of men and
women by means of psycho-analysis, it would be well-nigh
hopeless to expect a really serious approach to impartiality,
and even with the knowledge now at our service one cannot
walk too warily in this delicate path.

The second difficulty is of a more material kind. It is the
enormous complexity and almost endless variation in the
phenomena themselves. A slight impression of this may be
given by the following considerations. Anthropologists are
agreed that the central and perhaps the only essential one
of many phenomena grouped under the name of mother-
right (Mutterrechf) is "mother-kinship", i.e., the custom of
reckoning descent through the female only; there is matri-
lineal descent, as it is called, and no patrilineal, or agnatic,
descent. 1 This central feature is normally accompanied by a
number of other characteristic ones, the chief of which will

1 Rivers (Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics : art. Mother-Right)
would use the term mother-kinship in a different and narrower sense, dis-
tinguishing it from matrilineal descent. For him "kinship" is much the same
as our "relationship" when used in a genealogical sense, though perhaps the
actual conception of a blood-bond may not be always essential in the savage
mind. In this strict sense mother-kinship probably never exists in a pure form,
so that we may ignore it for our purpose; that is to say, there are no peoples
where no kinship whatever is recognized between the child and the father (and
the father's relatives). By descent, whether matrilineal or patrilineal, is meant
the origin of the child that determines to which social group (moiety or clan)
it shall belong. If this is determined by the status of the mother, we have
matrilineal descent which other writers denote by the term "mother-kinship"
and this is the most essential feature of mother-right.

148

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

be mentioned presently, but the actual correlation found to
exist among the various features is so extraordinarily
irregular as to bewilder anyone who is seeking for any degree
of order. The complications begin with what we have called
the central feature, for the child does not necessarily belong
to his mother's clan even if his descent is reckoned through
the female; the totem who happened to impregnate his
mother, to whose clan he therefore belongs, may be diff-
erent from his mother's totem and clan. The descent may,
of course, be matrilineal, patrilineal, or both together. The
complexity increases as soon as we consider some of the
connections between mother-kinship and the accompanying
features.

1. Authority The term "matriarchy" should be limited
to the cases where there is true mother-rule, i.e., where the
mother is the head of the household and disposes of the
final authority over the children. This is extraordinarily
rare, but when present constitutes the purest form of
mother-right. Often the father is the head of the family and
exercises the potestas to use the legal term as of course he
mostly does where there is patrilineal descent. The most
frequent case, however, and one so typical that its presence,
even in an attenuated form, always makes one suspect the
existence of mother-right (whether in the past or present),
is that in which the potestas is wielded by the mother's
brother, the child's maternal uncle; this is the so-called
avunculate organization. Other varieties are where the
potestas is shared between the father and maternal uncle,
according to the matters over which it is exercised, or where
the uncle has authority over the son and the father over the
daughter, or where the father has authority up to a given
age and the uncle after this.

2. Inheritance and succession With mother-right suc-
cession of rank (kingship, chieftainship, etc.) mostly, but
not always, passes from a man to his sister's son, not to his

149

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

wife's son; in other words, whether the rank can be held by
a woman or not, it is often transmitted through the female,
instead of as with us, through the male. But again there is
no rule about this. In Melanesia, for instance, where
matrilineal descent mainly holds, succession is usually
patrilineal.

The laws about inheritance (of property) are also ex-
tremely variable. The property may, very rarely, be held
only by women; most typically it is transmitted to the
sister's son, but there are instances of mother-right (as with
the Malays of Moerong) where nevertheless the boy inherits
from his father.

It should be borne in mind that there is no close correla-
tion between the individual features just enumerated. Out
of an endless number one only need be quoted: In Torres
Straits the potestas is avunculate, but the descent, inheri-
tance and succession are all patrilineal.

3. Residence In the most extreme forms of mother-right
the husband only visits his wife or else resides with her and
her people (matrilocal marriage), in which case he is usually
subject to the head of her household, her brother or uncle.
Matrilocal marriage is nearly always accompanied by matri-
lineal descent, there being only two exceptions known to
this rule. Patrilineal descent almost always involves patri-
local marriage, but the converse does not hold, since
patrilocal marriage is often found with mother-kinship;
Australian marriages, for instance, are mostly patrilocal,
whereas mother-kinship is nearly as common with them as
father-kinship.

The difficulties in correlating the institution of mother-
right with the status of women accompanying it, whether
high or low, with the level of civilization in which it is
found, and with the knowledge or certainty about paternity
possessed by the peoples concerned will be mentioned in
discussing the various hypotheses relating to the subject.

150

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

II. EXPLANATIONS OF MOTHER-RIGHT

After these introductory remarks we may proceed to
consider the main problems relating to mother-right, its
general significance and the causes of its genesis and super-
session. In doing so it will be seen that we at once impinge
on some of the most fundamental problems of anthropology
those relating to the evolution of totemism and religion,
of marriage and the family, as well as of other social
institutions. To us the conception of a family where the
father plays such a subordinate part, being to a great extent
replaced by an uncle, certainly seems strange and needful of
explanation. Yet many authorities, including McLennan,
Spencer, Avebury, Frazer, and Hartland, find this state of
affairs a perfectly natural one in an early stage of society,
so that for them the greater problem would be to explain
how it came to be superseded. They point to the more
intimate connection between child and mother and the
various uncertainties concerning the relationship of the
father. Other authorities, on the other hand, regard the
institution of mother-right as a secondary state of affairs to
be accounted for by purely temporary circumstances. The
causes for it may be either factors connected with the
status of women, perhaps the part they are often supposed
to have played in regard to agriculture, or more obscure
ones of the kind that will be discussed below. The main
hypotheses will next be considered in more detail.

The most obvious explanation for the existence of
mother-right, one first put forward in 1757 by Schouten and
since repeated by many travellers, is that it is due to
uncertainty about the individuality of the father. As it has
been cynically put, maternity is a question of fact, paternity
a question of opinion. The slightest investigation, however,
disposes of this view as being quite out of accord with the
facts. There is no correlation at all between father-right and

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

conjugal fidelity or between mother-right and infidelity. 1
On the one hand, mother-right obtains, for instance, on the
coast of West Africa and in Northern Abyssinia, where
wifely fidelity is very strict, adultery exceedingly rare and
often punished by death. On the other hand there is the far
commoner state of affairs where conjugal morality is loose
though father-right prevails. As Hartland puts it in con-
nection with the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, where the
strictest father-right holds, "that Kafir would be of a
highly sporting disposition who ventured to stake much on
the authenticity of any child of whom he was legally the
father." 2 More than this : among many patrilineal peoples
the men appear to show the greatest indifference about their
actual blood-relationship to their legal son, so long as they
have one at all for their ritualistic and economic purposes
where a son is desirable, and an adopted son, or their wife's
son by some other man, serves these purposes as well as one
they have themselves begotten.

Closely akin to this hypothesis are those that postulate a
specially close association between mother and child on
account of either polygyny (Winterbottom) or polyandry
(McLennan). Neither can be substantiated by reference to
the actual facts.

A more subtle and interesting view, hinted at by Mc-
Lennan over half a century ago in his Primitive Marriage
and developed by Hartland in 1 895 in his Legend of Perseus^
is that mother-right represents a survival from a time when
there was ignorance of the facts of procreation. If the father
was not thought to play any necessary part in procreation,
then it would seem to follow that the child's status could
only be determined by the mother's, i.e., that there would
be mother-right; and it is the essential presupposition of

1 For a sufficiently full discussion of the point, see Hartland, Primitive
Society, 1921, pp. 12-17.
* Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, Vol. I, p. 101.

152

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

this hypothesis that mother-right necessarily preceded
father-right throughout the world. It is true that mother-
right is often found where the paternal role in procreation is
fully understood; not only so, but, as Westermarck points
out in this connection, 1 there are Australian tribes who have
matrilineal descent in spite of their belief that the child is
created solely by the father and merely nourished by the
mother. Nevertheless there might well be psychological or
sociological reasons why a given organization should persist
after the originating agent had ceased to operate, so that
the considerations just adduced would not necessarily nega-
tive the hypothesis in question. We are thus led to investi-
gate, as an essential preliminary in our inquiry, the much
discussed topic of the sexual ignorance of the savages.

The surmise expressed by Hartland in 1895 that sexual
ignorance 2 may have played an important part in the
development of social beliefs and institutions was within a
few years brilliantly confirmed by Spencer and Gillen's
discovery that there were still tribes in Australia, notably
the interesting Aruntas, who were ignorant of the facts of
paternal procreation. The findings have been disputed by
other field-workers, such as Strehlow and von Leonhardi,
and the inferences contravened by Westermarck, Heape,
and Carveth Read. The question is not easily answered.
Like all inquiries in the sphere of sexuality, the truth is
peculiarly difficult to elicit and the fallacies unexpectedly
numerous. The only field-worker who seems to have made a
special study of these fallacies, and who exhibited remark-
able acumen in dealing with them, is Malinowski. The
account he gives of the sexual life of the Trobrianders, a
Papuan-Melanesian race inhabiting an archipelago off the
coast of New Guinea, is certainly the fullest extant, and its

1 Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, Fifth Edition, 1921,
Vol. I, p. 294.

1 By "sexual ignorance" I mean in this context particularly the ignorance
that semen is the fertilizing fluid.

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

quality is such as to inspire great confidence in the correct-
ness of his observations. 1 After a careful sifting of all the
available data he comes to the definite conclusion that these
natives have no knowledge whatever of the part played by
semen in procreation. They appear to believe that preg-
nancy results only from a "baloma", a spirit (usually
female) of a dead person, inserting a spirit child, "waiwaia",
into the womb. They admit, however, that for this to
happen it is necessary that the vagina be first opened up
and this is, of course, usually done by sexual intercourse.
Apparently the Australian Aruntas hold a similar view,
that women are prepared in this way for the reception of
the "ratapas". In making this belief more comprehensible
Malinowski points out that the causal connection between
intercourse and pregnancy is far from obvious to a race
accustomed to frequent copulation from early childhood ; the
sexual act may take place hundreds of times before a single
conception occurs. He has no doubts about the correctness
of his observations and concludes: "My firm conviction
is that the ignorance of paternity is an original feature of
primitive psychology, and that in all speculations about the
origins of Marriage and the Evolution of Sexual Customs,
we must bear in mind this fundamental ignorance." 2

If we accept these observations as correct, particularly
Malinowski's careful investigations, as it seems to me we
are bound to, 3 then the question would appear to be settled.
Nevertheless, the voice of scepticism refuses to be quieted.
A number of other considerations strongly hint that even
yet we are not at the end of the matter.

1 Malinowski, "Baloma; the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands,"
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1916; "The Psychology of Sex
and the Foundation of Kinship in Primitive Societies" and "Psycho- Analysis
and Anthropology" both in Psyche, Vol. IV.

2 Psyche, Vol. IV, p. 128.

3 1 may report, however, that Professor Malinowski expressed his keen
regret to me that he had known nothing of psycho-analysis before making
these investigations.

'54

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

In the first place we have the indisputable fact that most
savages all over the world, including those with mother-
right, are fully aware of the part played by the man in pro-
creation. This is proved not only by their own direct
statements, but also by numerous practices based on the
knowledge. 1 Then even the savages who are apparently
ignorant in regard to paternal procreation yield hints that
they nevertheless have some inklings of similar knowledge
in other fields of thought. Thus the Intichiama ceremonies
of the Australian natives definitely imply some knowledge
of the processes of fertility in both animals and crops. They
appear to make the same reservations about human kind as
a child does about its family in this matter: "Other people
may make babies that way, but not my parents." A very
curious feature observed by Malinowski among the Tro-
brianders, discussion of which will be reserved till later,
points in the same direction : a Trobriander is horrified at the
idea of physically resembling his mother, brother or sister ;
i.e., those who are thought to be his only blood-relatives, and
is intensely insulted at the mere suggestion ; he maintains
on the contrary, that he is the physical image of his father.

A psycho-analyst cannot fail to be struck by the unmis-
takable symbolism these ignorant savages display when
propounding their views on procreation, symbolism of so
accurate a kind as to indicate at least an unconscious
knowledge of the truth. Thus water plays a prominent part
in regard to conception. The spirit-children, waiwaias,
come from over the sea, often in a basket (like the womb
symbol in which Moses arrived), they usually enter the
woman's body when she is bathing in the sea, and the thing
that has most carefully to be avoided by those who do not
wish to conceive is the scum or froth of the sea an obvious
seminal symbol. In Australia impregnation may take place
by stones, snakes, or birds, well-known phallic symbols.

1 See Westermarck, op. cit., pp. 287, 288.

155

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The churinga nanja among the Aruntas are stone boulders
connected with ancestors from whom the seed-spirit comes ;
in the Acheringa dream-world there are two ancestors for
each child, not one as might be expected, on the hypothesis
of parthenogenesis.

Ideas of causality are known to be particularly difficult
to unravel with savages, for they are often curiously
different from our own. It is not easy to interpret, for
instance, a belief that two causes are necessary for concep-
tion, an opening-up copulation and the introduction of
spirit-children by a baloma. The natives say that the first
of these allows the second, which is the essential one, to
operate; but it is very well possible that the converse is the
real meaning of the belief, i.e., that it is the influence of the
baloma (the ancestral spirit) which permits the copulation
to take effect. This multiplicity of causes is very common in
regard to conception, for there are fewer topics that have
more adjuvant agents associated with them, from bathing
in holy water to the cure of barrenness by gynaecological
curettage. The use of these agents, and the faith in them,
may co-exist with every degree of conscious awareness of
the true agent in procreation; it would be absurd, for
instance, to maintain that the Greeks were ignorant of the
facts of procreation simply because their women practised
various fertility rites and regarded the resultant offspring
as the gift of the gods.

The argument put forward by Hartland and Malinowski
to the effect that it must be hard to recognize the connec-
tion between frequent acts of copulation and rare ones of
conception is not only incompatible with the simple fact
that after all most peoples have recognized this connection,
but has been penetratingly countered by Carveth Read on
psychological grounds. Rewrites : l "We must remember that

1 Carveth Read, "No Paternity," Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, Vol. XLVIII, p. 146.

156

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

the knowledge of animals and a great deal of the knowledge
of savages and even of civilized people, is not of the dis-
criminated, relational, prepositional texture to which, under
the influence of formal logic, we are apt to confine the
name." This is exactly in accord with what we find in the
analysis of infantile mental life, where instinctive intuition
plays a considerable part in divining the main outline at
least of sexual knowledge. If a child of two years old can
frame an image of genital coitus, and a year or so later con-
nect it with the birth of another child, then the feat should
certainly not be beyond the mentality of any adult savage.

III. A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL THEORY OF
MOTHER-RIGHT

The foregoing considerations raise the question of
whether the ignorance among these savages is after all so
genuine and complete as it would appear. The curious
combination of ignorance where one would reasonably ex-
pect knowledge and of half-knowledge is a phenomenon
with which we are very familiar in other fields of
thought.

Writers who are sceptical concerning the thorough-going
nature of this ignorance have tended to regard it as some-
thing secondary or artificial, and a few have even pro-
pounded reasons for its occurrence. Thus Frazer, in speak-
ing of the Australian belief that a "ratapa" enters the womb
at the moment of quickening, refers to the "sick fancies of
pregnant women". Heape 1 expresses the following views:
"All the evidence we can bring to bear on a subject from a
comparative point of view indicates that primitive man
was not ignorant of this fundamental fact, and such evid-
ence appears to me so strong that I consider it is irre-

1 Heape, Sex Antagonism, 1913, pp. 103, 112.

157

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

futable. Moreover, there is evidence that while these
Australian savage people now declare their ignorance they
still act in a variety of ways as if they knew the true facts.
This being so, I maintain that the initial cause of this con-
ceptional idea of totemism is due to a superstition which
overrode instinctive knowledge of the facts; in other words,
that the idea is not derived from ignorance, but is a manu-
factured scheme, originating at a period in the history of
man which is subsequent to his conception of superstitious
fear of personal or individual spirits, and arising out of such
superstition." "It is thus I interpret the story of concep-
tional totemism; an impulse due to the sick fancies of the
pregnant woman, due to fear or dread or desire, or all of
them, has bred a superstition which necessitated the relin-
quishment of instinctive knowledge previously acquired,
and all but buried it not quite buried, however, the
Intichiuma ceremonies are performed just when there is
promise of a good breeding season, and thus necessity
demands recognition of the truth; the Tully River 1 blacks
grant that the breeding of animals, at any rate, is governed
by the laws of Nature, while human beings are only exempt
from the force of those laws because they are thereby con-
firmed in their belief of their superiority over the brute
creation." He suggests that the (purely conscious) motives
why the natives maintain the beliefs they do is either to
facilitate adultery 2 and condonement of it, or else to gratify
the mother's hope of benefiting the child by conferring on it
the qualities of some totemic spirit. These suggestions, how-
ever, evidently do not carry us far.

1 Heape here quotes Roth, "North Queensland Ethnography," Bull. No. 5,
p. 22.

8 He cites (p. 100) the Baganda custom of punishing adultery only when the
banana tree is out of blossom, for otherwise the conception is ascribed to the
latter. But as the banana tree blossoms all the year round compare our saying
"when gorse is out of bloom then kissing is out of fashion" and the banana
is an obvious phallic symbol, there would seem to be need for further investiga-
tion gathered in respect of this custom.

158

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

Carveth Read 1 makes a decided step forward in suggest-
ing that the knowledge really present is only unconscious,
having been "repressed"; he speaks of its having been
"repressed by the animistic philosophy and expelled from
consciousness". Malinowski, however, thinks that such
knowledge cannot have been obliterated by any animistic
superstructure because in determining "descent" no im-
portance is attached by these savages to blood-relation-
ship.

When the question comes up whether ideas are present
in a state of repression, and, if so, what are likely to have
been the reasons for the repression, then surely a psycho-
analyst has a word to say. At this point, therefore, I propose
to put forward an hypothesis along psycho-analytical lines,
one which, if correct, would indicate that there is the closest
collateral relationship between ignorance about paternal
procreation on the one hand and the institution of mother-
right on the other. My view is that both these phenomena
are brought about by the same motive; in what chrono-
logical relation they stand to each other is another question
altogether, which will be considered later. The motive,
according to this view, in both cases is to deflect the hostility
felt by the growing boy towards his father.

The following considerations may be adduced in support
of this hypothesis. In the first place, it is known that of the
two components of the primordial QEdipus complex love
for the mother and hatred for the father the latter has
played by far the more important part in leading to repres-
sion of the complex and in giving rise to the various com-
plicated devices whereby this repression is brought about
and maintained. The reason for this is evident : the danger-
ous rivalry between two murderous males with all its
consequences. There is much reason to think that the
ambivalent conflict between love and hate is sharper among

1 Carveth Read, op. cit., p. 146.

'59

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

savage people than among ourselves 1 hence it is not sur-
prising that they should possess more elaborate institutions
subserving the function of guarding them from their re-
pressed impulses ; it is as if they had more reason than we
to fear them, or less power of diverting them. As examples
of institutions of this kind one may quote totemism and
exogamy 2 on the one hand and the innumerable initiation
ceremonies on the other. 3 (In accepting the view that the
function in question is the essential one of these institutions
one does not, of course, ignore the fact that they also sub-
serve numerous other ones.)

It would seem to be the fashion at present among anthro-
pologists to regard kinship and "descent" as not necessarily
having any close connection with blood-relationship. I am
inclined to think that in so doing they are following a
tendentious striving present among savages themselves. For
it seems pretty plain that savages try in all sorts of ways to
divorce the two matters, 4 although there is much reason to
infer that fundamentally they attach an enormous, and
even exaggerated, importance to blood-relationship. Not
only is the child's social status determined by birth to a
much greater extent than with us, but the central im-
portance of birth to the savage mind in connection with the
GEdipus complex has been made highly probable by Reik's
brilliant work on puberty rites. 6 He showed there that the
real significance of these rites is, by means of a complicated
castration and birth symbolism, to annul the original birth
by the mother and substitute for it an imaginary homo-
sexual birth; the idea evidently being that attachment to
the mother is due simply to the fact of being born of her,

1 One example is illustrated in Reik's interpretation of the postural couvade
as a means of coping with the sadism aroused by the sight of the suffering wife.

2 See Freud, Totem und Tabu, 1913.

8 See Reik, Probleme der Religionspsychologie, 1919, Chap. III.
* This is perhaps one reason why mother-right so often persists, even when
the facts of paternity are fully recognized.
5 Ibid.

160

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

so that the only way to neutralize the incest tendencies that
stand in the way of friendly relationship with other men is
to nullify the supposed cause of them (birth) by a symbolic
re-birth. If, according to savage theory, the maternal half
of the (Edipus complex, the attachment to the mother,
depends on the fact of being born by her, it is only reason-
able to suppose that the same, mutatis mutandis, is equally
true of the paternal half, the father-hate. At all events,
as we shall see, savages appear to act on this assump-
tion.

In unconsciously explaining incest tendencies as being
due to the act of birth, savages would appear to indulge in
the same "retrospective phantasying" as our neurotics who
so often behave exactly like them in this respect, where we
know the motive is to escape the guilt of infantile sexuality
by substituting harmless thoughts about birth: contact
with the mother's genitals is by birth only, not by coitus.
Nevertheless, if Freud's hypothesis is substantiated about
the inheritance of impulses dating from the primal horde,
the savages and neurotics would prove to have some right
on their side, though in a very indirect way. For in that
event there would be some causal connection between birth,
i.e., heredity, and the (Edipus complex.

Be this as it may, it is clear that any objectionable
tendencies the source of which is imputed to the act of birth
can most radically be countered by simply denying this act,
as is done, for example, in the puberty rites. Now in the
analysis of our neurotics we are very familiar with the wish-
phantasy in which this happens in regard to the father.
Many of them cherish, consciously or unconsciously, the
idea that their "father" had nothing to do with their con-
ception or birth, this being entirely a matter between them
and their mother. It is well known how extraordinarily
widespread this myth of the Virgin Mother has been
throughout the world, and there is every reason to think

161

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

that it has generally the same significance as we find in the
analysis of individuals. 1 The general belief evidently fulfils
more than one deep-seated tendency; repudiation of the
father's part in coitus and procreation, and consequently
softening and deflection of the hatred against him, a con-
summation desired equally by son and father. This is what
has happened where the institution of mother-right is com-
bined with denial of paternal procreation. It might be said
that just as the postural couvade is designed to protect both
wife and child from the father's hostility, 2 so the combina-
tion of mother-right and sexual ignorance protects both
father and son from their mutual rivalry and hostility.

I should be inclined to bring into connection with this
tendentious denial of paternal procreation the curious and
unexpected finding recorded by Malinowski 3 that the topic
of sexual intercourse between man and wife is regarded by
the Trobrianders as highly indecent, although they are
unusually free people in regard to sexual matters in general.
This seems to represent a higher degree of the common
aversion which most people feel in regard to the idea of
parental coitus, and serves the same function of keeping
at a distance the possibility of an QEdipus jealousy.

But the father is not so easily disposed of, a fact which
might be used in support of Freud's suggestion that the
inherited idea of the primal father is still actively alive in
our unconscious. The father disappears from the scene only
to reappear in a disguised form. The idea of the powerful
and hated father is sacrificed in favour of an ancestral
spirit, who in a supernatural manner impregnates the
mother; for both the Australian ratapas and the Trobriand
waiwaias emanate from ancestors, and no one who has had
the opportunity of analyzing a member of an ancient Eng-

1 See Rank, Der My thus von der Geburt des Helden, 2e Auflage, 1922, and
Ernest Jones, Section XIII of the present volume.
* Reik, op. cit.
8 Malinowski, Psyche, Vol. V, p. 207.

162

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

lish family or an American with a passion for genealogy can
fail to discover that forefathers are psychologically nothing
but fathers at a slight remove. This elevated father is there-
fore the original powerful father in another guise. The idea
corresponds with the deep belief that after all only the great
father can procreate (or permit it by giving his sanction),
with the added wish on the part of women to conceive of the
father, as the Virgin Mary did. 1

When put to the test of practice this way of treating the
father does appear to achieve its aim of bringing about a
far more intimate and friendly relationship between father
and child than is usual in patrilineal societies. Among the
Trobrianders, where the father has of course no authority
whatever over his children, the society, being matrilineal
and the potestas devolving on the uncle, the father is
described as being a "beloved, benevolent friend", 2 Malin-
owski writes 3 as follows: "Among the Melanesians, 'father-
hood', as we know, is a purely social relation. Now, part of
this relation consists in his duty towards his wife's children ;
he is there 'to receive them into his arms,' a phrase we have
already quoted; he has to carry them about when on the
march the mother is tired, and he has to assist in the nursing
at home. He tends them in their natural needs, and
cleanses them, and there are many stereotyped expressions
in the native language referring to fatherhood and its hard-
ships, and to the duty of filial gratitude towards him. A
typical Trobriand father is a hard-working and conscien-
tious nurse, in which he obeys the call of duty, expressed in
social tradition. The fact is, however, that the father is
always interested in the children, sometimes passionately
so, and performs all his duties eagerly and fondly."

The solution of the father complex, however, was not

1 A contribution from the woman's side which may be compared with
Frazer's remark (see above) about the sick fancies of pregnant women.

2 Malinowski, Psyche, Vol. IV, p. 298.
8 Ibid., p. 304.

163

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

always so easy, and with the obsessional ambivalence of
savages room had to be found for an object towards whom
could be directed the less amiable attitudes of awe, dread,
respect and suppressed hostility which are inseparable from
the idea of the father imago. It will be remembered that it
took Christian theology many centuries before they could
afford to dispense with the devil (whom I have shown else-
where to be a genetic counterpart of God) and allow them-
selves to face a God who would carry the responsibility for
both good and evil. Similarly the savage had to be provided
with a figure who would incorporate the disliked and feared
attributes of the father imago. In nearly all matrilineal
societies, and in some that have partly passed over into the
patrilineal form, the maternal uncle plays this part. It is he
who wields over the children the direct potestas, he who is
the main source of authority and discipline, from him that
they inherit possessions and acquire various accomplish-
ments, and often it is he who is responsible for their food
and keep. Still, in the majority of cases he does not reside
with the children, and often not even in the same village,
while his relations with their mother are extremely formal
and surrounded by taboos. Malinowski 1 contrasts the status
of the two men as follows: "To the father, therefore, the
children look only for loving care and tender companion-
ship. Their mother's brother represents the principle of
discipline, authority and executive power within the
family." As might be expected, affection is not the most
prominent feature in the relation between boy and uncle,
though doubtless there is much companionship during the
adolescent stage when the serious duties of life are being
inculcated. Malinowski 2 describes this stage: "The father
suffers at this time a temporary eclipse. The boy, who as a
child was fairly independent and became the member of

1 Loc. cit.

1 op. cit., p. 324.

164

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

the small, juvenile republic, gains now on the one hand the
additional freedom of the bukumatula, while on the other
he becomes much more restricted by his various duties
towards his kada y maternal uncle. He has less time and less
interest left for the father. Later on, when friction with the
maternal uncle makes its appearance, he turns, as a rule,
to his father once more and their life friendship then
becomes settled."

My suggestion is that the state of affairs just mentioned
is an example of the process with which we are familiar in
mythological studies under the name of "decomposition",
one common enough also in the psychoneuroses. It is one
whereby various attributes can become detached from an
original figure and incorporated in another one, which then
personifies these attributes. In the present case, as in so
many others, the process serves the function of unloading
affect in a relationship where it might have unpleasant con-
sequences and depositing it at a safer distance. The British
Constitution has evolved a similar arrangement; in it the
father of the country, the King, can do no wrong and so is
immune from criticism, retaining only the affection and
respect of his subjects. This was made possible, after the
people refused to tolerate the system of absolute monarchy,
by providing a counterpart, the Prime Minister, against
whom all complaints, resentment and hostility could be
directed; the volume of this opposition periodically and
inevitably accumulates until he has to make way for a
successor. A more subtle example has been analyzed by
Freud in his study of the "taboo of virginity". 1 He has shown
that the custom of a bride being deflorated by someone
other than the husband is to ensure that the resentment
which this operation is apt to provoke shall be directed
away from her future life-partner and precipitated else-
where.

1 Freud, "Taboo of Vkginity," 1918, Collected Papers, Vol. IV, 1925.

165

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The two men being unconscious equivalents, it is not sur-
prising that in some tribes the same name is applied to both,
as, for instance, in Loango, where the uncle is called Tate
(= father). 1 A story recalled by Hartland 2 well illustrates the
psychological complexity of the relationship. "When a child
dies or even meets with an accident with fatal results, the
mother's relatives, headed by her brother, turn out in force
against the father. He must defend himself until he is
wounded. Blood once drawn the combat ceases; but the
attacking party plunders his house and appropriates every-
thing on which hands can be laid, finally sitting down to a
feast provided by the bereaved father." The father is thus
punished because his repressed hostile wishes have come
true and the child has met with harm. Now this is in a
patrilineal society of Maoris and the action taken by the
maternal uncle points to an earlier avunculate and doubt-
less matrilineal social organization. In this transition from
one organization one sees how the parts played by father
and uncle respectively can change to the exact opposite.
Mrs. Seligmann 3 informs me that in some Soudanese tribes a
similar change can be observed to be at work, where the
father is becoming dreaded and the uncle loved.

In this decomposition of the primal father into a kind and
lenient father on the one hand, and a stern and moral uncle
on the other, it is not chance that the latter person was
chosen to fill this part. I will sketch the order of develop-
ment here somewhat schematically. If we start with the
primal trinity of father, mother, son, then in seeking for a
surrogate to whom the jealous hatred felt for the father can
become displaced there are two persons who naturally
present themselves, the mother's father and her brother.
The reason for this goes back to the mother's own incestu-

1 Hartland, op. cit., p. 281.

1 Ibid., p. 279.

8 Personal communication, for which I am much indebted.

166

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

ous attachments ; her father and brothers are also in a sense
rivals of her son, though they are at a greater distance from
him than his own father. It is therefore not surprising that
the QEdipus legend can be paralleled by similar ones relating
to the other men. Thus it was foretold of Acriseus that he
would be killed by his daughter's son ; and, in spite of all his
efforts first by isolating his daughter Danae, and then by
attempting to drown her and her son, Perseus, after Zeus
had managed to evade the endeavours of her father to keep
her a virgin the prediction is verified; Perseus did kill his
grandfather. Similar tales are related of other heroes besides
Perseus, such as Cyrus, Gilgam, and Telephos.

We know from psycho-analytic work that the girl's
attachment towards her father commonly becomes dis-
placed on to her brother, just as the son displaces his
mother-attachment on to his sister. The tendency towards
filial and parental incest is thus exchanged for that towards
brother-sister incest, which even to-day is much less taboo
than the former and is often realized in actuality. As is well
known, royal marriages between brother and sister were
customary in ancient Egypt, and till our times in Hawaii, 1
though forbidden to commoners. It is thus comprehensible
enough that jealous rivalry over the woman between nephew
and uncle should duplicate that between son and father, or
that the former psychological situation can replace the
latter. The classical legend displaying this situation is, of
course, the Tristan saga, particularly in its earlier versions.
Before winning Isolde, Tristan logically kills her maternal
uncle, Morolt, (of course on other ostensible grounds), and,
after she has espoused his own maternal uncle, Mark, he
enters into rivalry with the latter ; in the most recent version
of the story, Thomas Hardy unveils the mask of benevo-
lence that had been cast over Mark and lays bare the natural
enmity between the two men. In the earliest versions of the

1 Rivers, Social Organization, 1924, p. 39.

167

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Lancelot legend in the Arthurian cycle 1 there are plain
indications of the same theme. In the first account it was
Gawain who loved Guinevere, the wife of Arthur, his
maternal uncle. In the later accounts his place is taken by
Lancelot (who also usurped his position as the first Grail
hero), but that the underlying theme is only disguised is
shown by the circumstance that Lancelot's foster-mother
was also Arthur's sister. At the end the original theme
comes again to the surface, since it is another nephew,
Mordred, who abducts Guinevere and kills his maternal
uncle, Arthur. The further stage in repression, familiar to
us in the Hamlet form of the QEdipus complex, 2 can also be
traced in the uncle-nephew relationship, the nephew aveng-
ing his uncle's murder ; an example of this is the Otuel story
in the Charlemagne cycle. 3 The most complete inversion is
perhaps that of the Caucasian legend of Chopa, 4 for he
avenges his maternal uncle, whom his father had slain, by
attacking his own father.

We may now return to the Trobrianders. There, as with
most matrilineal societies, there is an extraordinarily severe
taboo against sexual relations between brother and sister,
one which begins at the earliest age. It could not escape
Malinowski's discernment that this taboo must be the ex-
pression of repressed incestuous tendencies, though he does
not appear to have recognized the connection between this
and the presence of an avunculate organization; i.e., that
the uncle, being the unconscious lover of the mother, is
therefore the imaginary father of her children, and logically
wields the potestas over them. He sees, however, that the
uncle plays the negative part of the father in our civiliza-
tion, and formulates the following neat statement on the

1 See Jessie L. Weston's works, Arthur and Guinevere, King Arthur and his
Knights, The Legend of Sir Gawaine, and Lancelot du Lac.

* See Ernest Jones, Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex, 1949.

* Ellis, Specimens of Early English Matrical Romances, 1805, pp. 375 if.

* Cited by Hartland, op. cit., p. 271.

1 68

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

whole matter: 1 "Applying to each society a terse, though
rather crude formula, there is in our society the repressed
desire 'to kill the father and marry the mother', while in
the matrilineal complex of Melanesia, the wish is 'to marry
the sister and to kill the maternal uncle'." One striking
piece of evidence he finds in support of this conclusion in a
very typical set of myths among matrilineal peoples
corresponding with the European GEdipus myths in which
incest occurs between brother and sister and hatred between
nephew and maternal uncle. 2

Malinowski's conclusion is doubtless correct on the purely
descriptive plane, but he goes on to use it as the basis of an
extremely doubtful hypothesis in which he attempts to
modify Freud's theory of the nuclear family complex. As is
well known, the latter regards the relationship between
father, mother, and son as the prototype from which other
more complicated relationships are derived. Malinowski, on
the contrary, puts forward the idea that the nuclear family
complex varies according to the particular family structure
existing in any community. According to him, a matrilineal
family system arises for unknown social and economic
reasons, and then the repressed nuclear complex consists of
brother and sister attraction, with nephew and uncle
hatred; when this system is replaced by a patrilineal one,
the nuclear complex becomes the familiar CEdipus one.

If attention is concentrated on the sociological aspects of
the data, this will appear a very ingenious and perhaps even
plausible suggestion. I would submit, however, that imper-
fect attention to the genetic aspects of the problem has led
to a lack of what I have elsewhere called a "dimensional
perspective", i.e., a sense of value and proportion based on
intimate knowledge of the unconscious, and that the
opposite of Malinowski's conception is nearer the truth. It

1 Malinowski, Psyche, Vol. V, p. 195.
Ibid., p. 216.

169 M

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

would seem more probable, in my opinion, that the matri-
lineal system with its avunculate complex arose in the way
described above as a mode of defence against the primordial
CEdipus tendencies than that it arose for unknown socio-
logical reasons with then the avunculate complex as a
necessary consequence and the CEdipus complex appearing
only when the patrilineal system was subsequently intro-
duced. The forbidden and unconsciously loved sister is only
a substitute for the mother, as the uncle plainly is for the
father. On Malinowski's hypothesis the CEdipus complex
would be a late product; for the psycho-analyst it was the
fans et origo.

IV. THE RELATION OF MOTHER-RIGHT TO
FATHER-RIGHT

In 1 86 1, the year Bachofen's famous work Das Mutter-
recht appeared, an equally famous work was published by
Sir Henry Maine, entitled Primal Law. In it he enunciated,
largely on the basis of juristic studies in India, the view that
the primal state of society must have been a patriarchal one.
In the years that have elapsed since that date more
historical and ethnological evidence and arguments, ex-
pounded especially by McLennan, Lewis Morgan, Lubbock
and Hartland, have accumulated in favour of the first of
these views, to the effect that the primal system of society
(with or without a still earlier state of promiscuity) was a
matrilineal one; and perhaps the majority of anthro-
pologists to-day are inclined to support this view. It is at
all events certain that mother-right is extremely widespread
among savage races, and there is much reason to think that
this was still more so five thousand years ago.

A heated controversy has taken place over the question
of whether father-right as we know it or mother-right as we

170

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

find it among the savages was the earlier system of the two.
The view here represented is different from either. It is that
the question has not been justly put, since the two alterna-
tives mentioned do not exhaust the possibilities. We know
from psycho-analytic work that there are often three
mental layers where there appear to be only two. A perky
conceitedness, for instance, is usually the compensatory
reaction to a deep-seated sense of inferiority, but analysis
shows that this in its turn is based on repressed narcissism.
The first and the third layers are similar in their content,
but they are not on that account to be identified. The
present problem may well prove to be of a like nature.

Before developing this idea we may briefly review the
opinions that have been expressed by other writers. Those
who take the primal patriarchal view have to explain why
mother-right ever came into existence, whereas for those
who take the opposite view the question is rather why the
primal mother-right was ever supplanted by father-right.
The former tend to regard mother-right as a temporary and
necessarily evanescent phase, and the chief explanation
offered for its existence seems to be that it was dependent
on the development of agriculture where woman's work was
found to be of special value; the correlation, however,
between agriculture and mother-right is far from close
enough to establish the connection. 1 The second set of
writers, who often wax enthusiastic over the idyllic situa-
tion prevailing under mother-right, tend to regard this as
the natural state of affairs and to take the view that
women were driven from this paradise by brute force. 2
Hartland, for whom father-right is "a purely artificial
system" 3 says: "The conclusion seems irresistible that

1 See Westermarck, op. cit., p. 297.

8 One cannot refrain from wondering what part the infantile "sadistic con-
ception of coitus" may have played in the idea that men imposed "father-right"
on "mother-right" by brute force.

8 Hartland, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 248.

171

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

father-right is traceable not to any change in savage or
barbarous theories of blood-relationship, but to social and
economic causes." 1 Both he 2 and Rivers 3 who, by the way,
expresses no opinion about the relative antiquity of mother-
right and father-right, would ascribe great importance in
this connection to the violent immigrations of primitive
times whereby the will of the conqueror was imposed on the
weaker.

The view advanced in this paper is based on the psycho-
analytic recognition of the fundamental importance of the
nuclear CEdipus complex. It is in accord neither with the
idea of primitive promiscuity, nor with that of primal
right, nor even with that of patriarchy as we nowadays
conceive it in its monogamic form. Far from being led by
consideration of the subject, as Malinowski was, to abandon
or revise Freud's conception of the "primal horde" (Atkin-
son's "cyclopeian family"), it seems to me, on the contrary,
that this conception furnishes the most satisfactory ex-
planation of the complicated problems which we have been
discussing. According to this, the system of mother-right,
with its avunculate complex, represents one mode of
defence among the many that have been adopted against
the tendencies denoted by the term CEdipus complex. We
cannot, of course, say whether it represents a necessary
stage in the evolution towards the present patriarchal
system; I see no reason why it should, and the fact that
some of the lowest type of Australian savages, whose
primitive instincts are hard enough to curb, find it possible
to cope with them by an alternative method that of taboo
and the totemic system might be quoted in support of the
doubt. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the savage
ignorance, or rather repression, of the facts of paternal pro-

1 Ibid., p. 100.

* Idem, Primitive Society, 1921, p. 161.

8 Rivers, op. cit., p. 97.

172

THE SEXUAL IGNORANCE OF SAVAGES

creation is a necessary accompaniment of mother-right,
though it is evident that it must be a valuable support to
the motives discussed above which led to the instituting of
mother-right.

The patriarchal system, as we know it, betokens ack-
nowledging the supremacy of the father and yet the ability
to accept this even with affection, without having to have
recourse to a system either of mother-right or of com-
plicated taboos. It means the taming of man, the gradual
assimilation of the CEdipus complex. At last man could
face his real father and live with him. Well might Freud
say that the recognition of the father's place in the family
signified the most important progress in cultural develop-
ment.

So far as we can tell, the way in which this has been at
least partly accomplished has been the replacement of
hate by sublimated homosexuality, of murder thoughts by
castration thoughts. The necessary price paid has been the
diminished sexual potency of civilized man, with all the
complicated consequences of this.

173

VI

A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL NOTE ON
PALEOLITHIC ART 1

THE material Dr. Heilbronner adduces in his interesting
essay 2 would seem fully to justify his conclusions that
"man in the Ice Age attributed an especial significance
at first unconsciously and later consciously to composite
representations of the male and female sexual organs". This
finding must forcibly remind psycho-analysts of the familiar
observation that the same state of affairs is true also of the
unconscious phantasies in early infancy. These are nowa-
days, following Melanie Klein, often referred to under the
designation "combined parental image". Two explanations
have been proffered for them. One would account for the
phantasies on the basis of congenital homosexuality. The
other would regard them as an early expression of the
CEdipus conflict and of the mingled love and hate this
engenders. Both explanations may, of course, be correct,
but some analysts would attach greater weight to the
former one, others to the latter. It is at all events highly
interesting to learn that similar forces were at work among
men of the Old Stone Age to those among our young
children of the present day one more example of the
resemblance between primeval mentality in phylogenesis
and ontogenesis.

Archaeologists are generally of opinion that the motives
impelling early man to execute his remarkable drawings in

1 Published in the International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, Vol. XIX, 1938.

2 P. Heilbronner, "Some Remarks on the treatment of the Sexes in Palaeo-
ithic Art," International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, 1938, p. 439.

'74

A NOTE ON PALAEOLITHIC ART

remote and hardly accessible caves were not so much con-
cerned with aesthetic feeling in spite of the high artistic
skill displayed in some epochs as with what may broadly
be called magic. This view was especially developed in
respect of animal drawings, it being supposed that the
craftsmen hoped thereby to acquire virtue and luck in their
hunting activities, which afforded at that time a main
source of food. It has also been suggested that an allied
motive was what analysts would call one of restitution, an
expression of guilt at the killing and a consequent desire to
expiate it by re-creating the animal in effigy. Since even
nowadays, when feelings may be supposed to be more sensi-
tive, there is relatively little remorse at killing animals for
food, and nothing in the way of expiatory rites on the part
of those who do so, we may take it for certain that any such
attitude could proceed only from a totemistic mentality, in
which the animals in question represented other human
beings, notably parents or ancestors. This equation
would suggest a possible prevalence of cannibalism at that
epoch.

Returning to the human drawings and statuettes
described by Dr. Heilbronner, we are impelled to inquire
into the significance of the changes he notes between the
Aurignacian and Magdalenian epochs of the Palaeolithic
era. It is generally thought that these two epochs have to do
with the same, or a very similar, race, though this is not
quite certain; but it will be remembered that they were
separated from each other by a space of many thousands of
years through the curious intrusion of the Solutrians.
Nevertheless there is an unmistakable continuity between
the two in the custom of cave drawings, as well as certain
pronounced differences in the form these display at the two
epochs.

The salient feature of the earlier Aurignacian drawings
is the remarkable concentration on female sexual charac-

175

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

t eristics. It is plain that the central concern of the crafts-
men was with these. Not only do the number of female
statuettes greatly exceed those of male ones, in the propor-
tion of seventy to five, but not one phallus has been found
to set beside the numerous images of the vulva ; even when
a phallus is present in male figures it is small and incon-
spicuous. Moreover, the main features of the female figures
consist of exaggerated breasts, buttocks and abdomen
(almost pregnant in size), whereas no trouble is taken to
depict the face, even when the head is drawn in frontal
view; one is here reminded of the famous "'A was Gesicht"
passage from Schnitzler's Reigen. The limbs are similarly
obscured, and the description of them given by Dr. Heil-
bronner, together with the phallic head, seems to point
plainly to the operation of unconscious castration phan-
tasies. It is as if the draughtsman wished to assert: "This is
emphatically a sexual and fertile woman, and anything
male connected with her must be disregarded or destroyed."

In contrasting this picture with that characteristic of the
Magdalenian epoch there would appear to have been three
important changes. Instead of the female sex predomina-
ting, the male sex is here the more prominent of the two.
Images of the vulva have become rare, those of the phallus
common. The Magdalenians are evidently more preoccupied
with their own sex than were their predecessors.

Then the artistic impulse seems to have nearly disap-
peared, since the figures are debased and lifeless repetitions
in a flat two-dimensional plane in place of the vivid and
plastic representation of the Aurignacian epoch. May one
not infer from this that the more purely libidinal motive has
been displaced by others of a more conflicting order ?

Thirdly, the figures are represented no longer en face ', but
in profile. One cannot but bring this feature of the drawings
into relation with the fact that palaeolithic man invariably
depicted animals in profile, this being the natural posture

A NOTE ON PALEOLITHIC ART

he was accustomed to when shooting at them to obtain
food.

This last point suggests the action of aggressive or
sadistic motives. The attitude of the draughtsman towards
the human beings he depicted approximates in the Mag-
dalenian epoch to that towards his prey. This could result
from either an increase in cannibalism or a heightened
hostility among males.

We do not know enough about the conditions of life in the
two epochs to venture a sociological explanation for these
differences, but we cannot resist the conclusion that for
some reason, climatic or cultural, life was harder for Mag-
dalenian than for Aurignacian man ; it may well have been
a time when the conscience was undergoing an important
development.

177

VII
FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM 1

IT is nowhere better known than in Oxford that the prob-
lem of free will is one of the most profound and baffling in
the whole of philosophy, and that in consequence its
literature is replete with subtle and intricate arguments
about it. This, however, is a psychological Society, and I
propose to deal principally with the psychological aspects
of the problem. I hope at least to show that these aspects
are more interesting than might be expected.

. At the outset one might pose the psychological question
of how it comes that this problem has possessed such an
extraordinary interest for the thinkers of all ages. As far
back as we have historical records, to ancient Babylon, we
find the problem keenly discussed and various solutions
propounded. In those times, and indeed until a couple of
centuries ago, it was generally involved in theological doc-
trines, but even when it was not as at times in Rome and
of course in more recent days it was just as hotly debated,
with often a display of very considerable acrimony. It
cannot be said that the matter has much troubled the
common man, who probably takes one solution or another
for granted without reflecting on it. But there must be few
serious thinkers who have not in some period of their life
been perplexed by the antinomy that seems to inhere in
every solution. The perplexity may even reach the intensity
of the folie de doute of those afflicted with an obsessional
neurosis, who endlessly oscillate between two opposite con-

1 Address delivered before the Oxford Psychological Society, 2yth October,
1924.

178

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

elusions or decisions. But, as in that case also, it is highly
unlikely that we have to do with a purely intellectual prob-
lem, like one of the teasers of mathematics. The concern
alone that is manifested shows that strong emotions are
involved in the argumentations. The fact that the concern
seems to be restricted to a relatively small group of people
does not in itself prove that the emotions are of an unusual
kind, remote from the general ones of humanity, since it is
known these can be stimulated in many different ways.

A second consideration that calls for psychological
inquiry is the ambivalence so often to be noted among those
expressing opinions on the matter. Even when a philosopher
or theologian avowedly commits himself firmly to one side
or the other, freedom of the will or absence of freedom, one
may often observe that his conclusion is so phrased as to
permit of the opposite opinion having also a place. I read
this as signifying an intuition on such a person's part that
there are two truths concerned in the answer to the prob-
lem, and that even when they appear to be diametrically
opposite and therefore mutually exclusive there may per-
haps be some plane, as yet undiscovered, on which they are
to be reconciled. I intend to support this thesis in what I
have to say here.

The problem of free will has constantly been involved in
a number of others, among them the most profound that
have vexed the mind of man. It may legitimately be asked
whether it owes its emotional significance to its connection
with those other problems or how much, on the other hand,
do they owe some of their importance to that inhering in
the matter of freedom of the will. According to Kant the
existence of God, the belief in Immortality, and the ques-
tion of Free Will are bound up together, and metaphysics
has for its especial object the solution of these problems.
They thus become the three postulates of his "practical
reason". The existence of free will is equally bound up with

179

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the relation of mind to matter, and especially of mind to
brain: i.e., between Idealism and Realism, the subjective
versus the objective view of what appears to be external
reality. Allied to this is the controversy between vitalism
and the physio-chemical view of physiology, and that over
the inheritance of acquired characteristics in biology. As to
theology the most vital matters are concerned : the problem
of evil in the world, the meaning of sin, the various methods
of salvation of the soul, whether by grace or by good works,
the question of moral responsibility, the basis of ethical
behaviour, and the possibility or not of improving one's
own character. This list of problems of cardinal import is
not exhaustive, but it suffices to show what is at stake when
we try to decide on some answer to that of free will.

And yet in spite of all this the sociologist makes the
curious observation that in practical daily life it does not
seem to make any difference whether a given person, com-
munity, or religion adopts one or the other belief, in free
will or determinism. The Babylonians, who firmly believed
that one's destiny was fixed at birth by the influence of the
stars then in conjunction, were not in the least a fatalistic
people, as one might have expected, but on the contrary a
people full of enterprise and initiative with evident powers
of original thought. The Calvinists who hold to pre-
destination strive to lead as good a life as other Christians,
although theoretically it would appear to be irrelevant to
their fate in the next life. The part played in Greek tragedy
by Fate, from which there was no escape, does not prevent
the struggles and conflicts there depicted from being of just
the same order as in a modern drama. The determinist
Stoics were as set on following the path of duty and leading
a moral life as the libertarian Epicureans. In the history of
Christianity we can cite great names on either side. St. Paul,
having been a Pharisee and not a Sadducee, adhered to the
doctrine of predestination as did St. Augustine and later

1 80

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

on both Luther and Calvin. To do otherwise would have
seemed to them to derogate from the omnipotence and
omniscience of God. Yet on the other side, from St. Thomas
Aquinas onwards, more theologians have been believers in
freedom of the will, and indeed have based on it the whole
conception of salvation. At the anti-Pelagian Synod of
Orange, in 529, the Catholic Church effected an interesting
compromise to which most other Christian Churches have
adhered. Denying predestination as a heresy, they asserted
that man's innate freedom of will had been so restricted as a
result of Adam's Fall that it needs the direct intervention of
God to enable it to function in the desired direction.

It would be hard to maintain that these religious beliefs,
vehemently attached to one side or the other, made any
perceptible difference to the life of action. Those who held
to free will showed no more tendency to licence or lack of
responsibility than their opponents, nor did the determin-
ism of the latter degenerate into fatalism and deprive their
votaries of initiative. One could scarcely imagine more
active, vehement and enterprising persons than Calvin and
John Knox, the arch-priests of predestination.

Similarly with the philosopher. No one could say that
Spinoza, Leibnitz, David Hume and John Stuart Mill, con-
vinced determinists, led a restricted life or strove less than
other people to perfect their character and ethical be-
haviour.

All this is very odd. Here we have a question on the
answer to which the most momentous and vital matters
depend, and which one would suppose must affect pro-
foundly the whole outlook of a man. And yet we cannot
detect any difference it makes to his life or conduct accord-
ing as he adheres to one answer or to its very opposite.
Surely this remarkable fact calls for much consideration.

Another interesting observation is that man's belief in
free will seems to be stronger in proportion to the unim-

181

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

portance of the decision. Everyone is convinced that he is
free to choose whether to stand or to sit at a given moment,
to cross his right leg over his left or vice versa "as he
wishes". With vital decisions, on the other hand, it is
characteristic that he feels irresistibly impelled towards one
and one only, and that he really has no choice in the matter
nor desires to have any. Luther's famous "Hier stehe ich.
Ich kann nicht anders" at the turning point of his career is
a classical example of this, and if one asked a man why he
chose to risk his life at some critical juncture he would
mostly reply: "I couldn't help it. I just had to," as would a
lover when asked to explain why he fell in love with one
particular person.

Kant would seem to have got further than anyone else
towards a solution of this great dilemma when he took the
view that pure reason dictated a belief in complete deter-
minism whereas what he called practical reason dictated an
equally convinced belief in freedom of the will. His division
between the two kinds of reason would nowadays be
roughly correlated with the distinction between intellect
and feeling, and it is now recognized that both of them play
an unescapable part in deciding our beliefs. Moreover, the
grounds he gave for recognizing the claims of "practical
reason" namely because of the demands of the moral law
accord with the importance we have to attribute to the
moral sources of feeling.

The question from which we started, concerning the
psychological motives for one or other of these beliefs, has
of course been raised before, chiefly, as one would expect,
by determinists, since they hold there must be motives or
"causes" preceding them. Spinoza, for example, expressed
the opinion that man thinks he is free simply because he
does not know the causes of his wishes, and Hume made the
same point. Hume went further, however, in asserting that
people believe in tree will (i) because of their objection to

182

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

the idea of constraint, (2) their direct feeling of liberty of
choice, and (3) religious influences. This is the beginning of
a psychological inquiry.

Psycho-analysis from its study of the unconscious mind
can make the following contributions to the problem. In the
first place it is in a position to reveal the apparently un-
known causes of our wishes, the feature pointed out by
Spinoza and Hume. Its investigations have shown that man
is only imperfectly aware of his whole personality and that
consciousness is but a selection of the total mentality. The
source from which all our motives and wishes spring, trivial
or serious, is the unconscious mind, and we are aware only
of the end products of complex mental trains. By the free
association technique one can over and again demonstrate
that a choice felt by the individual to be a purely spon-
taneous one on his part is in fact related to various past
thoughts and interests ultimately of a very personal order.
You may carry out this interesting experiment by follow-
ing up the old play "Think of a name" or "think of a
number", by then passively allowing its associations to
enter your mind. The upshot of this work is the conclusion
that ignorance of the causes of our choice is no longer a
reason for believing that it is uncaused, or that our will is
free to initiate any thought or decision without being
influenced by previous experiences.

The second contribution psycho-analysis can make is to
point out that ratiocination has but a limited power outside
consciousness. Unconscious attitudes, whether they are
tantamount to belief or disbelief, are beyond its influence.
A good example of this is the question of immortality.
Many people are convinced, on what they would hold are
rational grounds, that a human being is as perishable as any
other animal and that after his death nothing remains of
his personality except the memory in other people of the
influence and activity he had exerted in his life. This, how-

183

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

ever, has no effect on the unconscious, which is quite unable
to apprehend the idea of personal extinction. Even in
consciousness our ability to picture being dead is a very
limited one despite any rational grounds to the contrary.

The third contribution of psycho-analysis concerns the
motives actuating the various beliefs about freedom of the
will. There are deep sources for both sets of beliefs, and
which of the two is accepted in consciousness largely de-
pends on what interpretation the unconscious gives to the
question, i.e., what it comes to mean to the unconscious.

The sense of self-ness is the most typical attribute of what
we call the ego, and it is commonly believed that this ego is
a sharply defined unity, as it were a pin-point of conscious-
ness in the universe. Investigations of the deeper layers of
the mind, however, reveal that the ego is not only a com-
plex structure, one which is even liable in certain morbid
states to disintegrate into its elements, but is a product of
many factors. It is a part only of the mind, one elaborated
by degrees out of the primordial unconscious which Freud
has recently termed the id. Furthermore, an important part
of the ego, appropriately termed the super-ego, is set apart
with certain defensive functions such as warning the ego
against the dangers of being overpowered by irruptive im-
pulses from the id] in favourable circumstances the super-
ego becomes the conscience, and from the beginning it has a
moral nature far harsher than any conscience. These con-
siderations have, as will presently be seen, an important
bearing on our question of motivation.

When I remarked just now that all turns on the inter-
pretation given by the unconscious, I meant to indicate that
everything depends on the relation between the ego and the
super-ego. When the latter is functioning successfully it
reassures the ego that it need not fear the terrible dangers
emanating from the repressed unconscious. What the person
ought to do or is wise to do then becomes much the same as

184

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

the wish to do it. There is little or no conflict between the
sense of free will and the belief in determinism, and the
person will show little interest in the problem. It is a type
that suffers little from anxiety, because the strongly
organized ego has confidence in its ability to hearken to a
friendly warning super-ego and to defend itself without any
difficulty from any danger.

There are, however, other graver possibilities. If the ego
is intimidated by the warnings of the super-ego and yet is
unwilling to trust the defensive powers of the latter we have
the type of person to whom "self-control" (including the
belief in free will) becomes obsessive. Such people cannot
relax, they are often afraid of "losing control" and going
mad, they are afraid of hypnotism or of being deprived of
their conscious control through the administration of an
anaesthetic, and are apt to suffer from insomnia, due to the
fear of "letting go". An opposite type to this nevertheless
arrives at the same belief in free will. It is one where the
harshness of the super-ego is so great as to lead to a defiant
rebellion on the part of the ego, which so to speak insists on
having its own way and being its own master. They are the
people Hume had in mind when he spoke of the objection to
compulsion and loss of freedom (confounded with loss of
political or social liberty) which the concept of determinism
seems to imply. In yet another type unconscious fear may
make the person feel safer at the idea of determinism. The
notion of a break in the uniformity of natural law brings a
dread of chaos. If they are religious people they may feel it
impious, as the Calvinists do, to deny the omnipotence and
omniscience of God by daring to assert any claim to indi-
vidual initiative independently of Him. "God's will be
done" is a familiar phrase of resigned submission.

I have been dealing here, in an extremely condensed way,
with some advanced and only recently developed psycho-
logical conceptions, all relating to the unconscious mind

185 N

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

which is very unfamiliar territory. The interplay between
the different parts of the mind is much more complex than I
have just sketched, so that the final influence of the various
conflicts on the conscious attitude towards the problem of
free will is hard to predict without knowing something of the
relative strength of the forces concerned. But the main con-
sideration I have tried to convey is that the matter of
internal security ', which is striven for by devious routes, is
probably the key to extreme attitudes concerning free will
and determinism. There are of course philosophical and
rational grounds for believing in one or the other of these,
but I am persuaded that even philosophers may be influ-
enced by unconscious motives the nature of which I have
endeavoured to indicate.

The concept of "causality" is at present undergoing im-
portant modifications, and the use of it will probably be
replaced by the simpler one of "correlation". Psychological
science, any more than any other, cannot do without the
latter concept, and in its postulate of orderly relationship
subsisting between phenomena must therefore be as deter-
ministic as the rest of science. The irruptions of spon-
taneous and unrelated phenomena supposedly emanating
from "free will" would make nonsense of its scientific pre-
tensions, and I have indicated that investigation of the
unconscious has made it unnecessary to postulate any such
unrelatedness. It has, however, the special feature in this
connection that it has to take into account the phenomenon
of a belief in this unrelated spontaneity, i.e., free will.
Psycho-analysis of the unconscious shows that, whatever
the conscious attitude towards the matter may be, there
exist in the deeper layers of the mind the strongest, and
probably ineradicable, motives creating what may be called
the "sense of free will", closely connected with the sense of
personality itself and retained so long as this is retained,
i.e., until insanity, delirium or death dissolve it. That from

1 86

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

the point of view of scientific objectivity this belief is
illusory is irrelevant to the fact of its existence, and in a
way to the necessity of its existence.

We come back therefore to Kant's two forms of truth, to
his "critical reason" and "practical reason", but we see,
much better than he had the opportunity of doing, a chance
of reconciliation between the two in place of regarding them
as an insoluble antinomy. When there is internal harmony
in the mind the sense of free will becomes fused with the
sense of inevitability, as with Luther's pronouncement
which I mentioned earlier. This internal harmony may be
expressed in religious terms, such as Spinoza's statement
that the highest liberty consists in the service of God. Or it
may be expressed in secular terms as when Leibnitz, not a
determinist like Spinoza, proclaimed that freedom meant
self-realization. Which of these two you prefer will depend
again on other things.

Postscript

More recently some arguments derived from atomic
physics have given a fresh turn to this ancient controversy
and have illustrated once again how in the endeavour to
sustain belief in the objectivity of free will support is
sought in every possible direction. Starting from Planck's
quantum theory and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
some physicists, notably Sir Arthur Eddington and in more
ambiguous ways Sir James Jeans, hold that determinism is
absent on the atomic plane and apparently present on the
macrocosmic one only because of the effect of statistical
averages. The basis of this conclusion would seem to be the
awkward fact no doubt inherent in the peculiar conditions
of experimentation that while the speed of an electron can
be measured and its position in space determined it is im-
possible to make both these observations simultaneously.
The authors rather leap from this to the conclusion that the

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

movement of an individual atom is quite unrelated to any
other event, i.e., that it is unconditional. Then the further
step is taken to assert that since the material world is not
deterministic therefore the mind need not be, so we have
the right to claim free will for it. Eddington writes : "A com-
plete determinism of the material universe cannot be
divorced from determinism of the mind. . . . Conversely if
we wish (sic) to emancipate mind we must to some extent
emancipate the material world also."

The arguments transcend the sphere of psychology, which
was the theme of my address, but I note that Susan Steb-
bing in a book devoted to the subject has published a
trenchant criticism, one widely acknowledged to be valid,
of the philosophical principles and dialectics employed by
the group of physicists in question. Furthermore I note that
Planck himself, in spite of his believing in free will on moral
grounds, has with superb integrity resisted the temptation
to join them in exploiting shall one say? the facts of
atomic physics, and that Einstein agrees with him in rang-
ing himself against the conclusion that determinism does
not hold good in external nature.

The most comprehensive and profound study of this
modern aspect of the problem is to be found in E. Cassirer's
DeUrminismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen
Physik, 1937. He writes: "From the significance of freedom
as a mere possibility limited by natural laws there is no
avenue to that 'reality' of volition and freedom of decision
with which ethics is concerned. To mistake the 'choice'
(Auswabl) which an electron has between different quantum
orbits with a 'choice' (Wahl) in the ethical sense of this
word would signify becoming the victim of a purely
linguistic equivocality. To speak of an ethical 'choice'
there must be not only different possibilities but also a con-
scious distinction between them and furthermore a con-
scious decision about them. To attribute such acts to an

188

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

electron would be a relapse into a gross type of anthro-
pomorphism." He sums up: "It is of no avail whether
causality in nature is regarded in the form of rigorous
'dynamical' laws or of merely statistical laws. ... In neither
case does there remain open any access to that sphere of
'freedom' which is claimed by ethics."

189

VIII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 1

I N spite of the excellent work done by the pioneers in this
field some quarter of a century ago I need only mention
the names of Coe, Davenport, Flournoy, Frazer, Hoffding,
King, Starbuck, and, above all, Leuba the claim they
advanced that religious phenomena can be brought within
the orbit of science has not yet been generally, or even
widely, conceded. It is fully intelligible that we should meet
here the last ditch of the anti-evolutionary. The belief in a
miraculous special creation, which has been given up by all
modern thinkers in respect of man's body and is gradually
being renounced in respect of the greater part of his mind, is
tenaciously clung to when the question of his religious
activities is raised. The crudest form that this takes is the
view that man's soul, comprising his "religious faculty", is
divinely implanted as such, so that it is both impious and
fruitless to inquire into its origin: this naturally goes to-
gether with the idea that it is peculiar to man and not to be
correlated with any manifestations such as fear, respect and
awe which we may find in other animals. The alternative
view, indicated by the very existence of this symposium, is
the genetic one that religious manifestations, like all other
human ones, must have developed out of simpler, and ultim-
ately non-religious, forms of mental life. The arguments
that have been adduced in support of this standpoint, and
of the justification for the psychological study of religion,

1 Read before the International Congress of Psychology at Groningen,
7th September, 1926. Published in the British Journal of Medical Psychology,
Vol. VI.

190

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

particularly those advanced by Coe and Leuba, appear to
me so cogent that I shall waste no words in dwelling on them
here. It only remains to make the obvious comment that
even for those who adopt the genetic standpoint it is still
possible to maintain philosophically that the evolution of
religion is merely one of the mysterious ways, like the other
evolutionary ones, which the Creator has employed in order
to bring about an appreciation and worship of His great-
ness. The problem of the existence or non-existence of such
a Creator is not open to direct investigation as such, and
will always be decided solely by the operation of internal
mental processes, on the nature of which, however, much
light can now be thrown.

In the attempt to get as near as we can to the meaning of
religion we are met at the outset by a very imperfect agree-
ment about what is to be included under the term. Any
psychological theory of religion, therefore, is open to the
criticism that it does not comprehend this or that feature
which is alleged to be essential. Some criticisms of this kind
are merely factious and prove nothing more than that the
theory in question is incomplete, which the author himself
would in most cases admit : to seek to define religion exactly
would be, like defining sexuality, a presumptuous under-
taking in the present state of our knowledge and we must
be content with the fact that after all we have a very good
general idea of what is meant by the word. There is a wide
agreement that any comprehensive theory must take into
account at least the following aspects of the problem:
(i) Other-worldliness, the relation to the supernatural. This
has been described as "the consciousness of our practical
relation to an invisible spiritual order". The spiritual order
is invested with the attributes of power and sacredness. The
emotional attitudes towards it vary, those of dependence,
fear, love and reverence being the most characteristic ; the
first-named is perhaps the most constant. Propitiation is

191

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

common, though not invariable. (2) The effort to cope with
the various problems surrounding death, both emotionally
and intellectually. (3) The pursuit and conservation of
values, especially those felt to be the highest and most
permanent. (4) A constant association with the ideals of
ethics and morality. Religion is rarely found apart from
these ideals, though they are often found, especially among
civilized peoples, independently of religion. (5) The connec-
tion between religion and the sense of inadequacy in coping
with the difficulties of life, whether these difficulties be
external or, more characteristically, internal ones such as
the conviction of sin and guilt.

Each of these features has been singled out at various
times as constituting the central kernel of religion. Thus,
to mention but a few, we have Statius' famous "primus in
orbe Deos fecit timor"; Herbert Spencer's attempt to trace
the beginning of religion to the necessity of propitiating
dead ancestors and his other view of it as an hypothesis to
render the universe comprehensible; the stress laid on
sacredness by Durckheim; Feuerbach's reduction of religion
to the "instinct for happiness"; Frazer's definition of
religion as "a propitiation and conciliation of powers
superior to man" ; Hoffding's conception of it as a conserva-
tion of values, and so on. Leuba sees in this endless attempt
to find a unitary explanation of religion the chief obstacle to
constructing a proper psychology of it, and he has come to
the important conclusion that the various manifestations
and aspects of religion must have been derived from diff-
erent, and presumably disparate, sources. Personally I
regard this conclusion as an unnecessary counsel of despair,
though we might learn from it the wisdom of prefacing any
attempt at generalization by a more patient analysis of the
individual phenomena.

The attempt to translate religious manifestations into
terms of the primary emotions and instincts has not met

192

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

with much better success, probably because the psychology
of the instinctual life is itself so insecurely founded. Fear
has been made to play a central part by many writers, but
evidences of it are present in only certain groups of religious
phenomena, being apparently quite absent in others. Irving
King and others have laid stress on the cultural and social
sources of religion, and Trotter's hint of the connection
between it and the herd instinct should also be mentioned.
The so-called instincts of self-assertiveness and self-
submission evidently play a part in some manifestations.
The connection between religion and sexuality has been
warmly debated, but the discussions of it have been largely
vitiated by the tendency to take up extreme positions.
Leuba, for instance, in his standard text-book on the
subject, makes no reference to the connection, while William
James positively denies that any exists. The evidence for
the connection, however, is too unequivocal to be ignored
and is indeed far 'more extensive than is generally known.
But most advocates of the supposed erotogenesis of religion
have stated their views in much too simplistic terms to
carry conviction.

The last discussion of the psychology of religion held
before this Congress, at the Sixth Meeting that was held at
Geneva in 1909, represented the high- water mark of our
knowledge at that time, and perhaps the furthest point to
which academic psychology was able to take us. Since then,
however, a revolution in our knowledge has taken place, one
which demands attention in considering the problems of
religion. I refer to the increasing realization, primarily due
to the writings of Freud and his school, of the enormous
importance of the unconscious mental life. The view taken
by this school, and supported by a formidable mass of
evidence, is that the primordial and essential part of our
mental life is unconscious, whereas consciousness, the part
which was formerly taken for the whole, is seen to con-

193

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

stitute only a carefully selected portion of this whole. What
was previously regarded as primary elements in our con-
sciousness we now know to be the highly elaborated end-
products of a complicated chain of imperceptible (uncon-
scious) mental processes. Since religious manifestations give
every sign of proceeding from the very depths of the
personality it would not be surprising if the patient elucida-
tion of the processes that go on in these depths, their nature,
strength and interaction, were to throw light on the
mysteries of religion. Freud himself and several of his
followers, including Reik, Roheim, Pfister, Lowenstein,
Kinkel, Levy, Dukes, the present writer and others, have
published a number of detailed studies on various aspects
of religion. Up to the present, however, there has been no
comprehensive presentation of the bearing of these studies
on the psychology of religion as a whole, nor can such a task
be attempted in the short space at my disposal here.
Nevertheless some indication must be offered of the main
principles along which such a presentation would proceed.
Psycho-analysis has called attention to a region which
should logically be investigated before recourse is had to
the more obscure and remote region of the inherited
instincts. I refer to the infantile mind, which is continued
in later life as the unconscious mind and constitutes the
essence of the latter. Both the content and the mode of
functioning of the infantile mind differ widely from those
of the adult conscious one and the greater part of it becomes
buried in later life, "repressed" and inaccessible to con-
sciousness, as the result of powerful forces acting in this
direction. There is the strongest possible tendency to
depreciate the significance of infantile mental processes,
which are felt to be merely "childish", so that any attempt
to correlate them with important adult ones meets with
instinctive incredulity. To take a simple illustration of this.
If one were to correlate the abject fear of supernatural

194

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

agencies that has been experienced so many countless
times, and the fear that can still be experienced of the
awful wrath of God, with the fear that a child may feel
for his father, no one can well appreciate the significance of
this who has not had personal experience, through psycho-
analysis of the unconscious, of how intense the child's dread
of the father can be.

In the past quarter of a century a vast experience has
accumulated from psycho-analytic investigation of the
religious life of individuals, and in addition, as was men-
tioned above, a great number of works have been published
containing psycho-analytic studies of various aspects of
religious beliefs and other phenomena. The outstanding con-
clusion that emerges from all this investigation is that the
religious life represents a dramatization on a cosmic plane of
the emotions^ fears and longings which arose in the child's
relation to his parents. This is a sentence which must remain
without much meaning for those who have not taken
cognizance of the modern study of the unconscious mind,
but it is pregnant for those who have.

The five aspects of the problem of religion enumerated
above may now be commented on in that order.

(i) Relation to a supernatural spiritual order, character-
istically to supernatural beings. The attributes of power
and taboo connected with these, and the varying emotional
attitudes, notably those of dependence, fear, love and
reverence, are all direct reproductions of the child's attitude
towards his parents. The child's sense of the absolute as felt
in its original attitude towards his own importance is, when
it becomes impaired by contact with reality, partly con-
tinued as the anthropocentric view of the universe implicit
in all religions and partly displaced, first on to the parents
and then, when this also fails, on to divine beings; the
earthly father is replaced by the Heavenly Father. The con-
flicts with the parents that necessarily arise during the

'95

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

process of upbringing, the essence of which consists in the
regulation of or interference with the infantile sexuality
(or child's love life, if the phrase be preferred), are for the
greater part unconscious even at the time. They lead to
repressed death wishes against the parents, with a conse-
quent fear of retaliation, and from this comes the familiar
religious impulse to propitiate the spirits of dead ancestors
or other spiritual beings. The accompanying love leads to
the desire for forgiveness, reconciliation, help and succour.

(2) All the emotional problems surrounding death arise,
not from the philosophical contemplation of dead strangers,
but from ambivalence towards the person's loved ones.
Dread of death invariably proves clinically to be the expres-
sion of repressed death wishes against loved objects. It is
further found that the themes of death and castration (or
the equivalent withdrawal of the loved object) are ex-
tremely closely associated and that anxiety concerning
indefinite survival of the personality constantly expresses
the fear of a punitive impotence.

(3) The primal self-love and self-importance of the child,
which more nearly approaches the absolute than any other
experience in life, is commonly displaced on to a selected
portion of the mind called the super-ego, an ideal of what
the ego longs to be as the result of its moral education. The
sense of supreme values, of a rich "meaning" in life, which
plays a cardinal part in all the higher religions, is a typical
manifestation of this striving. It is, of course, related to the
desire to be reconciled with God and to be approved of by
Him.

(4) The constant association of religion with morality is
another aspect of this same feature.

(5) The sense of inadequacy in coping with life, Janet's
"sentiment incompUtude", Freud's "inferiority complex",
may appear in any aspect of life, physically, morally,
intellectually, and so on. Psycho-analysis of the pheno-

196

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

menon, however, reveals a unitary origin, namely in the
sense of sin or guilt aroused in the child in his endeavour to
make all his impulses conform with adult moral standards.
It is thus psychologically comprehensible that all mani-
festations of inadequacy, in whatever sphere, can be allayed
by dealing with their origin by religious means; to be
reconciled with the Father is the same thing as to obtain
assistance from him. It is well known what a central part
the conviction of sin plays in religion; without it, and the
consequent necessity for salvation, the Christian religion,
for instance, would be well-nigh emptied of meaning.

In conclusion I would ask that the simplistic appearance
of the foregoing propositions be not taken as a token of their
nature. It is an inevitable result of the attempt to present
in a few words an exceedingly complicated and novel body
of doctrine.

197

IX

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION 1

I PRESUME I owe the invitation to speak to you on this
topic to the interest aroused by the current series of
Broadcast talks on Science and Religion. 2 In looking
through the list of speakers I was specially struck by one
thing: there is no psychologist among them. Perhaps your
invitation is the result of making the same observation.
Theologians debate with anthropologists, biologists, and
even physicists, but no one mentions the simple fact that
after all religious beliefs and emotions are in themselves
mental phenomena. Whether they are brought about by
mundane or by supernatural agents they are in either case
susceptible to study by those accustomed to investigate
mental phenomena, i.e., psychologists. Moreover, many
such studies have already been carried out, with very
interesting results, as will be known by those who have
access to the various periodicals entirely devoted to the
subject or to the many books by such authors as William
James, Starbuck, Leuba, etc. The first of these studies were
on a purely descriptive plane and had no pretensions to
offering any explanation of the facts observed. Even so,
when it was shown that such familiar phenomena as sudden
religious conversion could be positively correlated with
matters like age, sex, surroundings, previous mental state
of the subject, and so on, it could no longer be maintained
that supernatural agencies were the only ones concerned.

1 Read before the Lotus Club, Oxford University, 22nd November, 1930.
1 The Listener, October-December, 1930.

198

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

From such humble beginnings as this, however, religious
psychology has in the last forty years made great strides
and is now in a position to give some scientific answers to
some of the most fundamental theological problems.

I intend to confine myself here to only a part of this vast
subject, namely to the contributions that psycho-analysis
has made to our understanding the meaning of religions,
and more particularly to that of the Christian one. The first
of them was made in 1908 when Freud called attention to
the psychological resemblances between religious rituals and
the ceremonials of obsessional neurotics, the unconscious
genesis of which he had recently unravelled. The great
differences are of course evident enough, the social nature
of the one as contrasted with the private individualism of
the other, the sense of high value in the one case and of
futile worthlessness in the other. Both are carried out with
the same sense of conscientiousness and with both there is a
dread of pangs of conscience if they are omitted. Both
depend on a renunciation of primitive impulses, sexual or
aggressive. Both are prepared to avoid a feared calamity.
With religious rituals the calamity is evidently a punish-
ment by God, either in this world or more certainly in the
next. If they are carried out successfully then not only will
God refrain from punishing or damning one eternally but
may bless and love one. There is here a difference from the
obsessional ritual, where the person can hope only for the
former of these two benefits. His psychology is based on
repressed hatred of his father, with a consequent fear
of retaliatory punishment, and his rituals symbolize
acts of appeasement or restitution only; love is beyond
him.

This comparison of the religious devotee with an obses-
sional neurotic raises at once two important questions.
What really is the dreaded calamity that has to be warded
off by semi-magical means ? And what is the source of the

199

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

disagreement with the Father or with God that demands
such penance or reconciliation? The remarkable state of
affairs with the obsessional neurotic is not to be accounted
for by any current situation. The man may be in fact on
excellent terms with his father, or he may even not have a
father, yet the neurosis when its apparently unintelligible
manifestations are analysed has the meaning I have just
mentioned a conflict of emotions concerning the subject's
attitude to his father, or rather his idea of a father. The key
to the riddle lies in the words : the unconscious and infancy.
The person has never emancipated himself from emotions
he experienced in infancy, which we have all experienced in
varying degrees of intensity, and which belong to the
unconscious system of the mind quite remote from con-
sciousness.

The conscious mind radiates over a thousand interests
and activities, the mind of the young infant does not extend
far from a few immediate concerns. Its emotions, before
they have been more or less disciplined during growth, are
of a passionate and uncontrolled intensity such as are
seldom met with in later life except in the outbursts of
insanity. They relate essentially to the parents, or whoever
stands in loco parentis, and they are of the opposite kinds.
On the one hand the baby, born without the experience of
frustrated wishes and in consequence of this with a feeling
of omnipotence, soon has to cope with numerous experi-
ences of being thwarted and of being helpless in the face of
them. Its only hope of countering this situation by getting
its wishes gratified, and in that way recapturing some sense
of power, is to appeal to the apparently omnipotent parent.
The omnipotence is thus displaced and an attitude of love
and awe developed towards the parent. This brings with it,
however, the great disadvantage of dependence. All is well
so long as its wishes and the parent's friendly response
coincide, but the awful possibility remains of the latter

200

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

being withdrawn and the situation of helplessness being re-
established, this time without any hope left. The danger of
this is related to the infant's own feelings of resentment,
anger and hostility that are aroused whenever the parent's
response to its needs is not immediate or positive, as must
inevitably happen from time to time. Hostile feelings at that
age are still in terms of the absolute: that is, they are
equivalent to the instant destruction of the hated object,
and this in turn means the disappearance of the person on
which the infant is so dependent. Later on the word
"disappearance" becomes softened into "turning away
from" or "disapproval" on the parent's part, but that is in
itself bad enough. The theme I have just touched on is far
more complex in fact I have for instance not yet men-
tioned the important part played by sexual sensations and
sex jealousy but I would maintain that no psychology of
religion is possible without taking into serious account the
psychological relation of infant to parent.

We cannot get away from the simple facts that God is
commonly called God the Father; that His official repre-
sentatives on earth bear the same title, Pope, Padre, Father,
and so on; that, so we are told, we are all "Children of
God" ; and thus His benevolence, His mercy and loving care
for each of us is just what we all craved for from our own
parent and mostly experienced at least to begin with.
When our own parents' limitations and imperfections begin
to become evident, it is no wonder that those who are un-
able to sustain life without help and who are still dependent
on an outside source, should seek for an all-powerful and
all-loving Person who should stand above all the vexations
of this earth and who should never fail one. Never, that is
to say, as long as one's relation to Him was satisfactory,
one of dutiful love and obedience.

This proviso is all important and indeed contains the key
to any understanding of religion. For why should one's

201 O

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

relation to one's Father, whether earthly or heavenly, not
be satisfactory ? Much of the story of mankind lies in the
answer to that question: the conflict of the generations, the
fight between the new and the old, the struggle between
subordinate and superior, between subject and ruler, and
between the unsuccessful and the successful in life. Unfor-
tunately love and friendliness do not dominate our life,
certainly not exclusively. There are also rebellious and
aggressive tendencies which in the depth of the mind are
more poisonous in their hostility than as a rule we allow
ourselves to become aware of. They are in themselves uncon-
sciously felt to be dangerous, both to oneself and to other
people, and we have developed a "bad conscience" about
them in the hope of thus checking their activity. This is
especially so, and for obvious reasons, when they are ex-
perienced vis-d-vis those whom we most love and on whom
we are also dependent in the first place our parents. The
bad conscience, which can also be described as a sense of
moral unworthiness, leads to all sorts of feelings of inferi-
ority from which few people are altogether exempt. We
come here to the origin of "sin", which may be defined
theologically as disobedience to God's will.

Failure to remedy the discord between oneself and God is
naturally believed to entail terrible consequences. Here the
sadistic phantasies of the infant's unconscious can obtain
free play; the horrors and eternal tortures of hell know no
limits. For obvious reasons the wrath of God is thought
more likely to find expression in the after life than in this
one, so that dread of death, or what Hamlet more accurately
calls "the dread of something after death", has always been
a matter of the greatest concern to mankind. In the broad-
cast symposium Professor Malinowski, the anthropologist,
described the essence of religion in rather intellectualistic
terms as preoccupation with the problem of survival after
death and the desire to ascertain the Divine Purpose in the

202

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

universe. This is the burning question, for both are in
essence one; what one really wants to know about the
Divine Purpose is its intention towards oneself ', how to dis-
cover the way to be well treated in the next world. Then
Professor Huxley, the biologist, strikes a deeper note in
finding the attitude of awe to be the essence of religion.
From this is derived on the one hand love of God, with the
desire to know His will and the sense of mystery that accom-
panies this search, and on the other hand fear, with the
feeling of dependence on unknown powers and the need to
attain some degree of harmony with them. Canon Streeter
holds the distinction between religion and science to be that
the former is concerned with moral values and the desire to
ascertain God's conception of them again the Divine Pur-
pose in slightly different terms. The study of comparative
religion has shown such variety in the results of this search
that he suspects man himself has had a considerable share in
establishing moral ideals, which brings us back to the
psychological problem of the origin of man's ideals and
psychology is after all a branch of science.

The comparison between religion and the obsessional
neurosis, which must have seemed absurdly far-fetched at
first sight, is thus becoming more significant. Both emanate
from the feeling of moral badness due to hostility against
the Father, in the one case the earthly one, in the other
the heavenly one; and both are desperately concerned with
the urgent need of coming to terms with him. The obses*
sional neurotic has the lowlier aim of the two. His com-
plicated ritualistic restitutions have merely the aim, like
that of those contemplated by Johannes Agricola as striving

... to win

If not love like God's love for me,
At least to keep his anger in.

203

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Other forms of neurosis, e.g., hysteria, have more positive
aims, the achievement not only of forgiveness but also of
love, and of course this is the ultimate goal of religious
endeavour.

There are those who do not feel much need of this salva-
tion, whether because of their good conscience or because
they have somehow come to terms with their inner nature.
Such people ask wonderingly "what are we to be saved
from ?" and are still more puzzled on being told that they
are in danger of the wrath of God which will express itself
in the next world in terms of torture, mutilation and
damnation. What sin can be commensurate with such
bloodthirsty treatment ? As I have already mentioned, the
tortures and damnation emanate from the infant's lively
and unrestrained sadistic phantasies and are of the same
nature as his own hostile wishes against his father for which
the punishments are (projected) retaliations. Why is all this
so savage ? Because the essential sin against the father (or
mother according to the sex) originates in the most in-
timate region of the personality in the sexual instinct.
The boy's jealous wish to castrate or kill his rival and so
obtain possession of his mother, with unrestricted access to
her body, has been given the name of CEdipus complex after
the unfortunate hero (mythologically derived from the son
of the Earth-Mother goddess, Demeter) who suffered so
grievously after committing both these sinful acts. There are
of course innumerable ways of expressing these wishes,
various forms of rebellion against authority or the moral
code or of desecration of the holy places (altar, etc.) sacred
to God. But if we bear constantly in mind this profound
(Edipus origin of the sense of sin we shall be in a better
position to understand the various ways in which mankind
has sought to evade its dreaded consequences, i.e., to be
"saved".

The mind has only a very limited capacity for apprehend-

204

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

ing the idea of personal death in its literal meaning of
extinction and bodily disintegration. In its deeper layers
the idea of consciousness being abrogated, as for instance
during sleep or death, always becomes equated with return
to the ante-conscious period of existence, to pre-natal life,
from which waking life may again arise. These womb
phantasies may be either agreeable or horrifying, according
to the associations, innocent or guilty, that have been made
with the idea of the mother's genitals. They are often pro-
jected on a cosmic scale to the picture of the next world,
and they then give us when we awake from the sleep of
death the image of heaven or hell accordingly.

Man seems always to have known that, broadly speaking,
there are only two ways of achieving salvation and of thus
assuring that one's after-life will be one of bliss and not
torment. They are via mother-love and father-love respec-
tively. The former is doubtless the more attractive, but the
latter appears to be the more efficacious. Which is chosen
probably depends on the type of civilization present,
whether light or serious minded, and on whether its pre-
dominant note is matriarchal or patriarchal. In the Near
East, on the confines of Europe and Asia, a number of
religions developed in which the Great Mother played a
central part, and later on in Rome they competed for a time
very seriously with early Christianity. The typical version
of the story they incorporated was that of the Dying God,
the God who fell a victim to malign influences, but whose
body was always found and resuscitated by the Great
Mother. Thus the priests of Cybele, often self-castrated,
would hold a recurrent festival in which on the third day
Attis, her son, would again be brought to life through the
ministrations and intercession of his mother. This gave the
believers the assurance that they would have the same fate,
and the blood of the frenzied priests was held in Roman
days to be more potent to save than the blood of the Lamb

205

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

adored by Christians. Isis of Egypt displayed a similar
beneficence to Serapis-Osiris, periodically restoring him to
life. Many features of her religion are reminiscent of the
Christian ritualism. There was holy water, there were ton-
sured priests (now only symbolically castrated), and the
Goddess herself was known as the "Mother of Tenderness"
and the "Mother of Sorrows" (Mater Dolorosa!). The
believers achieved the assurance of a happy immortality
through identifying themselves with the risen Osiris.

At the other extreme from this were the patriarchal and
monotheistic Jews who repudiated all commerce with god-
desses and sought to come to terms directly with God. By
entering into "covenants" with Him, and obeying His
commandments, they hoped if not for tender love, at least
for a benevolent attitude on His part. While Catholicism
appears to represent a compromise between the two modes
of salvation intercession by the Madonna plays a very
important part in it Protestantism has reverted to the
more patriarchal solution.

There is, however, between the two already mentioned a
third possibility, one in which the Dying God is not simply
a passive agent, being resuscitated by a powerful and tender
Mother-Goddess, but takes an important active part him-
self in the process of salvation. There were adumbrations of
this idea in various Eastern religions, but it was central in
the two that ran such a close race for acceptance in Rome,
Mithraism and Christianity. With the former of these,
characteristically the religion of soldiers, the young Son-
God resolutely opposes the father and becomes the Master
of his own fate. Early in his career he struggled with the
Sun and forced him to do him homage. In the central
ceremony of the Mithraic religion he faces a bull, a typical
father-symbol here representing the Persian deity Ahura-
Mazda and slays him. It is significant that he is repre-
sented as doing this unwillingly, averting his gaze as he

206

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

deals the fatal blow with his knife as if to indicate some
regret for the parricidal deed. After accomplishing it he
ascended to heaven, and doubtless ruled there, whence he
succours those who believe in his heroic powers. There was
also a Eucharist in Mithraism. The fact, however, that
women were excluded from Mithraic ceremonies seems to
have been fatal to the future prospects of the religion when
it had to compete with the more tender and appealing
Christian one.

With Jesus, another son of God, we meet with an almost
exactly opposite solution. So far from defying the Father,
he laid all possible emphasis on submitting oneself to his
will. If this be done whole-heartedly enough, as Jesus him-
self taught by his example, then a state of reconciliation, or
even At-One-Ment, with the Father could be attained.
More than this, one would win his personal love and care.
As with the other Eastern religions, this desirable goal was
to be reached by following the example of the Son-God and
identifying oneself with him as far as possible by "believ-
ing" in him. It was also necessary to identify oneself with
all fellow-believers, brethren and sisters in Christ. This
identification re-establishes the loving harmony of the
primal family situation and abolishes all the jealousy,
rivalry and hostility latent in it.

So far this is familiar ground, but Christianity is an
extraordinarily rich and complex religion which has incor-
porated many diverse elements from earlier ones. To this
feature it probably owes much of its success. Some Chris-
tians, but they are in the minority, are content with the
Eastern form of salvation described earlier. One will be
saved if one adopts the Saviour's attitude of submission to
the Almighty Father and endeavours to follow his example
in obeying the Divine precepts of ethical behaviour. Most
Christians, however, consider that the road to salvation is
harder than this. To begin with, it is necessary that the

207

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

priestly representatives of God perform a ceremony that
symbolizes re-birth; one has to be "born anew in Christ".
In this relic of Mother salvation holy Water, the most
typical accompaniment of birth symbolism, is of course
essential. It is far from being the only relic of the kind in
Christianity. Jesus's gentleness and tenderness, for in-
stance, are among his most prominent features and accord-
ing to our hymns surpass the devotion and tenderness of a
mother to her child.

Nevertheless the great question still arises whether the
primordial sinfulness of mankind is not so facinorous as to
be beyond the powers of an unaided mortal, even a regen-
erate one, to redeem, and it is generally held that Divine
assistance is needed. This grace from above, so Catholics
teach, will co-operate with the believer's own efforts,
although Calvinists hold it to be independent of such
efforts the final state having been predestined long before
the individual's birth, Grace is to be obtained partly by
invoking by prayer the Almighty's mercy, but more effec-
tively through the ceremony of the mass or holy com-
munion. This must have meant originally, as indeed it still
does in the Catholic Church, eating the flesh and blood of
the Saviour, an incorporation which portrays the closest
imaginable identification with him. In the Dionysian
frenzies the worshippers used actually to tear and devour
the raw flesh of an ox or goat who represented the god.
This reinforced the Divine element in man, who had first
been created by Zeus, the father of Dionysius, out of the
Titans who had slain the Son-God, boiled his limbs, devoured
them and had thus incorporated that element. 1 The method
of identification here employed corresponds with infantile
phantasies of devouring a parent and so acquiring strength,
phantasies with which we are very familiar in psycho-

1 For the historical precursors of the Mass see Preserved Smith, A Short
History of Christian Theophagy, 1922.

208

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

analytic work. It no doubt has an ancient history, going
back to the savage custom of killing and eating one's
parents when they get too old to work a primeval form
of inheriting. Doubtless these pious customs have more
sinister sources still in the cannibalistic tendencies of early
man, now for the most part, though by no means entirely,
repressed.

Jesus functioned as a Saviour in yet another way. Those
believing in him may assuage God's wrath at their sins, and
even win His love, not only by folio wing His son's submissive
attitude towards Him and by a mystical union with Him.
For Jesus also performed the tremendous deed of taking of
himself the sins of mankind and by a vicarious sacrifice
propitiated God his Father through in that way expiating
those sins a deed which naturally evokes profound grati-
tude and adoration from those who might otherwise be
damned. We cannot here enter into the ethics of those who
thus divest themselves of moral responsibility, but it is of
interest to recollect both that the scheme of the scapegoat-
god is itself an ancient one and also that to take the blame
for others is a laudable tendency which is to be met with
even in childhood, as is the less desirable, and far more
frequent, one of ascribing the blame to others.

In most Eastern religions the Godhead consists of a
Trinity Father, Mother and Son which appropriately
reproduces the family situation where all the conflicts are
born that religion sets out to alleviate or remedy. For
centuries the Jews, with their pronounced and patriarchal
monotheistic tendencies, strove, with varying success, to
abolish Mother-worship, and it is doubtless because of its
Jewish component that it plays only a veiled part in Chris-
tianity. So, although the idea of the Trinity is maintained,
the third member of it has an ambiguously nebulous char-
acter, in spite of a probable derivation from the Spirit that
moved upon the face of the waters in the beginning of the

209

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

world and who must originally have been a brooding
Mother. In the Spirit's relationship to the Virgin Mary he
unmistakably performs the fertilizing functions of the
Father, and yet the. comfort and tenderness the grace of
the Holy Spirit brings to believers has plainly a maternal
quality.

Ever since Christianity achieved its dominating position
in Europe it has contained two opposed trends over the part
to be played by the feminine element in it. On the one hand
the North of Europe has reverted on the whole to the
Hebrew tradition of patriarchalism with its subordination
of that element. There are even Protestant circles where the
mention of the Virgin Mary is almost anathema, and the
general attitude is to regard her as a purely passive agent
who was rather unfortunately necessary for the purpose of
introducing Jesus to a mundane existence. To denigrate the
mother is one of the most effective ways of denying the
incestuous wishes that lie behind the conflict with the
father, the real sin against him. On the other hand, in
Southern countries, and notably in the Catholic Church, the
status of the Virgin Mary has steadily risen and the
primordial Trinity is not far from being re-established. The
devotion felt for the tenderness of her personality, and her
powers of intercession to procure salvation, do not fall far
short of the attributes of the original Mother Goddess. Her
virginity when bearing Jesus, however, is not so much a
tribute to her purity as a derivation from the son's (Edipus
complex. The common infantile phantasy of one's mother
being virginal signifies a repudiation of any part played by
the father in one's birth the wish to be independent of
him and the jealous distaste felt at the idea of sexual inter-
course between the parents. At the time of Jesus's birth
such phantasies could be generally accepted in adult life;
most gods, heroes, and great men were accorded the privi-
lege of virgin birth. Even in the last century the Catholic

210

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CHRISTIAN RELIGION

Church could proclaim that the Virgin Mary herself had
also been born parthogenetically, emphasizing both her
purity and her remoteness from male activities.

We have been concerned here only with the beliefs of
Christianity, not with the important part it has played in
history. Nor has it been possible to consider the remarkable
ethical and spiritual ideals it has inculcated. As to the
beliefs themselves psycho-analytic investigation of the un-
conscious mental life reveals that they correspond closely
with the phantasies of infantile life, mainly unconscious
ones, concerning the sexual life of one's parents and the
conflicts this gives rise to. The Christian story, an elaborate
attempt to deal on a cosmic plane with these universal con-
flicts, can be fully accounted for on human grounds alone
without the necessity of invoking supernatural interven-
tion. Whether, nevertheless, such intervention took place as
well must remain a matter of opinion, but the story itself
is no proof of it.

211

X

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS 1

To ask why we keep Christmas is to ask a good question,
i.e., one which one does not usually ask because of taking
something for granted. Yet a moment's reflection will show
that there is much worth asking in the question. To begin
with, we might wonder why Christmas is the only one of
the Christian religious festivals that makes any appeal to
people who are not Christians. If someone becomes a sceptic
or atheist he is apt to lose interest in the important Christian
dates; he is likely to forget what ideas are commemorated
by the words Epiphany, Whitsun, Advent or Palm Sunday;
Eastertide loses its emotional significance and becomes
merely a Spring holiday. But Christmas commonly retains
as much meaning as ever. And the same is often true of
people with other religions who live in contact with Chris-
tians. I remember when crossing to America a couple of
years ago in December finding that nearly half of the
passengers were American Jews rushing through in order to
be "home for Christmas" ; and no doubt the same observa-
tion could be made in any other year. There must therefore
be something in the idea of Christmas that appeals to far
more than interest in the date, or even the fact, of Christ's
birth.

Perhaps we ought to begin further back in our inquiry
and raise the question of why mankind keeps festivals at all
on particular dates. It was Sir Isaac Newton, in 1730, who

1 Expanded from an article written by request, in October 1931, in answer
to the question: "Why do we keep Christmas?" for an American magazine,
the name of which I forget perhaps because it did not publish the article !

212

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

*st drew attention to the astronomical associations of
tiristmas and other festivals. Many years ago General
urlong, the distinguished anthropologist, in his famous
ivers of Life, took the trouble to collect the dates of
stivals in all parts of the world and to construct a curve
dicating the times of year in which they most often
xurred. The curve revealed the unmistakable fact that by
r the greatest number of festivals was held at one or other
' the four cardinal points in the earth's journey round the
in. The most favoured times are those of the summer and
inter solstice, towards the end of June and December
ispectively, when the sun begins to wane or wax, when the
ays begin to shorten or lengthen. The times of year next
. favour are those of the spring or autumn equinox,
rwards the end of March or of September. There can be
[tie doubt that man has always tended, sometimes even
msciously so, to associate his aspirations and emotions
ith these fundamental changes relating to the source of all
:e, the sun. It is well known how extensively the idea of the
in has permeated the religions of the world, He being the
.ost visible and striking emblem of both the life-giving and
le life-destroying forces of the universe.

We can further divide the innumerable religious festivals
: the world into two broad groups, happy and unhappy
les or to speak more accurately into cheerful and
>lemn ones. There are festivals of celebration, of rejoicing;
icre are occasions of sheer merriment and they have at
mes passed over into bacchanalian orgies. Christmas plainly
slongs to this group. On the other hand there are festivals
hich mark man's periodic need to search his heart, to
take a serious review of his position in the Universe or to
uestion his purpose in life and take a strict account with
imself. The former group indicate moods of easy con-
:ience, the latter of uneasy conscience.

To get back to the particular festival of Christmas. Before

213

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

trying to ascertain what it stands for it is necessary to know
something of its historical background. Literally, of course,
it signifies the date of Christ's birthday. But actually we
have no knowledge of what time of the year that fell on,
and even the year itself is uncertain, so there must have
been some other reason for choosing a particular day on
which to celebrate it. In spite of hints in the New Testament
that the birth took place at the beginning of the Jewish
New Year, i.e., at about the time of the autumn equinox,
there was in early Christian times a number of sects who
proclaimed the spring equinox as the most suitable date.
Most Christians, however, seem at first to have regarded
the matter of His physical birth as too mundane or even
desecrating a thought to dwell on; in A.D. 245, for instance,
Origen declared it to be a sin even to think of celebrating
the birthday of Christ "as if he were a King Pharaoh". They
confined their attention to the date when the Holy Spirit
took possession of Him; that was His real Divine birth.
This moment they regarded as the occasion of His baptism,
and to commemorate it they chose the date of 6th January,
now called Epiphany. We do not know why they chose that
date, but it was one when many festivals were held in the
Ancient World probably on astronomical grounds, it
being the first day on which the morning hours begin to
lengthen. Epiphany and Baptism were for many centuries
closely associated. By the fourth century the date of
6th January was universally accepted in the Eastern World
as the time to celebrate the birth of Christ, whether the
human or the divine one, and, in the oldest Christian
nation, (the Armenian), that is still the date adhered to.

The theological controversies on the nature of Christ
decided, however, that His divinity began at birth, so that
attention was directed there. Discarding some earlier
forgeries we can say that the first authentic date when
Christmas Day was recorded in connection with the physical

214

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

birth of Christ was A.D. 354. The matter seems to have been
settled in A.D. 329 at a Council known by the name of
Dionysius the little. In A.D. 400 an Imperial rescript ordered
all theatres to be closed on that day (as well as at Epiphany
and Easter), and in the course of the fifth century 25th
December was firmly established in both East and West as
the proper time to celebrate the anniversary of Christ.

The reasons why the festival was established at all, and
why that particular date was selected for the purpose, are
both interesting and complex. A Syrian writer of the period
(a Christian) is quoted for the following frank description
of the motives. "The reason why the fathers transferred the
celebration of 6th January to 25th December was this.
It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same
25th December the birthday of the Sun, at which they
kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and
festivities the Christians also took part. Accordingly when
the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had
a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved
that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day."
This political reason had of course to be denied by the
Church, and both St. Augustine and the Pope Leo the Great
found it necessary to rebuke Christians for still associating
Christmas with the rebirth of the Sun. The fact remains
that the date had already been established in innumerable
pagan religions in just this sense. The 25th December was
the birthday of many a Persian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and
even Teutonic Sun-God. And the decision was in line with
the general syncretizing activities of the Church in the early
centuries when it was combating paganism: it cannot be
coincidence that to quote a few examples the date of
Easter coincides with the similar celebration of the Phry-
gian god Attis (so popular in Rome) at the vernal equinox;
that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August
has replaced the festival of the goddess Diana; the festival

215

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

of St. George in April has replaced the ancient festival of
the goddess Pales (one which the Romans later combined
with that of Dea Roma) ; that the festival of St. John the
Baptist in June has succeeded to the water festivals of
Adonis in midsummer; that the feast of All Souls in Novem-
ber continues the Keltic Feast of the Dead at that time
(the beginning of their New Year), and so on.

The matter was, however, a good deal more complex than
the Syrian writer supposed, and can be elucidated only by
considering the life-and-death struggle that Christianity
was going through in the first three or four centuries in
Rome. When faith in the orthodox Roman religion began to
wane a number of competing Oriental ones crowded in to
secure the succession, one of which was the Christian one.
The general characteristic of them was the theme of a
young Saviour-God who dies, either periodically or once for
all, and thereby assures the eternal salvation (from the
wrath of the Almighty) of those who believe in him. The
series included Attis, Osiris, Adonis, Mithra, and Jesus
himself. With all of them except the last two mentioned
the belief in a powerful Mother Goddess, whose help secured
the reassuring Resurrection of the dying God, played an
important part. And it was just those two that were ahead
in the struggle for general acceptance, the only two,
incidentally, in which the young God died only once and
afterwards reigned in heaven. There is little doubt that
Mithraism, the religion especially of the army, was the
most dangerous rival to Christianity, and the issue of the
conflict between the two faiths appears for a time to have
hung in the balance. There was much similarity in their
beliefs, rituals and moral aspirations: 1 virginity, baptism,
holy communion, purity, etc. But Mithraism had one
serious weakness, on which the Christians seized and

1 Kipling, in his The Church that was at Antioch (Limits and Renewals)
equates in a vivid fashion the moral standards of the two religions.

2l6

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

thereby ensured their ultimate success. Its attitude and
beliefs were exclusively masculine. In its ritual the young
God took up the challenge of the wrathful father, slew him
and reigned in his stead, whereas in Christianity he submits
in a more feminine fashion to the will of the Father and by
sacrificing himself assuages His wrath. Consistently with
this solution Mithraism made the conflict one entirely
between two males; there was no feminine element, no
goddess, in its theology, and women were excluded from its
worship. Christianity here saw its chance and incorporated
from the other religions the element that had been missing
in both itself and Mithraism. Isis, Cybele, Rhea, Astarte
and the rest began a new lease of life. Mary, who had been
little but the necessary vehicle for the begetting of a son,
was rapidly raised in status and from being the Mother of
God was given in the fourth century the exalted title of
Queen of Heaven. Her virginal conception, the usual belief
then attaching to the birth of heroes and gods, had long
been established. From then on the increasing Mariolatry
demanded that more attention be paid, not only to her
intercessory and saving powers, but especially to her
maternal role. Mother and Infant, resembling Isis and
Horus, began to play a more central part in Christianity, as
it still does in Roman Catholicism, so that the circum-
stances of the birth, including its date and the appropriate
festival, assumed a cardinal importance. One might even
wonder whether Christianity would have survived had it not
instituted the festival of Christmas with all that it sig-
nified!

In the crisis the Roman Christians would not have been
long in doubt about choosing the actual date. It was indeed
dictated by the situation. In the Julian calendar 25th De-
cember was reckoned as the winter solstice and hence as
the Nativity of the Sun when the day begins to lengthen
and the power of the sun to increase. In Eastern countries

217 p

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the pagan celebrants of the Nativity had retired to inner
shrines or caves, from which at midnight they issued with
cries of "The Virgin has brought forth! The light is wax-
ing!" The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by
the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter
solstice, they exhibited to the worshippers. The Virgin who
thus bore a son on that day was of course the great Oriental
Mother-Goddess, who had many forms and names in
different countries. Mithra after conquering the sun had
become a Sun-God himself with the title of Solus Invictus,
and his festival, the Mithrakana, was appropriately cele-
brated on 25th December. If, therefore, the Christians had
to compete with such a formidable rival they had to assert
that it was their God who had been born on that significant
date, and surely of a Heavenly Virgin.

From the vast importance of the sun in earlier days one
might suppose that man was anxiously concerned lest he
might fail them, since it was evident that without his heat
and light life could not go on. This might occasionally have
been so, to judge by the anxiety displayed during an eclipse
and the human efforts (tom-toms, etc.) made to assist him
in his fight with the monster apparently swallowing him.
But I am persuaded that the case was really otherwise, and
that the sun was on the contrary much more a source of
security. One must remember that, in the East particularly,
celestial phenomena were observed with astonishing accur-
acy, and that the motions of the stars and planets were
known in great detail; astronomy was in fact the first of the
sciences. Those people knew perfectly well that the sun
would wax after 25th December just as surely as he would
wane before then and that day would infallibly follow night.
Uncertain human happenings could therefore be referred to
his activities as a means of obtaining reassurance. We still
say, as an expression of the utmost certainty, "It is as sure
as that the sun will rise to-morrow." The sun, therefore,

218

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

belonged to the external absolutes of the universe, like
God, and human uncertainties that could be brought into
association with him, or better still identification, would to
that extent be dispelled.

Comparative anthropology has clearly shown that man
has always tended to identify the changes in the sun's
apparent powers with the most vital of his own activities.
The waxing young sun of spring brings times for confident
rejoicing which culminate in the mad triumph of Mid-
summer Eve, the German's Johannisnacht. Then the bon-
fires shoot upward and proclaim the apothegm of human
and divine power. How wise were the Fathers of the
Revolution to choose the beginning of July to declare their
independence and thus provide a whole nation with the
opportunity of perpetuating man's delight in the crackling
of fire at that time of the year! On the other hand, the
diminishing strength of the sun arouses by association the
deep fears man always nurses of his own failing powers, of
impotence, old age, and death with the terrors of what
may follow this. The re-birth of the sun, therefore, has often
been the greatest reassurance he can receive of eternal hope,
always provided and that was vital that he was identi-
fied with the Deity. That a God, however powerful, should
periodically, (most often annually), die, to be constantly
re-born, is the central theme of many religions. It is fitting
that this re-birth should take place on what, according to
Bede, the pagan Anglo-Saxons called "Mother-Night",
i.e., Christmas Eve, the date from which their new year
commenced. The Sun and the God may die, but they will
surely be eternally re-born, so all is well.

The most natural expression of the re-birth idea is the
association with a new-born babe, and to Christians it is
the birth of the babe Jesus that is the central emblem of all
that Christmas stands for. In the Roman Catholic Church,
in particular, there is no moment of the year in which the

219

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Madonna and Babe are more adored; they then occupy the
centre of interest to the exclusion of all other theological
preoccupations. In Catholic countries Christmas is little
else ; the more mundane accompaniments and ceremonies of
Northern Christmases are postponed to another date.

The feeling, however, that Christmas is in some deep
sense a pagan festival has evinced itself with a strange per-
sistence throughout the ages. The Western Church was
responsible for its incorporation in the Christian religion,
and the Eastern Church for long protested against what
they regarded as a pagan innovation. Behind this word
"pagan" surely lies the idea of Mother-Goddess worship,
the attraction of which so often seduced the patriarchal
monotheistic Hebrews and indeed the Christian Church
itself. It is perhaps fundamentally what Protestantism
protested against, following the Hebrew prophets. Our own
Puritans have felt very strongly on the matter, and an Act
of Parliament in 1644 forbade the celebration of Christmas
as being a heathen festival, until the Merry Monarch once
more sanctioned it. To this day many Protestant sects,
notably in Scotland, look distinctly askance at Christmas
as being something alien to the pure faith. Ever since the
Reformation this attitude of suspicion has connected
Christmas with what has often been called the "paganism"
of the Roman Catholic Church. An amusing example is
recorded of a fanatical member of Parliament moving that,
in order to eliminate any association with the Mass, the
word itself be purified by being changed to Christ-tide; by
way of answer, however, he was exhorted to initiate the
change by altering his own name from Thomas Massey
Massey to Thotide Tidey Tidey!

To return to the concept of the sacrificial God. It is
probable that this was preceded by the custom of sacrificing
a king from time to time, either when he grew old or even,
as Frazer has expounded in his Golden Bough, annually.

220

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

However much such a king may have acquiesced in the
proceeding, sharing the belief of his people that it would
accrue to the good of the community, it was inevitable that
he should also feel some objection to it; so it was not
surprising that an alternative procedure should be sought
for. Two were found. One was to displace his majesty to
the skies in the form either of a God like Adonis or an
actual Sun-God. That the Sun should decline almost to
death every year and then arise refreshed in his glory and
strength was a solution satisfying to all concerned and was a
relatively innocent form of regicide (i.e., parricide). The
other, and perhaps more obvious, solution was to provide a
substitute, a mock king. Here we touch on the vast theme
of the scapegoat in mythology. In Babylonia, for example,
the king originally had to die at the end of his year's rule,
ostensibly so as to go and help the God Marduk in his
periodical struggle with the monsters of chaos in the regions
below, but after a time a criminal was set up for a few days
as a "mock king" and then executed in the king's stead.
The periodical rebellion against authority (ultimately the
Father) implied in the ceremony is attested by the general
licence of the rejoicings and by the curious reversal of
slaves and masters so characteristic of the Roman Saturn-
alia (i5th December to 1st January) and before that the
Persian Sacaea and the Babylonian Zagmuk festivals.
Relics of the mock king idea have persisted into historical
times. In the early centuries of our era the Roman soldiers
stationed in the Balkans had the custom of choosing by lot
one of their number to preside over the Saturnalia as king
of the revels. After he was feted and boisterously paid court
to he had to complete his career by standing at the altar
and killing himself. St. Dasius is said to have achieved his
fame (and martyrdom) by refusing to play this part on the
ground of its being a pagan custom. In parts of central
Europe a troupe of masqueraders are still headed by a "fool"

221

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

or "wild man" who leads their carol singing, but with less
lethal results than formerly. In the Middle Ages the "Feast
of Fools" was similarly presided over by someone who was
given the various titles of "Lord of Misrule", "Abbot of
Unreason", "King of the Bean", etc., and who reigned from
All Hallows' Eve till Christmas. His position was abrogated
in Scotland by Act of Parliament in 1555. A mock service
was held in the Church, with an imitation Mass, robes were
worn inside out and music sheets held upside down a
general reversal very reminiscent of the Satanic Black Mass
and like that indicating a violent reaction against divine
authority. The only trace left of it all nowadays is the
licence of kissing anyone encountered under the mistletoe,
as part of the jollification of a Merry Christmas.

Perhaps the last emblem of the sacrificed god or king was
the ceremony of the boar's head at the Christmas banquet,
thus turning it into a totemistic feast. For the boar, sacred
to the God Frey in the north and to others in the East, is
one of the patriarchal symbols in the unconscious ; in his
parricidal ritual Mithra slew sometimes a bull, sometimes a
boar. And he was treated as a royal personage, his entry to
the banqueting hall being preceded by a flourish of trumpets
and similar rituals. In the Balkans and in Scandinavia
cakes or loaves in the form of a pig are still sold at Christ-
mas, reminding the anthropologist how long the impulse
to cannibalistic parricide persists in the folklore of the
people.

The many other constituents of the Christmas festival
accord with its significance as just described. Some date
from Rome, but more have been added as Christianity
advanced northward and in doing so incorporated pre-
existing customs and rituals. Some of them have just been
mentioned. Others are the Yule log, cut down by a young
man and burned ceremoniously to rekindle the sun; holly
and evergreens to show that there is still life in nature; the

222

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS

Christmas tree, which was added only in the seventeenth
century but which has an ancient tradition from the days
of tree worship (may trees, etc.); the Christmas candles
which replace the old Feast of Lights. All life will surely
be somehow renewed and one need not fear extinction.

It is hard to determine how and when Christmas became
so predominantly the children's festival it now is at least
in Northern countries. The birth of a babe is, it is true, its
central feature, and in this connection it is interesting that
to receive a present which is what Christmas means to
children is in the unconscious mind always associated with
the idea of the birth of a baby the primordial gift par
excellence. Oddly enough, in Catholic countries this custom
is usually postponed to ist January, such as with the
French etrennes on the jour de Van. The giver, Father
Christmas evidently Father Time himself has in the past
century got fused with the figure of St. Nicholas, the
Archbishop of Myra, the children's saint, famous for his
habit of giving presents; and Santa Klaus the American
corruption of the Dutch Colonists' San Nicolaas is now his
accepted name in all English-speaking countries. In
Germany he was identified, as Knecht Rupprecht, with
Odin himself, the god who sacrificed himself by hanging on
a tree, his side pierced by a spear, for nine days; and so
St. Nicholas wears his broad-brimmed hat and rides his
white horse. In Holland hay has to be put out for the white
horse on 6th December, St. Nicholas's own Day; on this
day also Perchta, the companion of Odin, comes to inspect
households to see if they have been properly managed.

Historically expressed, the festival of Christmas is thus
a fusion of many strains of pagan customs and beliefs, but
one which Christianity has inspired with a fresh spiritual
significance. Psychologically it represents the ideal of
resolving all family discord in a happy reunion, and to this
it owes its perennial attraction. These two points of view

223

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

are seen to be identical when one remembers that the
ultimate significance of all religions is the attempted solu-
tion on a cosmic stage of the loves and hatreds that take
their source in the complicated relations of children and
parents.

224

XI
RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1

RATIONALISM and Psycho- Analysis would appear at first
sight to have so much in common that the most instructive
way I can find to introduce what I have to say in this
lecture is to begin by remarking on the curious fact that in
practice they prove to put it mildly to be distinctly
unsympathetic to each other.

Freedom of thought is a necessary prerequisite of psycho-
analytic work, as indeed of all scientific work. Knowing,
however, that this prerequisite is not always to be reckoned
with, psycho-analysts aim at furthering freedom of thought
by countering in certain ways various emotional obstacles,
which we term "resistances", some of which are very
familiar to you under such terms as prejudices, super-
stitions and the like. The Rationalist cause, in its turn, is
closely akin to what may be called the Free Thought move-
ment. Let me quote your official definition, laid down by
F. J. Gould in 1899: "Rationalism may be defined as the
mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy
of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy
and ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all
arbitrary assumptions or authority." You would probably
not quarrel much with the Oxford Dictionary definition of
Rationalism as "the principle of regarding reason as the
chief or only guide in matters of religion". We note at once
two differences. Rationalism and Psycho-Analysis have
different ways of achieving freedom of thought, and

1 Read before the Glasgow Rationalist Press Association, 29th November,
1936, and the Rationalist Press Association, London, 5th January, 1937.

225

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Rationalism also differs in concentrating on one sphere on
what is commonly called the spiritual side of man, namely
religion and ethics. Nevertheless the conception of Freedom
of Thought in general is fundamental to both. With aims
apparently so similar, therefore, it may seem strange how
little co-operation there has ever been between the two.

One might not unfairly describe the attitude of most
psycho-analysts to Rationalism as one of cold criticism,
any benevolent approval they might feel on general
grounds being tempered by considerable scepticism. The
attitude of Rationalists to Psycho- Analysis, on the other
side, appears to be even cooler and, so far as it has come to
public expression, to be definitely antagonistic. We have
thus a very interesting, and in a sense paradoxical, problem
before us, and I intend to make it the main theme of this
lecture in the hope of throwing some light on it and perhaps
clearing up some misunderstandings.

It will be safer if I begin by not assuming any knowledge
of psycho-analysis, but by explaining shortly what it is.
Psycho-Analysis consists primarily in a method of investi-
gation, a particular technique devised by Freud for explor-
ing the deeper and more hidden layers of the mind, layers
otherwise inaccessible whose existence was only in small
part previously suspected. It is concerned especially with
studying the influence of the Unconscious, as these deeper
layers are nowadays called, on the conscious mind and on
behaviour. In a larger sense psycho-analysis also means the
findings that have been made by the use of this method and
whatever theory of the mind that seems to yield itself in the
endeavour to codify these findings. It is in short a branch
of science, using the principles, methods and premisses of
science and none other whatsoever. It is our contention that
the conclusions we have reached concerning the nature of
the mind, however strange they may appear, emerge from
scientific investigation alone and have not been imported

226

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

from elsewhere least of all from any a priori assumptions.
So far, therefore, we have merely intensified the puzzle of
our problem, since Rationalism has always been an ardent
supporter of scientific research.

Let me select a couple of the conclusions arrived at in the
course of psycho-analytic work, on the subject of Free Will
and Evolution respectively. There is a very formidable case
to be made out from a philosophical point of view in favour
of the existence of Free Will, but I am concerned here only
with certain psychological aspects of the problem. There is
also the important observation that almost all people have
an intense personal conviction that they as individuals
possess Free Will. This belief has played an essential part
in most religions, especially those where the ethical aspects
are predominant. The apparent contradiction between it
and the belief in Divine omniscience has never been satis-
factorily resolved and forms a staple topic of theological
discussion. Some varieties of Christianity, e.g., the Calvin-
istic, have on this ground subordinated the former belief to
the latter. However all this may be, I take it that Rational-
ists tend to discard belief in the existence of Free Will as
interfering with their preference for a mechanistic, or even
materialistic, view of the Universe. If this is so it is open to
them to acquire support for their attitude in the matter
from certain findings of psycho-analysis. Naturally any
minute investigation into the problems of cause and effect
may be expected to reduce the sphere in which non-specific
agencies, such as Free Will, are said to operate: the narrow-
ing down of Vitalism by modern physiology is a case in
point. In the present matter, however, Psycho-Analysis has
not only done this: it has added two considerations of
fundamental importance. By its exploration of the Uncon-
scious it has constantly been able to show how various
mental processes, such as decisions in behaviour, specific
interests, ethical attitudes and so on, in regard to which no

227

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

determining factor may be visible, have nevertheless been
powerfully influenced and perhaps altogether determined
by unconscious factors of which the individual was
entirely unaware. These observations, the truth of which is
confirmed every day, have inevitably had the effect of
narrowing the field of Free Will and make it easier for those
so inclined to deny its existence altogether.

The second consideration I alluded to is that psycho-
analysis has been able to throw some light on the meaning
of the belief itself and to make more intelligible why the
conviction of Free Will is so strong and so important to the
personality. It is part of the general striving of the person-
ality for freedom. Incidentally, I may remark here that the
driving force behind the Rationalist movement is pretty
evidently, and indeed avowedly, the desire to achieve free-
dom from constraint. It is at first sight paradoxical that a
body of people moved by a passionate desire for freedom
should at the same time be eager to renounce such a
supreme expression of it as the belief in Free Will, but
perhaps we can understand it better if we contrast them
with religious believers. The latter retain the belief in
question by subordinating their personality to an external
power the Deity whereas Rationalists in their endeavour
to replace the latter by human reason are able to identify
Reason with their own personality and thus to dispense
with the individual conviction of Free Will.

The connection between these remarks and the second
theme I mentioned, namely Evolution, is probably not very
evident. Let me start afresh. As you doubtless know,
psycho-analysis took its departure from the study of a
curious and widespread class of phenomena the common
feature of which is inefficiency in mental functioning. I
refer to neurotic symptoms and what may be called every-
day slips slips of the tongue or pen, forgetting, mislaying,
and the like; in a sense dreams might also be included here.

228

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

For these phenomena science had previously had the
"explanation" that they were either completely meaning-
less, i.e., were effects without causes, or else the result of
some hypothetical maladjustment in brain functioning. It
was reserved for Freud to demonstrate that they all had a
precise signification and motivation. The reason why this
had been previously unknown was that the causative
factors operated in a region of the mind called the "uncon-
scious", one which although its existence was often
surmised was inaccessible to scientific examination until
Freud discovered a method to investigate it. The concept of
unconscious mental processes has been sometimes objected
to as being a contradiction, the argument being that mental
means conscious and nothing else. This both drags in the red
herring about mind and body, thus confusing the issue, and
also begs the question. What psycho-analysis asserts is that
processes of the same order as those we call mental, wishes,
fears, and so on, can occur without one's being conscious of
them and so are conveniently called unconscious mental
processes. What their nature is, and how they are related to
physiological processes, are matters irrelevant to the present
topic.

Freud found that existence of the unconscious is bound
up with a process called repression, i.e., the keeping from
consciousness of mental processes incompatible on moral,
aesthetic, or other grounds with it. This division dates
from infancy, and the processes operative in the unconscious
represent either the persistence of infantile ones or deriva-
tions from them. With neurotic symptoms, and other
failures in normal functioning, the operative processes have
been little changed from infancy, so that the study of them
provides a unique opportunity for ascertaining the earliest
stages in mental development stages so primitive as to
show great similarity not only among normal as well as
neurotic but among all races of mankind; incidentally, one

229

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

may mention that samples from all these races have now
been examined from this point of view.

Psycho-Analysis is thus essentially a genetic study. It
follows in detail the development of mental processes from
the most primitive beginnings to their most sophisticated
manifestations. Furthermore, the agencies at work are all
conceived of biologically, in terms of innate instincts. With
this genetic study of the development of the mind from
biological instincts, all of which are common to man and
other animals, Freud has filled in the gap in the theory of
human evolution which Darwin had perforce to leave. The
opponents of the doctrine of evolution have always been
able to make a comfortable reservation concerning the mind
or soul of man, to claim a privileged status for it in the
universe, one well deserving for its creation a special act of
interposition on the part of Providence. One result of
psycho-analysis is that such reservation will be less easy to
make and such interposition less needful to postulate.

This leads us on to the matter of Religion in general, one
with which both Rationalism and Psycho-Analysis have to
do. Before developing this theme, however, I should like to
say a few words on the more general one of the relationship
between Science and Religion.

Until psychology appeared on the scene, within the last
few years only, this relationship has mainly concerned the
more intellectual, cosmological and theological aspects of
Religion. It is hard to estimate the relative importance of
these aspects, but in my opinion Religion as a whole con-
tains much more significant ones than them, and I feel sure
that those Rationalists err who tend to take the part for the
whole. They are, however, right in their contention that
there is an inevitable conflict between science and those
aspects of Religion, and further that their influence has had
a deterrent effect on the progress of Science. It is surely
evident that if one is brought up to answer as an act of piety

230

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

such questions as "why has the heart four chambers?"
"why does an epidemic of plague occur in this year and not
in that ?" "why is the moon at the full only once a month ?"
and so on by the simple statement that it is because God
has so willed it, then any further inquiry is at once stifled
as both superfluous and impious. Wherever religious feeling
chooses to concentrate on any of these mundane questions
and make a test case of it, as has happened over and over
again in history, then a series of events regularly happens.
The scientific investigators who dare to prosecute their
inquiries in the face of the ban are assailed as atheists in
spite of their being for the most part themselves religiously-
minded; they produce their non-theological explanation of
the phenomena in question; and more or less slowly the
Church accepts the explanation and no longer feels that the
case was a vital religious issue. These recurrent happenings
naturally began in the fields of astronomy and physics,
since they were the more easily investigated aspects of
nature. When Copernicus and Newton showed that the
movements of the solar system could be correlated with
simple mathematical statements and with the familiar
processes of gravitation, it became unnecessary to postulate
an immediate interposition of the Deity to account for the
observed facts. When a little over a century ago Wohler
manufactured a substance, urea, which previously had been
inseparably connected with vital processes, he dealt the
first blow at the fundamental distinction so important to
theologians between animate and inanimate matter. When
the evolutionary biologists, culminating in Darwin, showed
that man's body was, in spite of its differences, of the same
order as that of other animals and in all probability derived
from them, then man's pride was badly wounded at the
thought that it was no longer necessary to invoke an act of
special Divine creation to account for his existence on the
earth.

231

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Although such events as these might be said to displace
God to a greater distance from man by rendering unneces-
sary the idea of miraculous interposition on His part, two
things prevented the religiously-minded from having their
faith profoundly disturbed thereby. One was and this was
decisive that they felt God to be as near as ever. The other
was that Science, despite Keats's view to the contrary, does
not destroy the sense of wonder and awe. In many ways,
indeed, Science heightens this by displaying the orderly and
grandiose scale of the way in which things work in the
universe. A theist with a capacity for imagination can feel
more uplifted, even if less flattered, by the reflection that
the creation of man has proceeded by a more remarkable,
though more devious, fashion than he had previously sup-
posed. The primitive belief in the miraculous is replaced by
the more mature and profound sense of wonder.

Science, however, cannot stop at the intellectual aspects
of Religion, and in the last forty or fifty years it has taken
an objective interest in other aspects also. William James
has studied the nature of the psychological harmony in-
duced by the event of religious conversion, and other
psychologists have correlated the intensity of religious
phenomena with many individual and environmental
factors. Any searching investigation of the human mind,
such as psycho-analysis, must concern itself with such a
fundamental constituent of it as Religion is, especially since
it is so often involved in neurotic conflicts. It was soon
found, as indeed might have been expected, that the
sources of religious feeling arise very early in the course of
mental development, though we see no reason for according
it, as some writers have done, the status of a biological
instinct which its universality might at first sight appear to
demand. Thinkers have drawn two opposite conclusions
from this feature of universality, a feature the existence of
which psycho-analysis with few exceptions confirms. Some

232

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

have inferred that it shows the existence of a supernatural
world which the mind more or less clearly perceives. Others
have inferred that it indicates a prevalent quality in the
mind itself, although hitherto only very vague and general
guesses have been made about the nature of this quality.
In other words, some infer from it an external source of
religion, others an internal. The discoveries of psycho-
analysis are necessarily concerned with the latter, since
it is not in a position to throw any light on the former.
They have added greatly to the psychology of religious
feeling, a study which has of course already been under-
taken from several points of view. If the sources of religious
feelings are traced to their origins in the unconscious mind
it will be found that they are there always interwoven with
the child's conflicting emotions about his parents. Here I
touch on a theme so vast that it could not be expounded in
any single volume or series of lectures. It would not be a
gross exaggeration to say that psycho-analysis is essentially
a detailed study of the relations between a child and his
parents. At the moment I can only assert in a single sen-
tence that the conflicting emotions in question are far more
complex, and far more important for the whole mental
development, than can easily be imagined. Returning to the
matter of religion, we should say that we find all the
numerous mental attitudes that man has at different times
displayed towards his various gods love, hate, dread,
adoration, awe, yearning, helplessness, exaltation to be
without exception copies or derivatives of corresponding
feelings he has at an earlier age experienced, consciously or
unconsciously, towards his parents or their substitutes.
When the Christian says we are all children of one Father
he is using a metaphorical parallel, but to the psycho-
analyst he is indicating a truly genetic description of his
belief. We can go even further and assert that the precise
ways by which these earlier feelings become translated on

233 R

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

to the plane of Religion are also fairly well understood. It is
therefore hard to avoid the conclusion that even if there
were no Divine Being in reality the human mind is so con-
stituted that it would inevitably build such a conception
together with the characteristic attitudes accompanying it.

This is a tremendous conclusion, and one would have ex-
pected Rationalists to have exploited it pretty extensively.
It surprises me that they have not. Yet I think the scien-
tifically-minded should be careful not to be carried away
beyond the actual evidence before us. To infer that a given
belief has a subjective origin is not the same thing as to say
it is therefore untrue objectively. That is quite another
matter, not to be confounded with the first one. On the
contrary, our analytical experience of subjective beliefs is
that they have an uncanny way of piercing through to an
external reality. When, for instance, a madman is for sub-
jective reasons possessed of the idea that someone wishes his
destruction or that his wife is disloyal to him he may have
reached these ideas on purely internal grounds, but they
are not always untrue in fact. Whether they are or are not
has to be determined by quite another type of investigation.
So to say that men must believe in the existence of God for
purely internal reasons, reasons which would be operative
whether He existed or not, is not the same as asserting that
therefore God does not exist. There are those who argue
thus, but in my opinion they are not reasoning scientifically
in so doing. The question is not one for any scientific
specialist as such, but for the philosophic thinker, if anyone.

The Christian Church learned in time, not only to adapt
itself to, but even to assimilate, the teachings of Coper-
nicus and Darwin, although these flatly contradicted some
of its most important doctrines. I expect that it will be able
to do the same with the teachings of Freud. The view will
probably be put forward that the grandeur of God is more
fully brought to expression by recognizing the extraord-

234

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

inarily complex one might even say subtle harmony of
His works than by upholding the primitive ideas of His
particulate intrusion into their details.

Let us now review the situation so far. Rationalism and
Psycho-Analysis both profess adherence to the principles of
scientific method and to the value of free thought. They
both find reasons for criticizing the doctrine of Free Will
and for accepting the theory of natural evolution. They
both consider that human factors are adequate to account
for the genesis of religious beliefs. Rationalism is apt to take
the further step of declaring that these do not correspond
with any external reality. There would thus appear to be a
great deal of common ground between Rationalism and
Psycho-Analysis and we recur to our original question con-
cerning the manifest lack of sympathy between them.

I can naturally say more about this matter from the side
of the Psycho-Analyst, but I will first state what I perceive
of the Rationalist's attitude. He shares of course the
general doubt 'about psycho-analysis, the feeling that its
conclusions are exaggerated and improbable. I seem to have
noted two special features in the criticisms passed by
Rationalist writers, and they are of considerable interest.
We have been very accustomed to the epithet of "gross
materialism"; a variety of abusive adjectives may be
attached to it, of which "carnal" and "earthy" are the
mildest. This is perhaps not very surprising when one
remembers the work psycho-analysis has done on the
animal nature of man and its conclusions that many of his
"higher" attributes are derived from "lowly" impulses,
such as the sexual ones. It is not very hard to distort
psycho-analytic work into a picture of latitudinarian lewd-
ness or of mundane coarseness ; some people feel about it, as
Keats did about physics and the rainbow, that it robs the
soul of man of all its fineness and spirituality. We have, as
I say, been so accustomed to this sort of un-understanding

23$

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

abuse that the news of certain rationalists taking just the
opposite view came with a certain sense of novelty. Here we
found ourselves, to our equal bewilderment, assailed as
being merely another variety of spiritualist who under the
guise of the word "psychological" tried to undo the progress
of biology and physical medicine by reverting to ideological
conceptions about the immaterial. So much has the simple
word "psychical" been debased by that unfortunate phrase
"psychical research" that it seems hard for many people to
dissociate it from the supernatural, and to such people
Freud's conception of the psyche gets at once confounded
with theological conceptions of the soul. To this I would
say in reply that those who are guilty of this misunder-
standing seem to be still so affected by theological pre-
occupations as to find it hard to conceive of a scientific
attitude towards mental phenomena. And by this term I
simply mean the phenomena which we discuss in a language
called mental using words like "grief", "distress",
"thoughts", etc. for the very good reason that we have
as yet no other language in which to discuss them. In doing
so no particular system of philosophy, idealistic, parallel-
istic, or materialistic, is implied. Our work is purely
scientific, not philosophical. Speaking for myself only,
however, (and in no way committing psycho-analysis itself
as a branch of study), I will say freely that I know of no
reason for believing that mental phenomena can occur
anywhere apart from bodily ones, and furthermore I see no
reason to believe that such an entity as "mind" exists at
all, whether attached to the body or not. If the time comes
when we can correlate our mental language with descrip-
tions of neurotic processes in the cerebrum I should expect
to find that the two modes of the description are merely
different languages depicting the same processes. So much
for the supposed "spiritualism" of psycho-analysis!

A second, perhaps less characteristic, feature is the dis-

236

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

taste many rationalist writers have evinced for the evi-
dently irrational modes of thought which are so much the
concern of the psycho-analyst. When we describe what we
find in the unconscious mind, its illogicalities, its self-
contradictions, its contempt for reason, its grotesque sup-
positions and pseudo-ratiocinations, it must and does pro-
duce on the conscious mind an impression of nightmarish
improbability. Many Rationalists seem to shrink back from
this picture with a peculiar horror as if they wished to
protest that the mind of man surely could not be so
irrational as all that. I suppose their abhorrence for such
irrationality is so great that they would fain deny its
existence until they are driven to recognize it. Yet a cooler
reflection might make them more willing to admit the
strength of the enemy they have devoted their lives to
fighting. Sometimes I think that their animus goes even
further and that they are inclined to blame the psycho-
analysts for the existence of the extensive irrationality to
which we have called attention, just as in former times
kings were wont to execute the bringers of bad tidings.

Now for the other side of the question the Psycho-
Analyst's criticism of the Rationalist's position. I can best
introduce this by reverting to our starting-point the topic
of free thought. Psycho- Analysis not only demands for its
work as much freedom of thought as is available, but it is
also concerned with the difficulties in the way of achieving
freedom of thought. In investigating them it recognizes
that freedom of thought is only one form of psychological
freedom and that one cannot properly consider the part
without the whole. To deal with freedom of the intellect
only, as Rationalists sometimes do, is unnecessarily to
limit oneself. This is especially so because in our judgement
freedom of thought is not so much the prerequisite of free-
dom in general although it can plausibly be described as
such as a sign or index that the wider freedom of the

237

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

personality in general has already been attained. The prob-
lem of what constitutes this freedom of the personality, on
which the capacity for free thought very largely depends,
is one that greatly exercises psycho-analysis. It has further-
more concerned itself with the significance of freedom itself,
with the question of why the subjective feeling of freedom
is so tremendously important to men and with the interest-
ing fact that its importance seems to vary so much at
different periods. The feeling in question is evidently bound
up with the sense of security, and may even be regarded as
one aspect of this. It is certainly striking how often men will
prize some form or other of freedom above all else and will
gladly sacrifice their lives in the endeavour to achieve it.
Even more astonishing is the way the same men will at
other times tamely submit to the most extraordinary
regimentation of their daily lives and interference with
every detail of their personal freedom, especially at the
behest of their fellow-countrymen. Italy, for instance, has
shown us several examples of both these reactions in less
than a century. At the present time it is only too easy to
point to numerous examples of extreme renunciation of
liberty, whereas I should be hard put to it to find a good
example of the contrary outside, of course, the ranks of
the Rationalist Press Association.

But the first thing that strikes an outsider about the
laudable campaign Rationalists are conducting on behalf of
freedom is the remarkable localization of their aim. Confin-
ing ourselves for the moment to the external barriers
against freedom, and still further to the barriers against
intellectual freedom to the neglect of other perhaps equally
important forms of freedom social, political, economic,
and so on one cannot help wondering why Rationalists
concentrate so much on the theological obstacles. In the
definition I quoted earlier it is stated that "Rationalism . . .
aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics . . .

238

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

independent of all arbitrary assumptions or authority".
Well, I should have doubted very much that any Church,
with the exception of that in Austria and Ireland, could
nowadays be called an authority that hinders one from
establishing such a system if one wants to. Matters were of
course different in bygone ages, and, as I just hinted, are
still different in a few countries of Europe, but I should
have thought the Rationalist Press Association has survived
long enough to discover that there are other much more
formidable obstacles to intellectual freedom than organized
religion. A very short residence in either Germany or
Russia should be enough to convince one of this, and of the
disturbing consideration that opposition to freedom can
proceed not only from blind tradition but also from a con-
sistent and up-to-date efficiency. Even in England I should
anticipate that anyone wishing to inculcate a new system of
ethics would encounter at least as much opposition or pre-
judice from the legal and political worlds as from the
clerical, nor do I think that most of it would be religious in
its origin. At your annual dinner a year after the war
William Archer said: "To the historian of a thousand
years hence this greatest of wars will rank as a mere skir-
mish in the never-ending battle of Rationalism against
irrationalism." Assuming that by Rationalism he meant
freedom of thought we have to record the painful fact that
the great victory won for freedom and democracy has led
to far firmer shackles being put on freedom of thought
throughout Europe than had existed for centuries pre-
viously, and that even in this country the number of those
who admire and yearn for those shackles is unfortunately
in the ascendant. And no one could maintain that organized
religion has played any serious part in this restriction; if
anything, its influence has been on the other side.

The investigations of psycho-analysis have thrown a
great deal of light on the problem of freedom and have also

239

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

been able to some extent to explain the curious oscillation
in man's attitude towards it. It has been forced to concen-
trate on this problem because in its therapeutic work its
main endeavour is to bring about freedom from the bonds
that have cramped the personality, or to put it more
modestly to dimmish the number of influences that have
restricted its freedom. One important conclusion issuing
from these investigations is that there exist internal bonds,
i.e., bonds inside the personality, which are much more
potent in their restrictive power than any external ones.
Anyone, therefore, who is seriously interested in achieving
mental freedom would do well to turn his attention to the
nature of these bonds. It is not possible for me here to
expound the psychology of the unconscious, that region
where the tumult of the instincts releases emotional forces
of which consciousness perceives only a faint mirror, but I
should say very emphatically that the restrictive bonds in
question are essentially due to the massive layers of
guiltiness and fear that are always present in the uncon-
scious mind. And I would add, what I am sure is an unex-
pected conclusion, that this guiltiness and fear is only in
small part imposed on the child from without, its main
source being quite endogenous. So important do we con-
sider these layers of the mind, arising as I say mainly from
within the growing personality itself, that we should not
find it a very gross exaggeration if anyone tried to describe
the whole of human life as a series of infinitely varied
endeavours to alleviate the distress they would cause if
allowed to function unchecked. These endeavours we term
defences. Like the more familiar defences against external
dangers they may be either active or passive. Instances of
the first kind are: aggressiveness, intolerance, pugnacity
and curiously enough often the struggle for freedom
from external barriers. Instances of the second are: flight of
all kinds, inhibitions, denial, shame, aversion and a clamour

240

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

for security. We now begin perhaps to see why mankind
oscillates between the passion for freedom and the passion
for security: each promises help for his fundamental dis-
tress. Our social institutions also can be fruitfully regarded
from this point of view. The one that has the most direct
bearing on these difficulties of the individual is undoubtedly
Religion, and it is not hard to see that it functions along
both the active and passive lines. When St. Paul spoke of
"the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" the phrase
must seem distinctly unintelligible to a Rationalist, but it
is full of meaning to a Psycho- Analyst. The sociological
disadvantages, however, of the religious solution are first,
that it operates successfully with only a minority of the
community, and secondly, that its operation tends to be
bound up with certain rather strict limiting conditions to
quote St. Paul again, "being then made free from sin ye
become the servants of righteousness", thus opening up the
wide question of what constitutes the "righteousness"
whose servants we are to become.

When the internal and unconscious restrictions become
too painfully tyrannical various reactions of defence against
them in turn come into play. Of these I will mention one
very important example to which we give the name of
"projection". The unconscious restricting influence is iden-
tified with a suitable external one, projected on to it, and
this is then attacked with an aggressiveness that may cul-
minate in a venomous hostility. Germany, for instance,
pursued by world condemnation which she vainly tried to
exorcize by repudiating what she called the "war-guilt lie",
discovered with relief that the poison in her system could
be identified with the Jewish section of her population.
The Jews were both the unseen instigators of wars and the
arch intriguers of defeatist pacifism, both the bloated up-
holders of the capitalistic system sucking the life blood of
the nation and the evil communists seeking to destroy the

241

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

sacred rights of property. The action she took in response
to this discovery is unfortunately known to all of us. The
Priesthood, or any form of organized Religion, has at times
been described as the main enemy to freedom, and the
frequent justification for this has led many to concentrate
on it as the one and only obstacle, an attitude which in my
opinion can only lead one astray. I should like here to echo
the words of your President, Lord Snell, when he warned
you recently that no Movement can live by worship at the
tomb of the past. He added: "Let us take care that our
Association does not become the sepulchre of an idea rather
than its cradle."

Certain signs enable us to say whether a given emotional
attitude contains this element of projection and is thus
being used as a defence against unconscious internal bonds.
They are the combination of hostility and animus with a
passionate enthusiasm for an ideal and excessive optimism
about attaining it. I will leave it to you to decide whether
the Rationalist movement has always been free of these
characteristics. Whenever you come across them you may
be sure that the clamour for external freedom they accom-
pany is being misused to conceal an internal lack of free-
idom. True freedom, on the contrary, breeds tolerance,
understanding and firmness. I wish, further, to lay stress on
the self-righteousness that so often accompanies the pro-
jection attitude I have just described. When Thomas
Jefferson thundered "I have sworn upon the altar of God
eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the
mind of man" we are naturally impressed by his earnest-
ness, but we might not feel sure that such a categorical
assertion of moral cartitude, if seduced by power, could not
degenerate into a doctrinaire opinionism. Bernard Shaw
once caustically said "Beware of the man whose God is in
the skies", meaning of course that a man may become
inaccessible when his private prejudices are fortified by pro-

242

RATIONALISM AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

jection on to the idea of a supernatural Being. And when
William Archer asserted of the human reason that "its
genesis is the mystery of mystery, the miracle of miracles"
one cannot help being reminded of the error the leaders of
the French Revolution fell into when they replaced the
worship of the Almighty by that of the Goddess of Reason.
This remark brings me to my last but not least theme,
the subject of reason. All I wish to say here is that we have
become very familiar in Psycho-Analysis with the deplor-
able fact that reason, however one may prize it, can be mis-
used like any other faculty when it becomes one of the
"defences" about which I have been speaking. By misuse I
mean the employing of the intellect not to discover truth,
but to conceal it. Nothing is commoner than for a man
unwilling to recognize his true motives for an attitude, and
unwilling to reveal the underlying feelings from which such
motives spring, to prostitute his intellect by using it to
invent reasons, quite logical ones, which will serve as an
explanation. An unwillingness to face intimate emotions is
characteristic of mankind, and yet without feeling reason is
powerless to understand the workings of the mind. The
theses I am sustaining here are that only by feeling can
reason discover truth and that, as was said by a certain
Person, "the truth shall make you free."

243

XII
THE GOD COMPLEX 1

THE BELIEF THAT ONE IS GOD, AND THE
RESULTING CHARACTER TRAITS

EVERY psycho-analyst must have come across patients
amongst whose unconscious phantasies is contained the
curious one in which the patient identifies himself with
God. Such a megalomaniac phantasy would be barely
comprehensible did we not know how closely the ideas of
God and Father are associated, so much so that, from a
purely psychological point of view, the former idea may
be regarded as a magnified, idealized, and projected form
of the latter. Identification of the self with the loved object
occurs to some extent in every affection, and is a regular
constituent of a boy's attitude towards his father; every
boy imitates his father, pretends to himself that he is the
father, and to a varying extent models himself on him.
It is therefore only natural that a similar attitude may
develop in regard to the more perfect Heavenly Father,
and indeed this is in a certain sense directly inculcated in
the religious teaching that one should strive to become as
like the divine model as is possible (i.e., to imitate it), and
in the belief that every man is a copy of God and contains
the divine spirit within him. The transition from obedient
imitation to identification is often a rapid one, and in the
unconscious the two terms are practically synonymous.
The function of representing his king or state that is

1 Published in the Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, 1913, Bd. I,

s. 313-

244

THE GOD COMPLEX

entrusted to an ambassador in a foreign country or to a
governor in a foreign province has many a time been trans-
gressed in history by opportunity allowing it to be ex-
changed for one of greater power; the Roman Empire, for
instance, was perpetually exposed to this menace. In
religion we see indications of the same process, though of
course they are less evident. To the common people the
figures of Buddha, Mahomet, Peter, and Moses mean some-
thing more than mere representatives of God, and we find
even minor prophets and preachers speaking in the name of
God with an authority so astounding as to preclude the idea
of its arising solely in learning; in other words one feels
sure that their conscious attitude is generally the product
of an unconscious phantasy in which they identify their
personality with that of God.

This phantasy is not at all rare, and possibly occurs here
and there in all men ; it is naturally far commoner with men
than with women, where the corresponding one seems to be
the idea of being the Mother of God. There is, however, a class
of men with whom it is much stronger than is usual, so that
it forms a constant and integral part of their unconscious.
When such men become insane they are apt to express
openly the delusion that they actually are God, and
instances of the kind are to be met with in every asylum. 1
In a state of sanity, that is to say when the feeling for
reality and the normal inhibitions of consciousness are
operative, the phantasy can express itself only after
passage through this censorship, and therefore only in a
modified, weakened, and indirect form. It is with these
external manifestations that we are here concerned, and it
will be the object of the present paper to indicate how
from them the presence of what may be called a "God-

1 A well-known medical anecdote, ben trovato, relates how an inquisitive
visitor approached one such patient with a perplexing problem in theology.
The patient turned away haughtily with the remark, "I never talk shop."

245

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

complex" in the unconscious may be inferred. This uncon-
scious complex, like any other important one, leaves
permanent traces of its influence on conscious attitudes and
reactions, and analysis of a number of individuals with
whom it is strongly pronounced shows that the character
traits 1 thus produced constitute a fairly typical picture,
one clear enough to be applicable for diagnostic purposes.
It is intelligible that they necessarily resemble those char-
acteristic of the father-complex in general, being indeed
simply a magnification of these; they form in fact a part
of this broader group, but one sufficiently peculiar in itself
to deserve to be singled out and distinguished from the rest
of the group.

The inductive generalizations arrived at on the basis of
my observations do not altogether coincide with those
that might have been expected from deductive considera-
tion of the attributes popularly ascribed to God. A main
distinction between them, for instance, is this: Whereas
the aspect of God as the Creator is perhaps the most
impressive in the ordinary mind, as illustrated by the
conclusiveness with which the existence of God is commonly
held to be settled by the question "who else could have
created the world?" or by more abstract ratiocinations
about the necessity for a "first cause", this aspect is far
from being either the most prominent or the most typical
to be represented amongst the phantasies belonging to a
God-complex. The most striking and characteristic of these
would seem to be the ones relating to effective power in
the broadest sense (omnipotence), and most of the external

1 When George Meredith, in The Egoist, endowed the chief figure of the
book with certain peculiarly human attributes, his friends individually
reproached him for having laid bare to the world their hidden weaknesses, each
seeing in the novelist's description a mirror of his own heart. The character-
traits pointed out in the present paper are so widely spread that I run the
risk of laying myself open to a similar charge, as indeed does everyone who
attempts to contribute something to our stock of psycho-analytical know-
ledge.

246

THE GOD COMPLEX

manifestations of the complex can best be stated in terms
of this. In my experience the main foundation of the com-
plex is to be discovered in a colossal narcissism, and this I
regard as the most typical feature of the personalities in
question. All the character-traits presently to be described
can either be directly derived from narcissism, or else stand
in the closest connection with it.

Excessive narcissism leads inevitably to an excessive
admiration for and confidence in one's own powers,
knowledge, and qualities, both physical and mental. Two
psycho-sexual tendencies are especially closely correlated
with it, the auto-erotic and exhibitionistic, 1 two of the
most primitive in the life of the individual, and we shall
see that they play a highly important part in the genesis
of the character-traits. With the second of these, the
exhibitionistic, there is always associated its counterpart,
the instinct of curiosity and knowledge, and this also pro-
duces some of the end-results. From the intimate inter-
association, therefore, of these impulses, the narcissistic,
auto-erotic, exhibitionistic, and curiosity ones, it is compre-
hensible why any sharp separation of the character-traits
from one another according to their origin is quite im-
possible, for many of them could be equally well described
under any one of the four, being related to all. It will thus
be convenient to describe them as a whole, and not
separately.

One other general remark may be made before we
proceed to the details, and that is to call attention to the
characteristically negative way in which these instincts are
manifested in the syndrome in question; for instance,
excessive modesty is more often met with than pronounced
vanity. The reason for this is that the unusual strength of
the primitive tendencies has called forth an unusually

1 See Stekel, "Zur Psychologic des Exhibitionismus," Zentralblatt ftir
Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. I., S. 494.

247

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

strong series of reaction-formations, and it is these that,
being more superficial in the mind and more in harmony
with social feelings, manifest themselves most directly. In
fact one can often infer the strength of the underlying
impulses only through noting how intense are the reactions
they have evoked.

We may begin the series by mentioning some manifesta-
tions of narcissistic exhibitionism, i.e., the wish to display
the own person or a certain part of it, combined with the
belief in the irresistible power of this. This power, which
is the same as that ascribed to the tabu king 1 or to the sun
and lion symbols of mythology, is for either good or evil,
creation or destruction, being thus typically ambivalent.
In the instances under consideration the harmful element
predominates, another interesting difference between this
phantasy and the (modern) conception of God.

These first manifestations, like those throughout the
whole complex, are most typically reaction-products. Thus
obvious self-conceit or vanity is not so frequent or so
characteristic as an excessive self-modesty, which at times
is so pronounced as to be truly a self-effacement. The man
advances his strongest convictions in the most tentative
manner possible, avoids the word "I" in both conversation
and writing, and refuses to take any prominent or active
part in the affairs of life. Already the exaggeratedness of
this betrays it as being an affectation, not a primary
character-tendency but a reaction to one, and this becomes
still more evident when we observe the more extreme forms
of the trait. These constitute what I consider to be the
most characteristic manifestations of all namely, a
tendency to aloofness. The man is not the same as other
mortals, he is something apart, and a certain distance must
be preserved between him and them. He makes himself as
inaccessible as possible, and surrounds his personality with

1 See Freud, Imago, 1912, Bd. I, S. 306-15.

248

THE GOD COMPLEX

cloud of mystery. To begin with, he will not live near
ther people if he can avoid it. One such man told me
dth pride he lived in the last house of his town (a Metro-
olis) and that he found this already too near to the
hrong, so he intended to move farther away. Such men
aturally prefer to live in the country, and if their work
revents this they try to have a home outside the town to
rhich they can retire, either every evening or every week-
nd. They may come in daily to their work and never
icntion their home address to their friends, using when
ecessary clubs and restaurants for whatever social pur-
oses they need. They rarely invite friends to their home,
rhere they reign in solitary grandeur. They lay the
reatest stress on privacy in general, this being of course
oth a direct expression of auto-erotism (masturbation) and

reaction against repressed exhibitionism. There are thus
wo elements in the tendency in question, the wish not to
e seen, and the wish to be distant or inaccessible; some-
imes the accent is on the one, sometimes on the other.
Joth are well illustrated in the following phantasy that a
atient once confessed to me : his darling wish was to own

castle in a distant mountain at the very extremity of the
ountry (near the sea) ; as he drove up to it he was to sound

terrific horn in his automobile so that the blast would
everberate along the hills (thunders of Jehovah and Zeus,
>aternal flatus), and on hearing it the servants and re-
ainers were to disappear to their underground chambers,
saving everything prepared for him in the castle; under no
ircumstances were they ever to see him. Such men in
ctual life interpose all manner of difficulties in the way of
>eing seen, even on business; appointments have to be
aade long beforehand or secretaries have to be interviewed,
,nd when the time arrives they are either late or are "too
>usy" to come at all. How prominent this feature of
naccessibility is with the nobility, kings, popes ( !) and even

249 s

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

important business men 1 is well known. A by-product of the
desire for distance, one which has also other roots, is a
keen interest in the matter of communication and in im-
proved means for enabling them to annihilate distance;
they invariably travel first-class or else by automobile, thus
keeping apart from the mob, insist on having the best
system of telephones (which presents the advantage of
allowing them to communicate without being seen), and so
on. This trait is in striking contrast with the fact that such
people do not willingly travel long distances, especially out
of their own country. They always feel best at home,
dislike going to the world and insist on making it come to
them.

The sense of this desire for inaccessibility is at once
seen when we consider its extreme exaggerations, as met
with in insanity. The late paranoic King Lewis of Bavaria
would seem to have shown a typical case of this. It is said
that he began by imitating Louis XIV ("obligation of the
name" Stekel), and proceeded to identify himself formally
with Le Roi Soleil. It is further related that at this stage
he refused to interview people unless there was a screen
between him and them, and that when he went out his
guards had to warn people of his approach, to get them to
hide in time and shelter themselves from his magnificent
presence. Such behaviour can only indicate the belief that
the rays emanating from this presence were charged with
power of destruction, and the king's solicitude possibly
covered repressed death-wishes. We have here a recru-
descence of the old Egyptian, Persian and Grecian projec-
tion of the father as a sun-god, one that played an important
part also in early Christianity. The significance of it in

1 H. G. Wells, in his novel Tono-Bungay, gives an amusing description of the
difficulties in obtaining an audience with a successful financier. The applicants
are sorted out in room after room by one secretary after the other, and only a
very few are fortunate enough to penetrate to the Holy of Holies and come
face to face with the great man himself.

250

THE GOD COMPLEX

paranoia, as well as of the interesting and not rare "aiglon"
phantasy, was pointed out by Freud in his Schreber
analysis. 1 In insanity the patient may identify both his
father and himself with the sun, as in the instance just
mentioned, or else only the former, as with a paraphrenic
patient of mine who spent the greater part of ten years
defiantly staring at the sun. In more normal people such
phantasies remain in the unconscious, and only a refined
form of them can penetrate through to consciousness, such
as the desire for aloofness. This desire, therefore, seems
mainly to express, in an indirect way, a colossal narcissistic-
exhibitionistic tendency, being based on the person's belief
that his proximity is fraught with tremendous power on
other people, and that the glory of his presence may dazzle
or even blind them; as a precaution against such terrible
consequences he withdraws to a distance whenever possible.
A repressed tendency that also plays a part in determining
this attitude is revealed by consideration of the fear of
blinding others. This of course symbolizes the fear, i.e., the
repressed wish, that he may castrate them, and we shall see
later that both this wish and the accompanying fear of
being castrated are prominent characteristics of the group
of complexes under consideration.

The other trait of mystery, mentioned above in conjunc-
tion with that of inaccessibility, may be regarded as the
mental correlate of this ; thus the broad tendency of aloof-
ness displays itself by the desires, on the physical side of
being inaccessible, on the mental side of being mysterious.
The person aims at wrapping himself in an impenetrable
cloud of mystery and privacy. Even the most trivial pieces
of information about himself, those which an ordinary man
sees no object in keeping to himself, are invested with a
sense of high importance, and are parted with only under
some pressure. Such a man is very loth to let his age be

1 Freud, "Nachtrag," Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. Ill, S. 588.

251

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

known, or to divulge his name or his profession to strangers,
let alone to talk about his private affairs. I know of a man
who has lived for eight years in a town in Western America
without any of his friends there being able to find out
whether he is married or not ; anyone who knows something
of the publicity of American private life will realize what a
feat this is. Some little characteristics about writing are
derivatives of the same tendency. A man of this kind writes
unwillingly, particularly letters. 1 He dislikes to part with
such expressions of his personality, and also finds the not-
answering of letters of other people to be a convenient way
of indicating his opinion of their importance. 2 In spite of a
great interest in accurate language, of which we will speak
later, he rarely expresses his thought clearly and directly.
Very characteristic is a lengthy, involved and circuitous
form of diction that at times becomes so turgid and obscure
as to render it really impossible for the reader to discover
what is meant. The more important is the topic (to the
writer) the more difficulty does he have in parting with his
valuable secret. The most important part is often not
written at all, but instead is constantly hinted at with
repeated promises that it will be disclosed on a further
occasion. In striking contrast with this is the fact that the
actual handwriting is typically clear and distinct. With
some such men it is the opposite, quite illegible, but with
both kinds the person is inordinately proud of it, whether
of the distinctness or of the obscurity. In any event he
insists that it is peculiar to himself, apart, and unique.
(In general nothing offends such a man as the suggestion
that he resembles someone else, whether it be in hand-

1 It need hardly be said that there are many other causes for this inhibition
besides the ones here mentioned.

1 Napoleon expounded this contemptuous attitude very wittily. He is said
to have formed the rule, particularly during busy times, of never answering a
letter until it was three months old. On being once criticized for this, he
remarked that it saved much trouble for he found that most letters answered
themselves in this time.

252

THE GOD COMPLEX

writing, in personal appearance, in capacity, or in conduct.)
The veil of mystery and obscurity that he casts over himself
is naturally extended so as to cover all those pertaining to
him. Thus he never spontaneously refers to his family,
speaking of them reluctantly when any inquiries are made
about them, and the same applies to any affairs in which
he may have become concerned. That all this privacy refers
not only to narcissistic self-importance, but also to auto-
erotism 1 in general, and particularly to masturbation, is too
well-known to need special emphasis here. The primary
narcissistic tendency leaks through in the curious trait that
when the reticence is abrogated, as during psycho-analysis
or during a confidential chat with an intimate friend, the
person takes the greatest pleasure in talking about himself
in the fullest minuteness and is never weary of discussing
and dissecting his own mental attributes. He is apt to be a
successful lecturer and after-dinner speaker, showing a
fondness for this that contrasts with his other reactions to
exhibitionism.

The tendency to aloofness also manifests itself on the
purely mental side quite directly. Such men are both un-
sociable and unsocial, in the wider sense. They adapt them-
selves with difficulty to any activity in common with others,
whether it be of a political, scientific or business kind. They
make bad citizens as judged by the usual standards; 2 how-
ever interested they may be in public affairs they take no
part in them, and never even vote, such a plebeian function
being beneath their dignity. Any influence they exert is
done so quite indirectly, by means of stimulating more

1 The prominence of this in the present group of complexes explains the
frequency with which the type under consideration presents the two character-
traits of an interest in philosophic discussions on the nature of truth (prag-
matism, etc.), with a low personal standard of honour in the matter of probity
and truthfulness.

2 Very characteristic is the combination of bad citizenship in a practical
sense with a keen theoretical interest in social reform, which will be spoken of
later.

253

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

active admirers. Their ideal is to be "the man behind the
throne", directing affairs from above while being invisible
to the crowd. To follow, to participate, or even to lead, in a
general movement, whether social or scientific, is repugnant
to them, and they use every effort to maintain a policy of
magnificent isolation. In this they may achieve, as Nietzsche
did, true grandeur, but more often they present merely a
churlish egotism.

As is to be expected, such a strong exhibitionistic
tendency as that indicated by the traits just mentioned
must have a counterpart in a strongly developed comple-
mentary instinct namely, the pleasure in visual curiosity
("scoptolagnia"), though there are fewer characteristic
manifestations of these in the syndrome. They differ from
the previous ones in being more often of direct origin, and
not reaction-formations. There is usually present a quite
womanish curiosity about trivial personalities, gossip and
the like, though generally this is concealed and is betrayed
only on occasion. More often a higher form of sublimation
occurs, and this typically takes the form of interest in
psychology. If the person in question is endowed with a
natural intuition for divining the minds of others, is a judge
of human nature, he will make use of this in his profession
whatever it may be; if he is not so endowed he tends to
become a professional psychologist or psychiatrist, or at
least to take a considerable abstract interest in the subject.
This desire to compensate a natural defect furnishes no
doubt one of the explanations for the notorious circum-
stance that professional psychologists so often display a
striking ignorance of the human mind. It also accounts for
their constant endeavour to remedy their deficiency by the
invention of "objective" methods of studying the mind
that are to make them independent of intuition, and their
antagonism to methods, such as psycho-analysis, which
deliberately cultivate this; the flood of curves and statistics

254

THE GOD COMPLEX

that threatens to suffocate the science of psychology bears
witness to the needs of such men. To revert to our typical
man: he takes a particular interest in any methods that
promise a "short-cut" to the knowledge of other people's
minds, and is apt to apply such methods as the Binet-
Simon scale, the psycho-galvanic phenomenon, word-
association reactions, or graphology in a mechanical and
literal manner, always hoping to find one that will give
automatic results. 1 The more unusual the method the more
it attracts him, giving him the feeling of possessing a key
that is accessible only to the elect. For this reason he is apt
to display great interest in the various forms of thought-
reading, cheiromancy, divination, and even astrology, as
well as in occultism and mysticism in all their branches.
This topic connects itself with that of religion on the one
hand, and the various manifestations of omniscience on the
other, both of which will presently be discussed.

Certain less direct products of narcissistic exhibitionism
may be grouped under the heading of omnipotence phan-
tasies. These may extend over every field where power can
be exhibited, so that it becomes impossible to discuss them
in detail; they are particularly apt to apply to unusual ones,
therefore claiming powers possessed by the few. Perhaps
the commonest is that relating to money, a matter closely
connected, in fact and fancy, with the idea of power. The
person imagines himself a multi-millionaire, and revels in the
thought of what he would do with all the power then at his
disposal. This phantasy is usually associated with a pre-
tended contempt for money in real life, and sometimes with
an actual generosity and freedom in the use of it; the
amount actually possessed is so infinitesimal in comparison
with what he possesses in his imagination that it is too
small to treasure.

1 The complicated mathematical analysis of questionnaires, so much the
vogue nowadays, evidently lends itself readily to such an attitude.

255

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The most characteristic sub-group in the present con-
nection, however, are those relating to omniscience. This
may be regarded as simply a form of omnipotence, for
whoever can do everything can also know everything. The
passage from the one to the other is clearly seen in the
case of foretelling; to know beforehand when something is
going to happen is in itself a kind of control, merely a
weakened form of actually bringing the thing about, and
the transition between a deity and a prophet is historically
often a very gradual one ( !).

One of the most distressing character-traits of the type
under consideration is the attitude of disinclination towards
the acceptance of new knowledge. This follows quite logically
from the idea of omniscience, for anyone who already knows
everything naturally cannot be taught anything new; still
less can he admit that he has ever made a mistake in his
knowledge. We touch here on a general human tendency,
one of which the psycho-analytical movement has already
had much practical experience, but it is so pronounced in
the present character that it cannot be passed over without
a few words being devoted to it. In the first place, men with
this type of character talk even more than other men about
their capacity to assimilate new ideas, and are sometimes
lavish in their abstract admiration for the new. But when
put to the test of being confronted with a new idea that
doesn't proceed from themselves, they offer an uncom-
promising resistance to it. This follows on the usual well-
known lines, being merely exaggerated in intensity. The
most interesting manifestations are the modes of accept-
ance, when this does occur. There are two typical forms of
these. The first is to modify the new idea, re-phrase it in
their own terms, and then give it out as entirely their own;
the differences between their description and that given by
the discoverer of the new idea they naturally maintain to
be of vital importance. When the modifications made are

256

THE GOD COMPLEX

considerable they are always of the nature of a weakening
of the original idea, and in this case the author of them
usually adheres to the new conclusion. Sometimes the
resistance to the new idea is indicated by the modifications
being simply changes in nomenclature, or even in spell-
ing (!), and then later reactions of the person show that
he has never seriously accepted the new idea, so that his old
repugnance to it will sooner or later be again evident. The
second mode, closely allied to the first and often combined
with it, is to devalue the new idea by describing it in such a
way as to lay all the stress on the links between it and older
ones, thus putting into the background whatever is essen-
tially new in it, and then claiming that they had always
been familiar with it. 1

Of especial importance is the subject's attitude towards
time. The idea of time and its passage is so intimately
bound up with such fundamental matters as old age and
death, potency, ambitions, hopes, in short with the essence
of life itself, that it is necessarily of the greatest importance
to anyone who claims omnipotence and omniscience. Like
all lesser things it must therefore be under his control, and
this belief is revealed in a number of little traits and
reactions. His own time is naturally the correct one, there-
fore his watch is always right and any suggestion to the
contrary is not merely repudiated, but resented; this con-
fidence is sometimes maintained in the face of the strongest
evidence against it. His time is also exceedingly valuable
in comparison with that of others, so that, quite consist-
ently, he is usually unpunctual at an appointment, but is
most impatient when others keep him waiting; time in
general belonging to his domain, it is for him to dispose of,

1 A beautiful instance of this performance occurred recently. I had written
a paper on Freud's theory of the neuroses, dealing principally, of course, with
the importance of infantile conflicts, repressed sexual perversions, etc. A very
distorted abstract of it appeared in a French journal, finishing with the assur-
ance that "since Janet's works all these ideas had long been current in France".

257

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

not for others. An exception is provided by those members
of the group that adopt the definition of punctuality as
"la politesse des rois", and who find pleasure in demon-
strating their perfect control over time by being absolutely
exact (one thinks of Kant's daily four o'clock walk).

The attitude towards fast time chiefly concerns their
personal memory. This they regard, like their watch, as
infallible, and they will stoutly defend the accuracy of it
to the last lengths; in support of this they cultivate with
attention an exactitude in such things as quotations, dates,
etc., which can easily be checked. In some cases they are
proud of their excellent memory, but more typically they
regard it as something obvious and are annoyed when any
of their success is attributed to it.

The capacity to foretell demonstrates the power over
future time, and this occupies a great deal of their interest.
To speculate about the future of an acquaintance, an enter-
prise, a nation, or even the whole human race, is a matter of
quite personal concern, and they freely give vent to all
manner of predictions, most often of a sinister kind. One of
the most characteristic of all the present series of character-
traits is the person's firm belief in his ability to foretell the
weather, and particularly rain or thunder. The vagaries of
weather have always played a prominent part in the
phantasy of mankind, not only on account of their obvious
importance for his welfare, but because the utter variability
of them seemed to point directly to the activity of super-
natural beings, whether good or evil. Christian congrega-
tions that would consider it unreasonable to expect the
Deity to improve the landscape at their request, or even to
change the temperature, still pray earnestly for modifica-
tions of the weather, and almost the last belief about
witches to die out was that they were responsible for the
production of inclement weather. The weather is the part of
nature that most flagrantly defies both the prescience and

258

THE GOD COMPLEX

the control of modern science, rivalling in this respect the
human mind itself; one may say that the chief evidences of
spontaneity and free will to be found in the universe occur
in these two spheres, so that it is little wonder that they
are equally regarded as conspicuous exceptions to the
natural laws of determinism and order and as manifesta-
tions of an external agency. In addition to all this, it is easy
to show that the various elements have always possessed
considerable symbolic significance, rain, wind, and thunder
in particular being taken to represent grand sexual-
excremental performances; a thunderstorm is in this con-
nection of especial importance, because it comprises all of
the three. In view of these considerations it is not surprising
that the present type should take the greatest interest in
the subject of the weather, and should arrogate to himself
special powers of prediction in regard to it. It is practically
pathognomonic of the God-complex when a man maintains
that he can invariably foretell a thunderstorm, relying on
signs and methods that cannot be explained to anyone else,
and regards as "false prophets" all those who use other
ones.

Such men also take a great interest in the subject of
language, one which bears a symbolic relation to the last-
mentioned. They pose as authorities on literary style, and
often are so, claiming a "mastery" of their mother-tongue.
The style they affect is usually good, exact but not pedantic,
but tends to be involved and even obscure; lucidity is not
its virtue, and they find it difficult to express clearly what
they have to say. With the thorough knowledge of their
own tongue goes an aversion to foreign ones, which they
often refuse to learn; their own is the tongue, the only one
worthy to be noticed. They are fond of talking, especially in
monologue, and usually excel in lecturing, speech-making,
and conversation.

Two character-traits that bear an even more direct

259

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

relation to narcissism are those concerning the attitude
towards advice and judgement. They are very unwilling to
give advice, the responsibility being too great. Any advice
that they gave would be so precious and important that
not to follow it would surely be disastrous. Rather than
expose their friends to this risk they prefer to withhold
their advice, another instance of apparent altruism. It goes
without saying that any advice tendered to them by others
is contemptuously rejected as worthless.

The attitude towards judging is also characteristic. It is
a double one, consisting of an alternation of extreme toler-
ance and extreme intolerance. The question of which of the
two is shown seems to depend on whether the infringement
to be judged is of their own will or merely of that of other
people. In the former case no punishment is too harsh for
the offender; I have heard such men describe, just like a
child, how they would execute various people who dis-
obeyed them,- tradesmen who were behind time, and the
like. In the second case, on the other hand, they are always
in favour of the greatest leniency and broad-minded toler-
ance. They thus advocate the abolition of capital punish-
ment, the more humane and understanding treating of
criminals, and so on.

The subject of religion is usually one of the greatest
interest to such men, both from the theological and
historical side and from the psychological; this sometimes
degenerates into an interest in mysticism. As a rule they
are atheists, and naturally so because they cannot suffer
the existence of any other God.

We may now briefly mention a few character traits that,
though pronounced, are less distinctive, inasmuch as they
are of such general occurrence; they only belong here
because they are almost always prominent features of the
present type. One of these is an exaggerated desire to be
loved. This is rarely shown directly, or at most by a desire

260

THE GOD COMPLEX

for praise and admiration rather than for love. It is com-
monly replaced by its opposite, an apparent indifference
to and independence of the opinion of others, and the
repressed need often betrays itself in such ways as a
theoretical interest in the action of crowd suggestion,
intense belief in the importance of public opinion, pliant
yielding to convention in deeds in spite of a rejection of this
in words.

Like all other human beings, they are convinced in their
unconscious of their own immortality, whether this be
ensured through direct continuity or through an eternal
series of rebirths ; they have thus neither beginning nor end.
The belief in their creative power, as was mentioned above,
is more subordinate, at all events in comparison with other
ones, than might have been expected, yet it is often pro-
nounced enough. The belief in self-creation, and rebirth
phantasies, are practically constant features. It is further
revealed in such phantasies as visions of a vastly improved
or altogether ideal world, naturally created by the person
in question, or even of the birth of a new planet where
everything is "remoulded nearer to the heart's desire"; 1
far-reaching schemes of social reform also belong here. In
general there is in such men a vein of romantic idealism,
often covered by a show of either materialism or realism.

The idea of castration always plays with our type a part
of quite special importance, both in the form of castration-
wishes against the father (authorities) and of fear of castra-
tion (talion) on the part of the younger generation. The
latter is as a rule the more pronounced of the two, and
naturally leads to a fear and jealousy of younger rivals,
this being in some cases remarkably intense. Beyond the
constancy with which a strong castration-complex is

1 English readers will at once think here of the numerous works of H. G.
Wells that excellently illustrate this phantasy; he does not appear, however,
to present any other characteristics of our type, at least not in a striking degree.

261

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

present there is nothing characteristic about its numerous
manifestations in this type, so that I will refrain from
mentioning these, particularly as they are fairly well
known. The resentment with which these men observe the
growing prominence of younger rivals forms a curious
contrast to another character-trait, namely their desire to
protect. They are fond of helping, of acting as patron or
guardian, and so on. All this, however, happens only under
the strict condition that the person to be protected ack-
nowledges his helpless position and appeals to them as the
weak to the strong; such an appeal they often find irre-
sistible.

The reader will probably have realized the difficulty I
have experienced in grouping such multiple traits and will
therefore allow me to repeat them now in a more concise
fashion. Thus, the type in question is characterized by a
desire for aloofness, inaccessibility, and mysteriousness,
often also by a modesty and self-effacement. They are
happiest in their own home, in privacy and seclusion, and
like to withdraw to a distance. They surround themselves
and their opinions with a cloud of mystery, exert only an
indirect influence on external affairs, never join in any
common action, and are generally unsocial. They take great
interest in psychology, particularly in the so-called objective
methods of mind-study that are eclectic and which dispense
with the necessity for intuition. Phantasies of power are
common, especially the idea of possessing great wealth.
They believe themselves to be omniscient, and tend to
reject all new knowledge. The attitude towards time and
towards the foretelling of weather, particularly thunder-
storms, is highly characteristic. The subjects of language
and religion greatly interest them, and they have an
ambivalent attitude towards those of giving advice and of
judging (e.g., punishment). Constant, but less characteristic,
attributes are the desire for appreciation, the wish to protect

262

THE GOD COMPLEX

the weak, the belief in their own immortality, the fondness
for creative schemes, e.g., for social reform, and above all, a
pronounced castration-complex.

An obvious consideration, and one important not to
forget, is the fact that all Gods have not the same attri-
butes although there is much that is common to them
all so that the God-type will vary according to the par-
ticular God with whom the person identifies himself. By
far the most important of these variations is that depending
on the idea of the Son of God, therefore in Europe of Christ.
This gives a special stamp to the type in question, which
must shortly be indicated. The three chief characteristics
are: revolution against the father, saving phantasies, and
masochism, or in other words, an QEdipus situation in
which the hero-son is a suffering saviour. With this type
the mother plays a part of quite special importance, and
her influence is often shown in the particular attributes
described by Freud in his harlot-saving type. 1 Saving
phantasies, where what is to be saved from the "wicked
father" varies from a given person (e.g., Shelley's first wife)
to the whole of mankind (democratic reform, etc.), are
thus extremely common here. The salvation is often to be
effected at the expense of a terrific self-sacrifice, where the
masochistic tendencies come to full satisfaction. These also
reveal themselves in the trait of extreme humility and
altruism, especially striking in men who originally were
unusually virile and aggressive, e.g., St. Francis of Assisi.
Second only to the importance of the mother who has to be
rescued is that of the oppressive father. There is thus con-
stantly present an intolerance of authority of any kind, and
any person invested with this, or even only with seniority or
pre-eminence, may be viewed in the light of this complex
so that his figure is artificially distorted into the imago of

1 Freud, "Beitrage zur Psychologic des Liebeslebens," I, Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse, Bd. II, S. 389.

263

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the wicked father. With this Christ type there invariably
goes also an anti-semitic tendency, the two religions being
contrasted and the old Hebraic Jehovah being replaced by
the young Christ. The castration-complex is if possible even
more pronounced in this variety than in the main type
described above.

It is interesting to see that the character evolved through
the influence of the God-complex in general tends to belong
to one or the other of two extreme kinds. On the one hand,
if the complex is guided and controlled by valuable higher
factors, it may give us a man who is truly God-like in his
grandeur and sublimity; Nietzsche and Shelley are perhaps
good instances of this. On the other hand what unfor-
tunately we see more commonly, particularly in patients
during analysis we find characters that are highly unsatis-
factory, with exaggerated self-conceit, difficulty in adapting
themselves to life in common with ordinary men, and there-
fore of no great use for social purposes. Probably this can
be correlated with the unconscious basis of the complex, the
enormous narcissism and exhibitionism. The last named
instinct is of all the sexual components the one most closely
related to the social instincts, being in a sense a definition
of the individual's attitude towards his fellow man, and
one can see a similar ambivalence in the value of its pro-
ducts; on the one side, by giving a greater self-confidence
and self-estimation, and a powerful motive to achieve a
good standing in the estimation of others, it supplies a
driving force that greatly contributes towards successfully
coming forward in life, while on the other side when either
exaggerated or not properly directed it gives rise to diffi-
culties in social adjustment through a false sense of values.

In conclusion we may refer to a few considerations, which
though evident have to be mentioned so as to avoid the
possibility of misunderstanding. In the first place, the
picture sketched above is a composite one, just like any

264

THE GOD COMPLEX

other clinical picture. The individual details are from
separate studies and artificially fused, just as a text-book
description of typhoid fever is. I have never seen anyone
who presented all the attributes mentioned above, and it
is very possible that such people do not exist ; at all events
in every case some of the attributes are more prominent
than others. Then I would further emphasize the fact that
the present description is quite tentative, necessarily so
because it is based on only one person's experience of
about a dozen analyses bearing on the problem, 1 in other
words on evidence that is certainly insufficient to establish
a sharply drawn syndrome. I am convinced that there is
such a thing as a God-complex, and that some of the
attributes above mentioned belong to it, but am equally
convinced that the present account of it needs modification,
and probably both expansion in some directions and limit-
ing in others. The present paper is thus published mainly
as an incentive to the further investigation of an interesting
series of character-traits.

Postscript. The close resemblance between the character
traits here described and those derived from what Melanie
Klein has termed the "manic" phase of infantile develop-
ment will be evident to present-day psycho-analysts.

1 Experience of many more cases since this paper was written has only
confirmed the main outlines here sketched so that no alterations have been
made in it.

265 T

XIII

THE MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH
THE EAR

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE RELATION BETWEEN
AESTHETICS AND RELIGION 1

Introduction The Legend of the Virgin Mary's Conception
through the Ear Breath and Fertilization The Dove and the
Annunciation The Ear as the Receptive Organ Conclusion

I. INTRODUCTION

THE object of the present essay is to illustrate, by the
analysis of a single example, the following thesis: that the
close relation of aesthetics to religion is due to the intimate
connection between their respective roots.

The closeness of the relation, which is perhaps more
striking with the higher religions, is shown in manifold
ways : sometimes by the diametrical opposition of the two,
as in the iconoclastic outbursts of Savonarola or the Eng-
lish Puritans against art, but more frequently by the
remarkable union between the two. The latter may be
manifested both positively, as when art and religion are
fused in worship (religious dancing, painting, music, sing-
ing, architecture; "The works of the Lord are lovely to
behold," "God is lovely in his holiness," etc.), and nega-
tively, as when religion condemns the same piece of con-
duct, now as sinful, now as ugly or disgusting.

It is widely recognized that the ultimate sources of

1 Published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1914, Band VI.

266

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
artistic creativcness lie in that region of the mind outside
consciousness, and it may be said with some accuracy that
the deeper the artist reaches in his unconscious in the
search for his inspiration the more profound is the resulting
conception likely to be. It is also well known that among
these ultimate sources the most important are psycho-
sexual phantasies. Artistic creation serves for the expression
of many emotions and ideas, love of power, sympathy at
suffering, desire for ideal beauty, and so on, but unless
the term be extended so as to include admiration for any
form whatever of perfection it is with the last of these,
beauty, that aesthetics is principally concerned; so much so
that aesthetic feeling may well be defined as that which is
evoked by the contemplation of beauty. Now, analysis of
this aspiration reveals that the chief source of its stimuli is
not so much a primary impulse as a reaction, a rebellion
against the coarser and more repellent aspects of material
existence, one which psychogenetically arises from the
reaction of the young child against its original excremental
interests. When we remember how extensively these
repressed coprophilic tendencies contribute, in their sub-
limated forms, to every variety of artistic activity to
painting, sculpture, and architecture on the one hand, and
to music and poetry on the other it becomes evident that
in the artist's striving for beauty the fundamental part
played by these primitive infantile interests (including their
later derivatives) is not to be ignored : the reaction against
them lies behind the striving, and the sublimation of them
behind the forms that the striving takes.

When on the other hand religious activities, interests
and rites, are traced to their unconscious source it is found
that, although as I have pointed out in the case of
baptism 1 they make extensive use of the same psychical
material as that indicated above, they differ from aesthetic

1 See Chapter II, pp. 34, 70, 71.

267

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

interests especially in that the main motives are derived
not so much from this sphere as from another group of
infantile interests, that concerned with incestuous phan-
tasies. 1 At first sight, therefore, esthetics and religion would
appear to have on the whole disparate biological origins.
Freud's 2 researches have demonstrated, however and this
is not the least far-reaching of their conclusions that
infantile coprophilia belongs essentially to the as yet unco-
ordinated infantile sexuality, constituting as it does a
prominent part of the auto-erotic stage which precedes that
of incestuous object-love. From this point of view we
obtain a deeper insight into the present topic, and indeed
a satisfactory explanation of the problem, for, since aesthetic
and religious activities are derived from merely different
components of a biologically unitary instinct, components
which are inextricably intertwined at their very roots, it
becomes throughout intelligible that even in their most
developed forms they should stand in close relationship to
each other.

II. THE LEGEND OF THE MADONNA'S
CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

A belief, often forgotten nowadays, but preserved in
the legends and traditions of the Catholic Church, is that
the conception of Jesus in the Virgin Mary was brought
about by the introduction into her ear of the breath of
the Holy Ghost. I do not know if this is now held as an
official tenet of the Church, but in past ages it was not
only depicted by numerous religious artists, but also main-
tained by many of the Fathers and by at least one of
the Popes, namely Felix.

1 See Freud, Totem und Tabu, 1913.

* Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 46 Aufl., 1920

268

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

St. Augustine 1 writes: "Deus per angelum loquebatur
et Virgo per aurem impraegnebatur," St. Agobard 2 "Des-
cendit de coelis missus ab arce patris, introivit per aurem
Virginis in regionem nostram indutus stola purpurea et
exivit per auream portam lux et Deus universae fabricae
mundi", and St. Ephrem of Syria 3 "Per novam Mariae
aurem intravit atque infusa est vita"; similar passages
could be quoted from various other Fathers, such as
St. Proclus, St. Ruffinus of Aquileia, etc. In the Breviary
of the Maronites one reads: "Verbum patris per aurem
benedictae intravit," and a hymn, 4 ascribed by some to
St. Thomas a Becket, by others to St. Bonaventure, con-
tains the following verse:

Gaude, Virgo, mater Christi,
Quae per aurem concepisti,

Gabriele nuntio.
Gaude, quia Deo plena
Peperisti sine pena

Cum pudoris lilio.

There were many versions of this current in the Middle
Ages; Langlois 5 quotes the following one from the seven-
teenth century:

Rejouyssez-vous, Vierge, et Mere bienheureuse,
Qui dans vos chastes flancs conceutes par 1'ouyr,
L'Esprit-Sainct operant d'un tres-ardent desir,
Est 1'Ange 1'annoncant d'une voix amoureuse.

The event was often portrayed by religious artists in
the Middle Ages. For instance, in a painting of Filippo

1 St. Augustine, Sermo de Tempore, XXII.

2 St. Agobard, De Correctione antiphonarii, Cap. viii.

3 St. Ephrem, De Divers Serm. I, Opp. Syr., Vol. Ill, p. 607.

4 Bodley MS., Latin Liturgy, X, Fol. 91 vo.

* Langlois, Essai sur la Peinture sur Verre, 1832, p. 157.

269

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Lippi's in the convent of San Marco in Florence, in one
of Gaddi's in the Santa Maria Novella, in one of Benozzo
Gozzoli's in the Campo Santa of Pisa, and in an old mosaic
no longer extant 1 in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome,
the Holy Dove is seen almost entering the Virgin's ear.
In the first named of these the Dove emanates from the
right hand of the Father, in the second from his bosom;
more typically, however, as in the picture of Simone
Martini's here reproduced, 2 one which will presently be
more fully discussed, the Dove emanates from the mouth
of the Father. The Dove may either constitute a part of
the Father's breath as it were a concrete condensation
of this or it may itself repeat the emission of breath: in
the Florence Bargello there are three examples of this
(by Verrocchio and the Delia Robbias), and it may also
be seen in a picture of the Ferrarese school in the Wallace
Collection, London, as well as in Martini's picture.

The connection between the fertilizing breath of the
Dove and the child to be conceived is made plainly evident
in an old panel that used to stand in the Cathedral of
Saint-Leu, of which Langlois gives the following descrip-
tion: "Du bee du St-Esprit jaillissait un rayon lumineux
aboutissant a 1'oreille de Marie, dans laquelle descendait
s'introduire, dirige par ce meme rayon, un tres-jeune
enfant tenant une petite croix." 3 A similar picture, by
Meister des Marialebens, in which also the infant is seen
descending along a ray of light, may be seen in the German-
isches Museum in Nuremberg. We note that here it is a ray
of light that issues from the mouth of the Dove, instead
of the more appropriate breath. This equating of radiating
breath and rays of light is an interesting matter to which
we shall have to return later. It may have been partly deter-

1 Gori, Thesaurus, Tab. XXX, Vol. III.

2 See Frontispiece.
8 Langlois, loc. cit.

270

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

mined by the greater technical facility with which rays of
light can be represented by the painter, but it also has its
theological aspects, since it is related to the doctrine of the
monophysite Churches of Armenia and Syria (which split
off from the Byzantine in the fifth century) that Jesus's
body, originating in an emission of light from heaven, was
made of ethereal fire and had neither bodily structure nor
functions. Another example of this equation occurs in an
old stained-glass window which was formerly in the sacristy
of the Pistoia Cathedral, 1 also representing rays issuing
from the Dove's mouth and bearing an embryo in the
direction of the Virgin's head; the picture is surmounted by
the lines :

Gaude Virgo Mater Christi
Quae per Aurem concepisti.

In a sculpture now in the Frankisches Luitpoldmuseum
at Wiirzburg 2 a little child carrying a crucifix is seen in
the midst of the Father's radiating breath and aiming at
the Virgin's right ear; the Dove here stands aside, at the
right side of the head. The presence of the infant at this
stage was denounced as heretical by the Catholic Church,
for it contradicted the belief that He took his flesh from
the Virgin Mary and so was really man.

As a counterpart to the accompanying picture of
Martini's where the sacred words "Ave Gratia plena
dominus tecum" are designated passing from Gabriel's lips
to the Virgin's ear converging thus with the breath of the
Dove may be mentioned a twelfth-century altarpiece at
Klosterneuburg, 3 by Nicolas Verdun, in which two rays
escape from the tips of the fingers of Gabriel's right hand
and are directed towards the Virgin's ear. The anomalous

1 Cicognara, Storia della Scultura, 1813-1818, Vol. I, p. 324.

2 Nr. 6 Portalstein der Hauskapelle des Hofes Rodelsee in Wiirzburg, 1484.

3 Arneth. Das Niello-Antipendium zu Klosterneuburg, 1844, S. n.

271

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

termination of light rays in the ear demonstrates the
strength of the main idea, that of impregnation by means of
breath here replaced by its symbolic equivalent of rays
of light entering the ear.

Much discussion took place in subsequent centuries over
the delicate questions pertaining to the mode of birth
of the Holy Babe, of whether He left His mother's body
by the natural route or emerged between the breasts or
from the ear itself, whether the hymen was ruptured, and if
so whether its integrity was restored later, and so on. 1 It is
not proposed, however, to discuss these matters here, our
attention being confined to the initial stage of the process.

This remarkable conception of the process of impreg-
nation, so foreign to all human experience, 2 must arouse
the desire to investigate its meaning, for it evidently
represents a symbolic expression of some obscure idea
rather than a mere literal description of a matter-of-fact
occurrence. Lecky 3 asserts that it "of course was suggested
by the title Logos", but we shall find grounds for doubting
whether this rationalistic explanation does not reverse the
actual order of genesis of the two ideas.

Our interest is further increased when we learn that
the story is in no way peculiar to Christianity, though
perhaps it is here that it reaches its most finished and
elaborate form. Anticipating a little of our later discussion,
we may mention at this point the legend of Chigemouni,
the Mongolian Saviour, who chose the most perfect virgin
on earth, Mahaenna or Maya, and impregnated her by

1 See Guillaume Herzog, La Sainte Vierge dans I'Histoire, 1908, Ch. Ill,
"La Virginit6 'in partu'," pp. 38-51.

2 So foreign that Moliere uses it to indicate the utmost limit of ignorance on
sexual topics. In the Ecole des Femmes he makes Anolphe say that Agnes has
asked him

Avec une innocence a nulle autre pareille,
Si les enfants qu'on fait se faisoient par 1'oreille.

8 Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in
Europe, Cheaper Edition, Vol. I, p. 212.

272

CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

penetrating into her right ear during sleep. 1 We shall see
also that when the Mary legend is dissected into its elements
each of these can be richly paralleled from extra-Christian
sources, and that the main ones have proved to be of
almost universal interest. It is therefore certain that we
are concerned, not with a purely local problem of early
Christian theology, but with a theme of general human
significance.

For the sake of convenience the subject will be divided
up, and an attempt made to answer in order the following
questions: Why is the creative material represented as
emanating from the mouth, and why as breath in particu-
lar? Why is it a dove that conveys it? And why is the
ear chosen to be the receptive organ ?

III. BREATH AND FERTILIZATION

In anthropological, mythological and individual sym-
bolism, instances of which are too numerous in the literature
to need quoting here, the mouth has more frequently a
female significance, being naturally adapted to represent a
receptive organ. Its capacity, however, to emit fluids
(saliva and breath), and the circumstance of its containing
the tongue, the symbolic significance of which will presently
be considered, render it also suitable for portraying a male
aperture; the idea of spitting, in particular, is one of the
commonest symbolisms in folk-lore for the male act (hence,
for instance, the expression "the very spit of his father").

1 Norlk, Biblische Mythologie, 1843, Bd. II, S. 64. Jung (Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse, Bd. IV, S. 204) makes the interesting statement, for which
however he gives no authority, that the Mongolian Buddha was also born
from his mother's ear; the accounts I have read, on the contrary, say that he
was conceived by the ear, but born by the mouth. In a silk banner painted
about A.D. 1 100 and recently discovered in the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas,
the first appearance of the babe is depicted as being within his mother's sleeve
(See Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, 1912, Vol. II, p. 199), a fact to which
Mr. Alfred Ela of Boston kindly directed my attention.

273

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The idea of the breath as a life-giving agent is familiar
to us from the passages in the Old Testament: "And the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul" (Genesis ii. 7) ; "The heavens by the
Word of God did their beginning take ; And by the breath-
ing of his mouth he all their hosts did make" (Psalms
xxxiii. 6). Mohammedan tradition ascribes the miraculous
impregnation of the Virgin Mary to Gabriel having opened
the bosom of her garment and breathed upon her womb. 1
One of the various legends of the birth of the Aztec divinity
Quetzalcoatl relates that the Lord of Existence, Tonaca-
tecutli, appeared to Chimalma and breathed upon her, with
the result that she conceived the divine child. 2

Further than this, the idea of breath has played a
remarkably extensive part in religion and philosophy, in
the lowest as well as in the highest beliefs of mankind.
In Brahmanism it becomes formally identified with the
Eternal Being, 3 and all over the world it has furnished
one of the main constituent components of the idea of
the soul (Hauchseele)*

Now when we ask what is the source of this intense
interest and importance with which the idea in question has
been invested, such an inquiry may seem almost super-
fluous, for it will be said that the importance attached to
the idea of breathing is inherent in the act itself. Breath,
as a symbol of life, is felt to be a natural and appropriate
choice. No manifest act is more continuously essential to
life than that of breathing, and the presence or absence
of it is the simplest and most primitive test of death; the

1 Sale, Koran, 1734, Note to Ch. XIX, citing various Arabian authors.

2 Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, 1876,
Vol. Ill, p. 271. See also Preuss, Globus, Bd. LXXXVI, S. 302.

3 Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, Engl. Transl. 1906, pp 39, no.

4 Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Bd. II, 'Mythus und Religion," 1906, Zweiter
Teil, S. 42 et. seq.

274

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

mysterious invisibility of breath finds a meet counterpart
in that of the soul.

Psycho-Analysis, however, has by now become familiar
with the experience of finding various matters taken for
granted as being something obvious and in no need of
explanation infantile amnesia affords one of the most
striking examples of this and then nevertheless discovered
that behind this attitude of indifference may lie most
important problems, just where there was thought to be
no problem at all. So that, sharpened by such experiences
in the past, we should not be content to adopt a current
estimate of mental phenomena until an unbiassed examina-
tion of the facts confirms the accuracy of it. With the matter
under consideration this is, in my opinion, not so. In spite
of the obvious reflections just mentioned, the thesis will
here be maintained that the current conclusion indicated
above furnishes only a part answer to the question asked,
and that much of the significance attached to the idea of
breath is primarily derived from a source extraneous to it.
In other words, it is maintained that we have here another
example of the familiar process of displacement, whereby
various affects that originally belonged to another idea
altogether have become secondarily associated with that of
breath.

I have two reasons for venturing to differ from the
generally accepted opinion on this matter, first because this
seems to me to be based on an erroneous estimate of the
amount of psychical interest normally attaching to the idea
of breath, and secondly because it is in open disaccord with
the principles of psychogenesis. To make the idea in ques-
tion the centre of an elaborate religion, philosophy or
Weltanschauung, as has been done many times in history,
seems to me to presuppose an amount of primary interest
in it which transcends that taken by anyone not in the
throes of mortal illness. And when we explore the Uncon-

275

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

scious, that region where so many philosophic and religious
ideas have their source, we find that the idea of breath is
much less important even than in consciousness, occupying
a rank of almost subordinate inferiority. In the numerous
cases, for instance, of neurotic symptoms centring about
the act of breathing or speaking, analysis always shows
that the primary importance of the act has been over-
determined by extraneous factors. There is reason, it is
true, to think that if we could apply the libido theory
more extensively to somatic processes, along the lines
opened up by Ferenczi, the act of breathing would assume
an importance hard to overestimate, but there is no
evidence at all events as yet to indicate that any serious
amount of what may be termed ideational interest results
from this organic importance of the act.

In the second place, it is a law of psychogenesis, founded
now on extensive experience, that an idea can become
psychically important in adult life only through becoming
associated with, and reinforcing, an earlier chain of ideas
reaching back into childhood, and that much, or even most,
of its psychical (as apart from intrinsic) significance is
derived from these. Thus whenever we find such an idea
dating mainly from adult life we may be sure that it
represents much more than itself namely, earlier groups
of important ideas with which it has become associated.
These considerations are much more extensively applicable,
and should therefore be regarded as correspondingly more
potent, with ideas concerned with the adaptation to the
world of inner, psychical reality than w r ith those relating
to the outer world, and the religious and philosophic ideas
referred to as also those concerning the act of breathing
certainly enter into the former category. Now in the
present instance it must be admitted that the ideational
interest attaching to the act of breathing arises for the
most part relatively late, for the infant is usually unaware

276

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

of the act as such, which it performs automatically, and
which arouses almost as little interest as the beating of
the heart; even with difficult breathing in disease it is
rather the sensations of distress (precordial, etc.) that are
important than the idea itself of the act of breathing. This
whole argument will not perhaps be very convincing to
those who have not realized through psycho-analytical
experience the ontogenetic antiquity of our affective pro-
cesses, but with those who have it must, in my judgement,
carry considerable weight.

To trace the origin of the various affects that in later
life invest the idea of breath, or of course those of any
other idea, is a matter of detailed individual-psychological
studies and of noting the different displacements that have
occurred during the growth of the mind. If this is done,
it will be found, as I pointed out some time ago, 1 that
much of the interest and affect attaching to this particular
idea has been derived from that of an excreted air other
than breath namely, the gas resulting from intestinal
decomposition. This conclusion may seem at first sight
repellent, highly improbable, and above all unnecessary,
but the truth of it is supported not only by the preceding
theoretical considerations and the results of actual indi-
vidual analyses, but by a large amount of very definite
evidence of a purely external nature. Psycho-analytic
investigation has shown that from the beginning children
take a far greater interest in the act referred to than is
commonly supposed, as is true of all excretory functions, 2
and that they are apt in various ways to attach great
significance to it, most of which of course becomes in later
years displaced on to other, associated ideas. From this
point of view the extensive part played by the idea in the

1 Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. IV, S. 588 et seq.

2 It should not be forgotten that the interest in question is a manifestation
of the sexual instinct. The part played by breath in infantile sexuality is
certainly less important than that played by the rectal excretions.

277

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

obscene jokes of childhood, and indeed in the more allusive
ones of later years, 1 becomes for the first time intelligible.
It is hardly necessary to add that, owing to the repugnance
of the idea, most of the infantile interest in it gets buried
in the Unconscious and the phantasies concerning it
forgotten.

One of these phantasies, which has a special reference
to the main theme of this essay, is the identification of
the material in question with the sexual secretion. In their
early cogitation about what is done by the father to bring
about the production of a baby many children originate
the belief, to which I have elsewhere directed attention, 2
that the mysterious act performed by the parents consists
in the passage of gas from the father to the mother, just as
other children imagine it to consist in the mutual passage
of urine. Some children, probably the smaller number, go
on to connect this with the swelling of the mother's
abdomen during pregnancy, and their personal experience
of a swollen abdomen due to dyspepsia and intestinal
decomposition may be the starting-point for reproduction
phantasies of their own. 3 The possible objection that this

1 Cp. the volumes of Krauss' Anthropophyteia, which give some notion of
this. Most farcical comedians on the variety stage make almost unconcealed
allusions to the act, usually in conjunction with the orchestra.

* Zentralblattfur Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. I, S. 566. In the Jahrbuch der Psycho-
analyse (1912, Bd. IV, S. 563) a detailed report is given of one of the cases on
which my conclusion was based. The explanation was subsequently, and inde-
pendently, confirmed by Reitler (Zentralblatt filr Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. II,
S. 114).

8 Larguier des Bancels (Arch, de Psychologic, t. XVII, pp. 64-6), in a criticism
of the present essay, holds that my conclusions "se brisent sur un point
capital". Quoting the extremely doubtful conclusions of Hartland, to the effect
that many savage races are ignorant of any connection between sexual inter-
course and fecundation, he asks how one can attribute to young children
greater perspicacity in this respect than that possessed by savage adults. My
answer is that I attribute to both a greater perspicacity than does my critic.
That, quite apart from actual knowledge, young children commonly imagine
the begetting of a baby to be dependent on some unknown act between the
parents may be news to him, but it is a very familiar fact to me, as to all others
who have intimate experience of the child's mind.

278

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

is in any way an artificial finding of psycho-analysis, or
perhaps one that refers only to present-day civilization,
can be at once disposed of by mentioning a single counter-
part from antiquity. Thus in the Satapatha-Brahmana, 1
and in several other passages in the Vedic literature, it is
described how the Lord of Existence, Pragapati, who had
created the original gods with the "out (and in) breathings
of his mouth", proceeded to create the whole of mankind
with the "downward breathings that escape from the back
part (jaghanat)"; the identity of cosmogonic theories of
creation with infantile ones has been amply demonstrated
by Otto Rank. 2

It will be most convenient to continue the discussion
at this stage by dissecting the natural associations existing
between the two expiratory gases, and grouping rather
artificially, it is true various topics under each. Air
emitted from the body, whether upwards or downwards,
has the following attributes: blowing movement, sound,
invisibility, moisture, warmth and odour.

I . Blowing Movement

The primitive notion that the down-going breath, to
use the seemly phrase of the Vedic writers, is a fertilizing
principle has frequently been extended to the wind, as
might readily have been expected. It is significant that
the corresponding belief can be traced in every quarter
of the world, from Australia to Europe. Perhaps the most
familiar example of it is the legend of Hera, who was
fertilized by the wind and conceived Hephaistos. In the
Algonkin mythology, Mudjekeewis, the West Wind and
Father of the other winds, quickens the maiden Wenonah,

* X. Kdnda, I, iii, i and 6; K&nda, I, ii, 2.

* Otto Rank, "Volkerpsychologische Parallelen zu den infantilen Sexual-
theorien," Zentralblatt fiir Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. II, S. 372, 425.

279

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

who then bears the hero Michabo, better known to us under
the name of Hiawatha. 1 In Longfellow's well-known poem
of this name the courtship is described in terms that
indicate the symbolic equivalence of wind, light, speech,
odour and music, one which will be discussed later.

And he wooed her with caresses,
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine,
With his flattering words he wooed her,
With his sighing and his singing,
Gentlest whispers in the branches,
Softest music, sweetest odours,
Till he drew her to his bosom.

The Minahassers of Celebes believe they are descended
from a girl in primeval days who was also fecundated by
the West Wind. 2 The Aruntas of Central Australia still
hold that a storm from the West sometimes brings evil
"ratapa", or child-germs, that seek to enter women; as
the storm approaches, the women with a loud cry hasten
to the shelter of their huts, for if they become impregnated
in this fashion twins will result who will die shortly after
their birth. 3

Although this belief is more especially connected with
the West Wind, other ones can on occasion display a
similar activity. Thus in the Luang-Sermata group of
islands in the Moluccas the origin of mankind is traced to a
"sky-woman" who climbed down to earth and was im-
pregnated by the South Wind; 4 her children had access to
the sky until the Lord Sun forbade it, a belief the onto-
genetic significance of which is evident. Again, in the

1 Brinton, American Hero-Myths, 1882, p. 47.

2 Schwarz, Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographic, 1907, Jahrg. XVIII, S. 59.
8 Strehlow, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stdmme in Zentralaustr alien, 1907, S. 14.
4 Riedel, De Sluik- en Kroesharige Rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, 1886,

p. 312.

280

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

Finnish national epic, Kalevala, the virgin Ilmatar is
fructified by the East Wind and gives birth to the wizard
Vainamoinen; appropriately enough, the latter not only
invented the harp and discovered fire, but became the
instructor of mankind in poetry and music. 1 In the similar
legend of Luminu-ut current in Singapore and the Indian
Archipelago 2 it is not stated which wind was responsible,
In classical times this belief was especially connected with
the Spring Wind, Zephyrus or Flavonius, who, for instance,
begot Euphrosyne with Aurora, and it is highly probable
that the Floralia included a worship of this wind as well as
of flowers; Ovid 3 describes how Chloris, called Flora by the
Romans, was ravished by Zephyr. Widespread also are the
traditions of whole regions particularly islands the
inhabitants of which are descended from the wind, or
whose women conceive only in this way. In early classical
times the latter belief was entertained in regard to Cyprus,
and only last century the inhabitants of Lampong, in
Sumatra, believed the same of the neighbouring island of
Engano. 4 Mohammedan tradition tells of a pre-Adamite
race consisting entirely of women, who conceived (daughters
only) by the wind, and also of an island of women thus
peopled. 5 The Binhyas of India also claim descent from the
wind. 6 In an interesting poem by Eduard Morike entitled
"Jung Volkers Lied", the connection is clearly indicated
between the belief in question and the tendency to re-
pudiate the male sex; it is probable that all these beliefs
in miraculous conception spring from the boy's desire to
exclude the father from anything to do with his birth :

1 Abercromby, The Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, 1898, Vol. I, pp. 316,
318, 322.

* Bab, Zeitschrift ftir Ethnologic, 1906, Jahrg. XXXVIII, S. 280.

8 Ovid, Fasti, v, 195-202.

4 Marsden, The History of Sumatra, 1811, p. 297.

8 L'AbrJgt des Merveilles. Translated from the Arabian by De Vaux, 1898,
pp. 17, 71.

e Saintyves, Les Vierges M&res, 1908, p. 143.

281 u

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Und die mich trug im Mutterleib,
Und die mich schwang im Kissen,
Die war ein schon frech braunes Weib,
Wollte nichts vom Mannsvolk wissen.

Sie scherzte nur und lachte laut
Und liess die Freier stehen :
"Mocht' lieber sein des Windes Braut,
Denn in die Ehe gehen!"

Da kam der Wind, da nahm der Wind
Als Buhle sie gefangen:
Von dem hat sie ein lustig Kind
In ihren Schoss empfangen. 1

As is quite comprehensible, the same belief was by
analogy also extended to animals. Freud 2 has reminded
us of the ancient belief that vultures were, like the inhabi-
tants of the islands just referred to, all female, and that
they conceived by exposing their genitals to the wind; so
accepted was this that Origen appealed to it in support
of the credibility of Jesus Christ's virgin birth. Nor was
the vulture the only bird that has been supposed to con-
ceive in this way; in Samoa the same thing was related

1 And she who bore me as a child
Who rocked my cradle then,
She was a fine brawn lass so wild
That would know nought of men.

She only scoffed and laughed beside,
And left the men alone,
"I'd rather be the wild wind's bride
Than marry anyone."

The wind he came, the wind so wild,
Bride was she, he the groom,
By him she got a merry child,
A boy child in her womb.
2 Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, 1910, S. 25.

282

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

of snipe, 1 and both Aristotle 2 and Pliny 3 tell us that par-
tridges can be fecundated when merely standing opposite
to the male, provided that the wind is blowing from him
to her. 4 St. Augustine 5 gravely relates how the mares in
Cappadocia are fertilized by the wind, Virgil 6 says the
same of the mares of Boaetia, and Pliny 7 of those of
Lusitania. In more modern times this ancient belief is found
only in the form of poetic analogy, such as in the following
passage from Shakespeare: 8

When we have laugh' d to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following, (her womb then rich with my young squire)
Would imitate, and sail upon the land.

Not only have the life-bringing powers been ascribed
to the outer air, usually in the form of wind, but this has
been extensively identified with the principle of life and
creation altogether. Something will be said later of the
enormous part it has played in Indian and Greek philo-
sophy, where it has been exalted to the rank of the breath
and essence of God himself, the fundamental substratum of
all material and spiritual existence, the source of all life
and activity, the first principle of the universe, and so on.
A glance at the extraordinary mass of material collected by
Frazer 9 on the subject of "The Magical Control of the
Wind" is enough to show the astonishing significance of

1 Sierich, "Samoanische Marchen," Internal. Arch, fur Ethnographic, Bd. XVI,
S. 90.

Aristotle, Hist. Anim., v, 4.

8 Pliny, Hist. Nat., x, 51.

4 See also Plutarch, Moralia, Lib. VIII, Art. i, Par. 3.

* St. Augustinus, Civ. Dei, xxi, 5.

6 Virgil, Georgics, iii, 266-76.

7 Pliny, op. cit., viii, 67.

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. 2, 1. 69.

9 Frazer, The Magic Art, 1911, Vol. I, pp. 319-31.

283

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the idea in anthropology and folk-lore. There remain in
modern times many examples of this over-estimation of the
idea, particularly in poetry, of which the following may be
quoted from Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", in which
also the association between wind, birth, fire, thoughts, and
words, which will presently be discussed, is well indicated:

Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

The question why various beliefs in the fertilizing power
of the wind get attached, now to the wind from one cardinal
point, now to another, cannot be completely answered
without a special study. It is plain that a number of
different determining factors enter into the matter. For
instance, it was believed in Thuringia 1 to be advantageous
to sow barley when the West Wind was blowing, and
one gets a clue to the meaning of this on learning further
that the sowing should be done on a Wednesday, i.e. on
Odin's day, since Odin, probably for reasons to do with
the setting sun, had special connections with the west.
A very general factor in the localizing of the belief is its
association with winds of a warm, moist, and "relaxing"
character, which commonly induce a more or less lascivious
mood: a good example is the "Fohnfieber" in Switzerland,
which is certainly a form of sexual excitation. The good
King Ren6 of Provence passed the very tolerant law that
those who committed crimes when the mistral was blowing
were not to be punished, since they could not be held

1 Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebrduche aus Thiiringen, 1878, Bd. II, S. 215.

284

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

responsible in such "irritating" circumstances. All agencies
leading to sexual excitation are readily identified, especially
in the unconscious, with a fertilizing principle. As winds
of this character prevailing blow from the west or south-
west over the chief part of Europe, it is not surprising
that in this region most of the beliefs in question are
related to it. In confirmation of this supposition is the fact
that the opposite type of wind, the East Wind, is popularly
credited with the contrary effect. There is a saying among
German sailors which runs (in Plattdeutsch) as follows: 1
"Oste-Wind makt krus den Buedel un kort den Pint."
("The East Wind makes the scrotum crinkled and the penis
short.")

It is nowadays generally recognized, since the belief
in mankind's primary interest in physical geography has
been largely discredited, that all this significance attaching
to the idea of wind must have arisen mainly through a
projection outward of thoughts and feelings concerning the
air in immediate connection with man's body. In accord
with this view is the fact that the beliefs just mentioned
concerning the sexual activities of the wind can be exten-
sively paralleled by similar ones relating to the breath. One
or two of these may be added to those already cited. The
Delphi priestess in her love-embrace with Apollo was filled
with his breath, which the God poured into her. In an
early Mexican picture 2 a man and woman are represented
as having intercourse by mingling their breath.

On the basis, therefore, of present-day views on myth-
ology, which do not need to be expounded here, 3 we may
assume that the idea of breath is primary to that of wind,
and that the beliefs just related concerning the latter may

1 Private communication from Dr. Karl Abraham.

2 Reproduced by Seler, "Tierbilder der mexikanischen und Maya-Hands-
chriften," Zeitschr. /. Ethnologic, Bd. XLII, S. 67.

3 See Rank and Sachs, Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fiir die Geisteswissen-
schaften, 1913, Kapitel II.

285

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

be taken as some index of how important the former has
been in anthropological history. That, however, the idea of
another personal gas is still more primary than that of
breath is a thesis that an attempt will be made to sub-
stantiate in the following pages.

2. Sound

In the description of a fertilizing principle or of the
Creative Being himself sound may occur either alone, when
it is plainly a symbol, or as the most prominent attribute
of some other phenomenon. A clear example of the former
is the "Last Trump", which is to wake the dead from their
sleep and call them to eternal life. This motif also plays
a part in the various miracles of raising people from the
dead; it is indicated for instance in a picture by Bronzino
(in the Santa Maria Novella, Florence) representing the
raising of Jairus's daughter, in which an angel stands at
the side blowing a trumpet. Another example of the sig-
nificance of sound, where the sexual meaning comes to
open expression, is afforded by a cameo, dated 1294, in
the Florence Bargello, in which a satyr blowing a trumpet
surprises a sleeping bacchante.

In the second type, where sound is merely one of the
prominent features, the phenomenon is perhaps most
often conceived of in the form of wind. In the Old Testament
the voice of God is described by Ezekiel (iii. 12) as "a great
rushing", and in the account of the advent of the Holy
Ghost given in the Acts of the Apostles (ii. 2) we read:
"And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a
rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they
were sitting." Similarly the South American Indians wor-
shipped "Hurrakan", "the mighty wind", a name supposed
to be cognate with our word "hurricane", and the natives
of New Zealand regarded the wind as a special indication

286

MADONNAS CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

of God's presence; 1 with this may be compared the Austra-
lian fear, mentioned above, of the impregnating storm, the
idea of "Father" being common to both. Even in modern
times tempests have been regarded as representing God in a
dangerous mood, while in all ages the creating of storms
and thunder has been considered a special prerogative of
the Deity (Odin, Thor, Yahweh, Zeus, etc.).

A Chinese myth 2 relates how Hoang-Ty, or Hiong, the
founder of civilization, was born of a virgin, Ching-Mou,
and thunder. The mythology of thunder is much too
extensive to be considered here, but attention should be
called to the close association between the ideas of
"thunder" and "father", one, indeed, which applies to the
whole group under discussion. The Phrygian precursor of
Zeus was called both Papas ( Father) and Bronton
( Thunderer). Frazer 3 has shown how extensive has been
the connection between Kings and thunder, and has made
it probable that the early Roman kings imitated Jupiter's
powers in this respect ; it is well known that psychologically
the idea of king is equivalent to that of father. The old
Indian God of Thunder and of Procreation, Parjanya, was
represented in the form of a bull, 4 a typical patriarchal
symbol. That the idea of thunder is exceedingly apt, in
dreams and other products of the unconscious phantasy, to
symbolize flatus, particularly paternal flatus, is well known
to all psycho-analysts; such psycho-neurotic symptoms as
brontephobia are almost constantly related to unconscious
thoughts concerning this, and in obscene jests the associa-
tion is at least as old as Aristophanes. 5

The association Father God Sound has always been

1 Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, Second Edition,
1870, p. 181.

* De Pre*mare, Vestiges des principaux dogmes chre'tiens, 1878, p. 433.
3 Frazer, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 180-3.

* Rigveda (Griffith's Translation), Vol. II, p. 299.

5 Aristophanes, Clouds, Act V, Sc. 2. BpovT^ xai Trop89), 6(iowo.

2 8 7

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

a remarkably close one, and the following description of
Zeus in this respect would hold good for the majority of
Gods: "He gave his oracles through the voices of winds
moaning and rustling in his sacred oak grove amidst the
murmur of falling waters and the clangor of bronzen vessels
struck by wind-moved hammers." 1 By a characteristically
human reasoning process it was assumed that supernatural
beings, including God himself, could be influenced by
sounds, of any kind, and this device has been widely em-
ployed in connection with both the purposes for which
it was desired to attract the attention, and influence the
conduct, of the Divine Being. The beating of tom-toms in
African villages to frighten away evil spirits, and the
similar Norse procedure to prevent the sun from being
swallowed at the time of an eclipse, may be cited as
examples of the one kind; in Greece also, loud noises were
considered especially effective as apotropaic measures
against the malign influences of evil demons. By the side
of this Luther's statement 2 may be recalled, according to
which the devil is to be driven away through the efficacy
of the passage of flatus.

On the other hand, sounds, especially in the form of
hymn-singing and music, have been, and still are, favourite
means of intercession to obtain benefits from the Deity.
A hymn called "haha" (= breath), an invocation to the
mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori priests on the initia-
tion of young men. 3 The instrument called the "bull-
roarer", "bummel", or "buzzer" is said by Haddon 4 to
be the most ancient, widely-spread, and sacred religious
symbol in the world. It consists of a slab of wood which,
when tied to a piece of string and rapidly whirled around,

1 Cotterill, Ancient Greece, 1913, p. 58.

2 Schurig, Chylologia, 1725, p. 795; see also Les Propos de Table de Luther,
Trad, franc, par Brunei, 1846, p. 22.

3 Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, 1884, p. 36.
* Haddon, The Study of Man, 1898, p. 327.

288

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

emits a roaring, uncanny noise. It is still used in Mexico,
Ceylon, British Columbia, New Zealand, the Malay Penin-
sula, New Guinea, Africa, and Australia. 1 Under the name
of the rhombus it figured prominently in the Dionysian
mysteries in Ancient Greece, and Pettazoni 2 has recently
pointed out that the "rombo" still survives in modern
Italy. It is used sometimes to invoke the presence and aid
of the Deity, sometimes to drive away evil spirits. A study
of the various beliefs surrounding it shows that the three
main ideas with which its use is associated are: (i) thunder
and wind, (2) reproduction (vegetation cults, initiation
ceremonies, danger if seen by women, etc.), (3) ancestor
worship (i.e., Father) in other words, ideas that take a
prominent part in the theme under discussion here. There
is naturally a close connection between bull-roarers and
thunder-weapons in general, which have played an im-
portant part in religious rites in most parts of the world
except Egypt; 3 the hammer of Thor, the trident of
Poseidon, the trisula of Siva, and the keraunos of Zeus
are a few of the many variants of it the phallic significance
of which is evident. In short, there are innumerable con-
nections between the idea of thunder on the one hand and
ideas of paternal power, particularly reproductive power,
on the other, a conclusion reached long ago by Schwartz 4
and in full accord with the conclusions of Abraham 5 and
Kuhn 6 on the sexual symbolism of lightning.

In ancient times it was believed that the young of
lions were born dead and that they were awakened into

1 Frazer gives numerous references to it in the different volumes of his
Golden Bough. See also Marett, Hibbert Journal, January 1910, and Bouvaine,
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. II. p. 270.

2 Pettazoni, "Soppravvivenze del rombo in Italia," Lares, 1912, Vol. I.
p. 63.

8 See Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore, 1911.

4 Schwartz, Wolken und Wind, Blitz und Donner, 1879, S. 186.

6 Abraham, Traum und My thus, 1909.

6 Kuhn, Uber die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks, 1859.

289

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

life through the roaring of their sire; this is given as one
of the reasons why in the Resurrection Jesus was some-
times represented as a lion, the space of three days being
also common to the two beliefs. It may be paralleled by
the belief mentioned by Pliny, 1 that a female partridge
can be impregnated merely from hearing the cry of the
male. The general importance of the voice in love-making
is well known to biologists. With many animals, e.g., deer,
most birds, etc., the love-call of the mate is one of the
strongest means of attraction, and even with human beings
the voice ) in both speaking and singing, 2 has by no means
lost this primitive effect.

From the sound of the voice it is an easy transition to
the idea of Speech. The sexual relationships of speech are
made plain in every psycho-analysis of neurotic symptoms
in which this function is implicated; stammering, self-
consciousness concerning speech, and so on. It has been
dwelt on by many writers. The philologist Sperber 3 has
made out a powerful case for the view that speech originated
as a development of the love-call excitation accompanying
the search for symbolical sexual gratification. In mytho-
logy and folk-lore the function of speech is often treated as
equivalent to loving or living, just as its opposite, dumb-

1 Pliny, op. cit, x, 51.

2 That infantile interest for the sound accompanying the passage of flatus
may be transferred in later life to the subject of music was first pointed out by
Ferenczi (Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. I, S. 395, Anm. i). The resem-
blance between the German words "fisteln" ( = to sing falsetto) and "fisten"
( = to pass flatus) is certainly in accord with this finding. One may in this
connection recall the fact that Hermes was God, not only of music, but also of
winds, speech, and money. (The anal-erotic association between money, gas,
and intestinal contents is indicated by many expressions in English. Thus new
words are "coined", while new coins are "uttered". "To stink of money" is to
be over-wealthy. "To raise the wind" is slang for "to obtain money", just as
"to cough up money" is for parting unwillingly with it. "To have a blow-out"
means to have a good meal, while "to blow" money is to spend it extrava-
gantly; the latter expression is often, through confusion with the past tense
"blew", corrupted to "to blue money".)

3 Sperber, "Uber den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf die Entstehung der
Sprache," Imago, 1912, Bd. I, S. 405.

290

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

ness, signifies impotence or death; an example of the latter
symbolism is to be found in the New Testament story where,
to emphasize the supernatural nature of John the Baptist's
conception, the earthly father (Zacharias) is said to have
been dumb (= impotent) from just before the conception
until just after the birth.

Speech was therefore quite naturally considered to be
identical with God, i.e., the Creator, and the doctrine of
the Logos has played a prominent part in most of the
higher religions. One need only recall the familiar passages
in St. John (i. i and i. 14) : "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;' 7
"And the Word was made flesh" (embodiment of Jesus
Christ). He also relates of his vision of the Being on a
White Horse that "his name is called the Word of God"
(Apocalypse xix. 13). God seems to have selected with
preference mere speech as the means of carrying out his
wishes, for instance in the Creation itself ("And God said,
Let there be light; and there was light," etc.). The associa-
tion between the Holy Ghost and speech was just as
intimate: the saints "spoke by the Holy Ghost" (St. Mark
xii. 36; Acts of the Apostles xiii. 2; xvi. 7), or were "filled
by the Holy Ghost and prophesied" (St. Luke i. 67), while
St. Paul pointedly says that "no man can say that Jesus
is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (i Corinthians
xii. 3).

The sexual equivalency of the idea of speech, or word,
comes to especially clear expression in the very legend
under discussion. From a number of passages in the
writings of the early Fathers that bear this out I will quote
two only: St. Zeno 1 writes: "The womb of Mary swells
forth with pride, not by conjugal gift, but by faith; by the
Word, not by seed," and St. Eleutherius, 2 "0 blessed

1 S/. Zeno, Lib. ii, Tractatus viii and ix, Pat. Lat., Tom. II, p. 413.
1 S/. Eleutherius Tornacensis, Serm. in Annunt. Fest., Tom, 65, p. 96.

291

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Virgin . . . made mother without co-operation of man. For
here the ear was the wife, and the angelic word the hus-
band." The Virgin's conception has been constantly con-
trasted by ecclesiastical writers with the fall of Eve, "the
second Eve" being a very usual designation for Mary.
The following passage, from St. Ephrem, 1 is typical of
many: "In the beginning the serpent, getting possession of
the ears of Eve, thence spread his poison throughout her
whole body; to-day Mary through her ears received the
champion of everlasting bliss." It is now generally recog-
nized 2 that the myth of the Fall in Eden represents an
expurgated version of a fertilization myth, so that such
passages as the one just quoted must be simply regarded
as expressing the contrast between forbidden and allowed
sexual union, as typified by Eve and Mary.

It is thus plain that at least some of the significance
attaching to the idea of speech has arisen in psychosexual
affects, and the next question is, in which specific ones f
I have elsewhere 3 indicated the probable answer to this
namely, the acts of breathing and speaking are both treated
in the Unconscious as equivalents of the act of passing
intestinal flatus, and a corresponding displacement of affect
is brought about from the latter idea to the former ones.
Indications of this association are still preserved in such
expressions as "poetic afflatus", "clat-fart" (Staffordshire
dialect for "gossip"), "flatulent speech", "a windy dis-
course", and the contemptuous slang phrases for this,
"gas" (English) and "hot air" (American). The word
"ventriloquism" (literally "belly-speaking", German
Bauchreden) is noteworthy in the same connection, and

1 St. Ephrem, De Divers. Serin., I, p. 607. See also St. Fulgentius; Delaude
Mariae ex partu Salvatoris; St. Zeno: Ad Pulcheriam Augustam, etc.

2 See, for instance. Otto Rank, Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg, II, S. 389,
and Ludwig Levy, "Sexualsymbolik in der biblischen Paradiesgeschichte,"
Imago, 1917-19, Bd. V, S. 16.

$ Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1912, Bd. IV, S. 588, 594.

292

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

it is of interest that Ferenczi 1 has pointed out that during
analysis the suppression of a remark may be betrayed by
a rumbling in the stomach.

Nor is it without significance that of the five Pranas
(the sacred breaths in the Vedas) it is the Apana, or down-
breathing, that is the one associated with speech. 2

3. Invisibility and Fluidity

These attributes favour the occurrence of the interesting
association between the idea of Thought and the group
under consideration. Thought is usually imagined as some-
thing flowing; one thinks of such expressions as "he poured
out his thoughts", "his thoughts ceased to flow", etc.,
and every psychologist is familiar with William James'
famous chapter on "The Stream of Consciousness". The
idea of breath, speech and thought are symbolic equivalents
and are all unconsciously associated with that of intestinal
gas. 3 I have elsewhere 4 brought forward reasons for think-
ing that the unconscious belief in the omnipotence of
thoughts (Allmacht der Gedankeri), which lies at the root of
animism and magic, may be related to this association
with the idea of creative power, just as most concrete
emblems of power (sceptre, sword, cross, staff, etc.) are
well-recognized phallic symbols. The notion of thought as
a begetter also occurs, e.g., in the myth of Athene's birth
out of the brain of Zeus. There are frequent reports of
nuns in the Middle Ages who professed to be pregnant
because Jesus had thought of them.

We thus see how the unconscious conceives of the Mind,

1 Ferenczi, Contributions to Psycho-Analysis (Engl. Transl.), 1916, p. 179.

8 Khdndogya-Upanishad, iii, 13, 8.

8 This association is also illustrated in the case already referred to and its
relation to the idea of "auto-suggestion" expounded.

4 Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, 1913, Bd. I, S. 429. See also
Eisler, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1921, Vol. II, p. 255 et seq.

293

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

regarded as an objective phenomenon. In the Vedic litera-
ture 1 the mind is said to be cognate with the Vyana, or
back-going breath, while in another of the Upanishads 2
we read that the Self consists of speech, mind, and breath,
and that the Self should be consoled in sacrificing the
desire for a wife by remembering that "mind is the husband,
speech the wife, and breath the child". 3 Similarly for the
Neo-Platonist Plotinus the world-soul is the energy of the
intellect and is begotten by the intellect, the father, just
as Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, sprang from the brain
of her father. In quoting the following passage from him,
"That which lies closed together in the intellect attains
full development as the Logos in the world-soul, fills this
with meaning and, as it were, makes it drunk with nectar,"
Jung 4 comments : "Nectar, like soma, is the drink of fertility
and life, i.e., sperma." Diogenes 5 also identified the intellect
with air; he maintained that air has intelligence, and that
human beings are intelligent in virtue of the air that enters
in from without. The latter statement is perhaps a highly
sublimated expression of the infantile sexual theory
described earlier in this essay.

From the ideas of thought and the mind it is but a step to
that of the Soul, and we shall see that the same group of
affects have extensively influenced this concept also. Of
the primitive conceptions of the soul, 6 the lower (we do
not say the primary) is that of the "bound soul", which was
imagined as the vital principle of various internal organs,
and was evidently little else than a symbolisation of the
vital essence, i.e. sperma. (We are not here concerned with
the motives or forces that led mankind to conceive the idea

1 Taittiriyaka-Upanishad, i, 7, i.

1 Brihaddranyaka-Upanishad, i, 5, 3.

8 Ibid., i, 4, 17.

4 Jung, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1912, Bd. IV, S. 179.

8 See Brett, A History of Psychology : Ancient and Patristic, 1912, p. 46.

6 See Wundt, op. cit., S. i, et seq.

294

of a soul, a matter on which Freud 1 has thrown considerable
light, but simply with the original content out of which this
idea was constructed.) If sexual thoughts played such a
prominent part in this crude conception of the soul it is
reasonable to expect that they have also been operative,
though perhaps in a more disguised manner, in regard to the
more elaborate ones, and this we find to have been so. The
most important part of the concept "Free Soul" is that
known as the "Breath Soul" (Hauckseele), and it is easy to
show that the idea of this belongs to the group under con-
sideration. The evidence for the far-reaching association
between the ideas of soul and breath is so familiar that it
need not be recounted here ; we are constantly reminded of it
by the very names for the former, from the Greek "psyche"
and the Hebrew "nephesh" to the German "Geist" and the
English "ghost" and "spirit". The fact that all these words
originally meant simply "breath" also indicates that the
latter was the primary idea of the two, which is indeed
evident from every point of view, and that we have here a
typical example of displacement of significance.

There are at least two reasons for suspecting that the
affects here concerned did not all originate in the idea of
breath even, but in a still deeper one namely, in that of
intestinal gas. These are, that in the first place the affects
and psychical significance which have been attached to the
idea of breath, or air or wind, were disproportionate to the
inherent psychical importance of the idea and so must
have been derived from one of greater psychical significance
(such as flatus indubitably is in infantile life and in the
adult unconscious), and that in the second place numerous
direct connections can be indicated between the idea of
intestinal gas and the conception of the Breath-Soul.

The first argument, put in other words, is that, if a
mass of feeling flowed over from the idea of breath to

1 Totem und Tabu, 1913, Kap. IV.

295

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

that of the soul greater in quantity than the amount
inherently belonging to the former, then it follows that this
idea must have acted, in part at least, merely as a carrier.
Now it is not hard to show that the significance attached
to the ideas of wind, air, soul, and breath have been much
greater than what might be explicable from the primary
psychical importance of the last-named of these, omitting
of course its secondary importance as an emblem of life and
creation. Confining ourselves solely to Hindu and Greek
philosophy, and taking first the former, we note the follow-
ing beliefs and statements in the Upanishads alone. Prana
(breath) is identified on the one hand with Brahman, the
Supreme Being, and on the other with Atman, the primary
essence of the Universe. 1 The origin of the latter is thus
described: From Atman came the Other, from this the
wind, from this the fire, from this water, and from water
came earth; thus the primary four of the series are ex-
pressed in terms of a gas. It is unnecessary to cite any
further examples, but it may be said that by far the greater
part of this whole literature is taken up with this theme,
the ideas of breath, wind, and so on, being described in the
most exalted language imaginable.

Similarly if we turn to Greece we find that the same
group of ideas forms a central starting point for a great
part, probably the greater part, of the views on philosophy,
medicine, psychology, and general Weltanschauung. Many
of the earlier monists, including Anaximenes, posited air
as their <*px^ and the continued existence of the world
was explained by a process of cosmic respiration, 2 the con-
ception of which was based in detail on that of bodily
respiration. Heidel, in a specially careful study, 3 has further
shown that the various atomic theories of the Greeks can

1 Deussen, op. cit., pp. no, 194.

2 Heidel, "Antecedents of the Greek Corpuscular Theories," Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology, 1911, Vol. XXII, pp. 137-40.

* Heidel, op. cit., pp. 111-72.

296

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
principally be traced to their views about the act of breath-
ing. 1 Diogenes, in taking air as the most important element
in the world, plainly says that the necessity of breath for
life is the reason why air is chosen as the primary reality;
the interaction between air in the body and the air outside
is the type of all vital action. 2 With the Stoics also, 3 the
pneuma was of cardinal importance: it was the breath of
life, the warm air closely associated with the blood, the
vital principle transmitted in generation, and at the same
time the soul, which is contained in the body and yet is
one in nature with the surrounding World-Soul. 4 The part
played by the idea of breath in moulding the Greek concep-
tion of the soul is too familiar to need insisting on. The
influence of this conception extended far into Christian
times: Clement of Alexandria, for instance, as well as
Tertullian, maintained that the "rational soul", which is
directly imparted by God to man, is identical with that
"breath of God" 5 mentioned in Genesis, in contradistinction
to the "irrational soul", which is akin to the life-principle
of animals. The latter belief may profitably be compared
with the Indian one mentioned above (p. 279) concerning
the two breaths, upper and lower in a moral as well as in a
physical sense, and the juxtaposition here of animal and
divine opens up the whole topic of repression.

The pneuma concept was also one of the highest sig-
nificance in Greek medicine and retained much of its im-
portance until about a century ago, gradually fading away

1 It is interesting to note that prominent ideas in nineteenth century
physical science, the atomic theory and the conception of ether, both of which
were anticipated in Greek philosophy, represent in both cases sublimated
projections of the complex under discussion.

8 Brett, op. cit v pp. 45, 46.

3 Brett, op. cit., pp. 166, 167.

4 It is clear that the idea of "cosmic consciousness", of which we hear so
much in modern pseudo-philosophy, is psychologically equivalent to ideas
concerning the outer air, which have been projected from more personal
sources.

5 The Hebrew "ruach" denoted both the human soul and the breath of God.

297 w

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

via the doctrine of "humour" and "diathesis"; its memory
is perpetuated in such expressions as "to be in a bad
humour", "in good spirits". All causes of disease other
than those relating to food and drink were summarized
under the generic term "air", a pernicious relic of which
attitude we still retain in the almost universal superstition
that draughts are dangerous to health (not to mention the
special risks ascribed to specific forms of air such as "night
air", "damp air", air coming through holes, etc.), and the
therapeutic value ascribed to a "change of air", or a
"change of climate" was even greater than that obtaining
in our own days. 1 For centuries most physicians were
attached to one or other school of philosophy, and the
most important group were those constituting the school of
Pneumatists, who subscribed to the Stoic doctrines;
physiology and philosophy thus exerted a mutual influence
on each other. The pneuma coursed through the entire
body, regulated nutrition, generated thought and semen, 2
and, according to Aristotle, conveyed to the heart the
movements of sensation that had been transmitted to it
from without through the medium of the sense organs ; on
the state of it depended the health of the individual. An
interesting example of the strength of the pneuma doctrine

1 One should also think of the excessive significance which is still attached
by many people to respiratory exercises. In the description of my patient
referred to above there are some beautiful examples of the mystical application
of these. Nor can orthodox medicine be entirely exempted from this reproach;
I may cite the following examples taken at random from a medical catalogue:

1. Fletcher: The law of the Rhythmic Breath, Teaching the Generation,
Conservation and Control of Vital Force.

2. Arnulphy: La Sante" par la science de la respiration. (La respiration est
un des principaux proce'de's au moyen desquels on arrive a de" velopper sa
force magne"tique, sa volonte".)

3. Durville: Pour combattre la peur, la crainte, I'anxie"t6, la timidite",
deVelopper la volont6, gue"rir ou soulager certaines maladies par la
Respiration Profonde.

* The view was, for instance, expressed that Hephaistos took the form of
pneuma that coursed through the arteries of Zeus to his brain and thus led
him to generate thought, i.e., to procreate Athene. (See Creuzer, Symbolik und
Mythologie, 2e Aufl., 1819-23, Bd. II, S. 763 et seq.)

298

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

was the way in which it was able totally to obscure the
significance of the discovery of the nerves, 1 it being insisted,
in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that these
were merely ramifications of the pneuma-carrying arteries ;
even later, when the relation of the nerves to the brain and
to muscular action had been established, Augustine main-
tained that they were tubes of air which transmitted to
the limbs the actions commanded by the will. The following
passages from Brett 2 well illustrate the general significance
of the pneuma doctrine: "To one who thinks of the body
as irrigated throughout by air, who attributes the cause of
pulsation to the shock of air meeting blood, who moreover
feels dimly that man is in direct connection with the whole
universe through the continuity of this air, the importance
of this factor must have assumed the greatest propor-
tions."

There is abundant evidence to show that the idea of
breath could not have been by any means the sole source
of this series of doctrines, readily as this seems generally
to be assumed. Proceeding first with the Greek views, we
note two considerations : that the pneuma was not always
brought into connection with breath as one would have
expected from the current opinion, and further that their
conception of respiration was a singularly broad one, many
processes being included under this term besides that of
breathing. Aristotle, for example, positively states that the
pneuma of the body, the importance of which we have
just noted, is not derived from the breath, but is a secretion
resulting from processes going on within the body itself
(primarily in the intestine), and Galen says, even more
explicitly, that the psychic pneuma is derived in part from

1 Brett (op. cit., p. 284) gives a striking description of the prejudices due to
the tenaciousness with which the pneuma doctrine was held, and of the
difficulty with which these were overcome before the value of the discovery
could be properly appreciated.

2 Brett, op. cit., pp. 52, 53.

299

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the vapours of digested food. 1 This association, which
appears to be still active in the unconscious, is also em-
bodied in our daily speech: we talk of "expressing our
thoughts", of being given "food for thought", and so on.
It would seem possible that the association has played
some part in the development of certain forms of material-
istic philosophy; one is struck, for instance, by the simile
employed in such dicta as that of Cabanis, "the brain
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile". We see an
interesting revival of this attitude in the current material-
istic trends of present-day psychiatry, which would derive
the greater part of mental disorder from toxins due to
intestinal disturbances quite logically, if this organ were
the source of thought, as the Greeks believed; the absence
of any evidence in support of this aetiology makes no
difference to the belief in it.

In the second place, a little study of the accounts given
by various writers makes it plain that the Greeks thought
of the respiratory and alimentary systems as being through-
out closely connected, 2 which is the main point we are
trying here to establish. On the one hand respiration was
not restricted to breathing, but included also perspiration
(a perfectly scientific view), while on the other hand
respiration was regarded as a variety of nutrition, which
indeed it is. They not only identified the absorption of air,
its subsequent changes within the body, and its final excre-
tion, 3 with those of food, but ascribed to the influence of
the former the process whereby the latter becomes suffi-
ciently rarefied to be carried over the body; the underlying
idea, with of course many modifications, seems to have

1 Brett, op. cit., pp. 118, 291.

a See Heidel, op. cit., pp. 131-7.

3 Hippocrates in describing the foetus says that it draws in breath through
the umbilical cord, and that when it is filled with breath this "breaks", makes
a passage for itself outward through the middle of the foetus, and in this way
escapes. (See Heidel, op. cit., S. 135, 136.)

300

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

been that the inspired air reached the stomach, either
through the blood stream or through the oesophagus
(which they believed led to the heart), and there digested
the food, the internal pneuma being the product of this
and thus representing a combination of air and food. From
this point of view it is clear that pneuma was not merely a
symbolic equivalent of intestinal gas, but was actually and
grossly identical with it. The world-wide belief that the soul
escapes through the mouth 1 probably refers, therefore, to
ideas concerning not only the respiratory system, but the
alimentary one also; this conclusion is supported by the
existence, among many tribes, of various precautions and
taboos designed to prevent the escape of the soul through
the mouth during eating. 2

Study of the Vedic literature shows that the conceptions
of the Indian philosophers on this matter were funda-
mentally similar to those of the Greeks. They devoted an
extraordinary attention to the subject of the five Pranas,
or breaths, but the accounts given of these in the various
passages are so overlapping that it is not always easy to
define the precise differences between them; in fact it is
known that the definitions shifted to some extent at
different periods. In spite of this, however, it is possible
to determine the main outlines of the conceptions, and we
may consider them in order. Prana, the "up-breathing",
means essentially the breath proper. Where it stands alone
it frequently denotes the sense of smell, consequently
inspiration, but sometimes when used in conjunction with
Apana it means expiration and the latter inspiration. 3
Apana, the "down-breathing", though it also sometimes
denotes smell and inspiration, usually means the wind of
digestion residing in the bowels. It originates in the navel

1 See Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 1911, pp. 30-3.

2 Frazer, op. cit., p. 116.

8 See Deussen, op. cit., pp. 276-9, where this matter is discussed in detail.

301

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

of the primeval man. 1 It carries off the intestinal excre-
ments; 2 it dwells in the bowels, 3 and presides over the
organs of evacuation and generation. 4 The Vyana, or "back-
going" breath, unites the breath proper to the wind of
digestion, 5 and courses through the blood-vessels. 6 The
Samana, or all-breathing, also unites the Prana to the
Apana, 7 and carries the food over the body. 8 These two last-
mentioned breaths evidently make up together the Greek
"internal pneuma". Finally the Udana, the "up- or out-
breathing", sometimes called the "wind of exit", 9 dwells in
the throat, 10 and either brings up again or swallows down
that which is eaten or drunk. 11 The Udana, which evidently
denotes gas regurgitating from a flatulent stomach, is an
interesting counterpart to the Apana, for while the latter is
formally identified with death itself 12 the former carries
away the soul from the body after death; 13 the connection
between them is naturally a close one, since they both
represent intestinal gas, which may escape either upwards
or downwards. The idea of death and of intestinal decom-
position are here, as so often, 14 brought near together, an
additional explanation being thus afforded for the belief
that the soul escapes from an alimentary orifice after death.
Consideration of these accounts reveals the striking fact
that four out of the five Pranas are much more closely

1 Aitareya-Aranyaka, ii, 4, i, 6. (I refer throughout to the notation in
Miiller's edition.)

2 Ibid, ii, 4, 3, 2. Also Maitrdyana-Upanishad, II, 6 and Garbha-Upanishad, I.

3 Amritabindhu, 34.

4 Prasna-Upanishad, iii, 5.

6 Maitrdyana-Upanishad, ii, 6.

6 Prasna- Upanishad, iii, 6.

7 Prasna-Upanishad, iv, 4.

8 Maitrdyana-Upanishad, ii, 6. Prasna-Upanishad, iii, 5.

9 Veddntasdra, 97.

10 Aimritabindhu, 34.

11 Maitrdyana-Upanishad, ii, 6.

12 Aitareya-Aranyaka, ii, 4, 2, 4.

13 Prasna-Upanishad, iii, 7.

14 See Vol. I, p. ii.

302

related to the alimentary system than to the respiratory,
being primarily concerned with the movement of food,
either within the alimentary canal itself or in the body at
large; even the fifth, the Prana in the narrowest sense,
does not altogether dispense with this connection, for on
the one hand it is doubly united to the Apana (flatus) and
on the other hand it has to do with the sense of smell, which
biologically is nearly related to both sexuality and cop-
rophilia.

It seems to me, therefore, a hardy venture for anyone
who has reviewed the evidence just brought forward still
to maintain that no other bodily gas than breath has played
a part in developing the conception of the "Breath-Soul".

4. Moisture

It is well known that the idea of water has played an
extraordinarily extensive part in anthropological sym-
bolism, and especially in connection with the ideas of crea-
tion and birth. The symbolic significance of water is mainly
derived from its unconscious equivalency with uterine fluid,
urine, and semen; it is probably the commonest symbol,
both male and female, employed in birth phantasies. It is
therefore quite intelligible that the ideas of water and of
gas should frequently be found in proximity in these phan-
tasies, and that they should even be treated as symbolic
equivalents. A simple example is that in the myth of
Prometheus, who created mankind out of water and sound.
One nearer to the principal theme of this essay is that of the
relation between the Holy Ghost and Baptism. In a previous
essay 1 I have tried to show that the psychological sym-
bolism of the baptismal rite signifies "rebirth through
purification", and that purification is an idea unconsciously
equivalent to fertilization. It is thus noteworthy that the

1 Chapter IT, p. 70.

33

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

two ideas of baptismal water and the Holy Ghost (in
infantile terms, urine and gas) are frequently brought
together in the New Testament in relation to the idea of
re-birth. Jesus, in his reply to Nicodemus, says: "Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that
is born of the Spirit" (St. John iii. 5 et seq.), and again,
"For John truly baptised with water; but ye shall be bap-
tised with the Holy Ghost" (Acts i. 5). The replacement of
the desire for earthly (i.e., incestuous) re-birth by that for
spiritual re-birth is equivalent to the wish to be purified
from sin, sin (of which incest is the great archetype) and
death being opposed to re-birth and life; St. Paul writes
(Romans viii. 2): "For the law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death."

The tertium comparationis between water and gas is
evidently fluidity, and in the idea of vapour we get a fusion
of the two. For this reason vapour has always played an
important part in connection with the various topics dis-
cussed above, and the process of evaporation, whereby
water is converted through vapour into gas, has extensively
engaged the interest and attention of mankind. In Ancient
Greece the Plutonia, Charonia, or hell-gates, where vapours
issued from the earth, were sacred, because the exhalations
were regarded as the spirits of the dead 1 (cp. the relation
mentioned above between death and Apana and Udana).
These spirits were looked to for increase of flocks and

1 Rohde, Psyche, 6. Aufl., 1910, Bd. I, S. 213. Also Preller-Robert, Griechische
Mythologie, Bd. I, S. 283, 811.

304

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

herds 1 and for the fruitfulness of the soil, while women
worshipped them to obtain offspring. 2 Such beliefs are still
current in Syria: 3 for example, at the Baths of Solomon
in northern Palestine, blasts of hot air escape from the
ground, and one of them, named Abu Rabah, is a famous
resort of childless wives who wish to satisfy their maternal
longings; they let the hot air stream up over their bodies
and really believe that children born to them after such
a visit are begotten by the saint of the shrine. In ancient
Italy issuing vapours were personified as a goddess, Mefitis,
whose chief temple was in the valley of Amsanctus. The
exhalations here, supposed to be the breath of Pluto him-
self, are known to consist of warm, noisy blasts of sulphur-
etted hydrogen 4 (i.e., had the odour of flatus) ; the associa-
tion between intestinal functions and Pluto, the god of the
lower world, is brought to our consciousness by the title of
the well-known purgative, Pluto water !

Heidel 5 says that "probably no other natural pheno-
menon played so important a role in Greek philosophy as
evaporation". Rohde has abundantly shown that to the
Greeks the soul was essentially a vapour ; 6 the later concep-
tion of the soul, however, for instance that of the Stoics,
would seem to have been that of an invisible, gaseous
medium which owed both its origin and its continued
activities to the vapours, derived from the mixture of blood
and air, that coursed through the body. The process of
evaporation or distillation was evidently of cardinal im-
portance in effecting this change from the material to the
immaterial, and thus helps to explain the significance

1 Many passages in Dieterich, Mutter Erde, 1905.

2 Rohde, op. cit., S. 297-9.

3 Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-Day, 1902, pp. 116 et seq.

4 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 2nd Edition, 1907, p. 170.

5 Heidel, op. cit., p. 122. See also Gilbert, Die meteorologischen Theorien des
griechischen Altertums, 1907, S. 439 et seq.

e It may be mentioned that our word "breath" is cognate with the German
Brodem (steam, odour).

305

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

attaching to bodily heat that brought it about, of which we
shall speak later. From this point of view it is also easy to
grasp Diogenes' notion that thought is an activity of dry
air, that moisture is detrimental to thinking, and that
excess of moisture is the reason why the young lack
intelligence. 1 The same train of thought was applied to the
life of the universe, cosmic respiration being imagined in
terms of moisture, the earth and sea giving forth vapour
and receiving back rain. 2 It dominated further the greater
part of physiology, for digestion, absorption and nutrition
were essentially problems of the conversion of food into the
internal pneuma and the distribution of this through thebody.
The inter-relation of moisture and air in both respiratory
and intestinal breath affords a physiological basis for these
conceptions, the psychological origin of which, however,
goes back, as was indicated above, to infantile life.

5. Warmth

In relating the variants of the idea of the Virgin Mary's
conception, as portrayed in art, we noted the curious fact
that rays of light were sometimes treated as the equivalent
of radiating breath, issuing from the mouth, entering into
the ear, and so on, and we take this as a starting point for
the discussion of warmth as an attribute common to the
upper and the lower breaths. The belief in question finds
many parallels outside of Christianity: the legends of
virgins that have been impregnated by rays of light,
usually from the sun or by fire, are exceedingly numerous
and wide-spread. Bab, 3 Frazer, 4 Hartland, 5 and others have
collected many dozens of such stories, with customs based
on the belief, and it is not necessary to quote any specific

1 Brett, op. cit., p. 46. * Heidel, op. cit., p. 134.

3 Bab, op. cit., S. 279 et seq.

4 Frazer, The Golden Bough, 1900, Vol. Ill, pp. 204 et seq., 244, 270, 305, 314.

5 Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, Vol. I, pp. 11-13, 18, 25, 26, 89-100.

306

examples here. They show the usual characteristics of
supernatural births, the child proving to be a Messiah, a
great Emperor, or what not. One rather striking feature is
the frequency with which water is made to play a part in
the event ; the virgin is the daughter of a river-god, a star
falls into water which she drinks, and so on. That the
making of fire is commonly conceived of by the primitive
mind as a sexual performance is well established. 1

But beyond the symbolic equivalency just signified, an
inherent connection between breath and fire (or light) is
often predicated. To breathe on a fire, especially a holy
one, is strictly tabooed in many countries; 2 for instance a
Brahman is forbidden to blow on a fire with his mouth.
The relation of breath to fire in folk-lore and superstition
is a very close one. 3 In Longfellow's "Hiawatha" it is
described how Gitche Manito, the "Creator of the Nations",
blew on to the trees so that they rubbed together and
burst into flame. In the Old Testament breath is constantly
associated with fire, and in the Hermetic writings it is
stated that souls are made from "the breath of God and
conscious fire". In the Mithra liturgy the creative breath
proceeds from the sun, and in the Stoic philosophy the
cosmic Divine Fire was identical with the atmosphere.
Jung 4 and Silberer 5 quote a number of interesting passages
from various sources that show the intimate association
subsisting between the ideas of shining and sounding. It
can therefore be said with certainty that in primitive
thinking the ideas of sound, beat and light are as definitely
interchangeable equivalents as the corresponding physical
processes have been proved to be by the scientific doctrine
of the transformation of energy.

1 Frazer, The Magic Art, 1911, Vol. II, Ch. XV, "The Fire-Drill," and p. 233.

2 Frazer, op. cit., p. 241. Spirits of the Corn andojthe Wild, 1912, Vol. II, p. 254

3 Frazer, The Magic Art, Vol. II, p. 239 et seq.
* Jung, op. cit., S. 206-8.

6 Silberer, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. II, S. 596-7.

37

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

We have now to inquire into the meaning of this associa-
tion. Fire, or heat, is known to be one of the commonest
libidinal symbols, and, as Abraham 1 has clearly shown, it
is the equivalent of soma and sperma. This, however,
obviously cannot be the original source of the association,
for not only is the child ignorant of the existence of sperma,
but it is relatively late before it learns to appreciate even
that of fire. Years ago, in his Dora analysis, Freud 2 pointed
out that in symbolic language, e.g., in dreams, the idea of
fire replaced that of water, particularly urine ; the associa-
tion is partly one of contrast, from the mutual incom-
patibility of the two substances. In the psycho-analyses of
patients I have also found that fire can symbolize not only
urine, but also flatus, as for instance in phobias concerning
gas-jets, 3 and further that the primary source of fire sym-
bolism in general is probably to be explained in the follow-
ing way. The infant's first experience of heat (as distinct
from the warmth of the normal body temperature) is
derived from the fact that all excretions are warmer than
the external temperature of the body and in addition often
produce, from their irritating and acrid nature (especially
marked with young children), local burning sensations.
When, now, the child becomes acquainted later on with
other sources of heat, particularly burning heat, he inevit-
ably forms an association between them and the causes of
his earlier experiences. This happens so regularly that, for
instance, with a phobia of fire at night one can predict with
certainty that such a person will prove to be one who has
incompletely overcome the infantile fear (and temptation)
of bed-wetting. As we know that the child can express to
itself the idea of sexual secretion only in terms of one or
other excretion we can understand how it is that fire comes

1 Abraham, Traum und Mythus, 1909.

* Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften ZUY Neurosenlehre. Zweite Folge, S. 80.

8 This must have been so in the case described by Reitler, loc. cit.

308

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

to be such a general libidinal symbol, most often of urine,
though sometimes of flatus. We must thus infer, on the
principles enunciated above, that the association between
fire and breath is a secondary one, replacing the earlier one
between fire and flatus (and urine).

There is ample confirmation of this conclusion to be
found in many spheres, but we shall confine ourselves
mainly to the field of Greek philosophy, so as to extend
our previous considerations on this subject. In the first
place, it is striking that the idea of heat, or fire, played a
part of central importance in the pneuma doctrine;
Aristotle, for instance, maintained that the active element
in the internal pneuma was of the nature of fire, identical
with the principle of fertility in semen. According to
Heidel, 1 "it is in the phenomena of fire as interpreted by the
Greeks that we discover the best illustration of the processes
of respiration and nutrition," and this is still the favourite
method of introducing the study of chemical physiology.
But the Greeks did not stay at the analogy; for them heat
was the actual motive force that carried on these processes.
Except among the Atomists, respiration was thought to
proceed through the natural warmth of the body creating
an expansion that mechanically draws in the colder air
from without. 2 Similarly with nutrition. The native heat
of the organism "digested" the food, i.e., converted it into
pneuma, in which form it was conveyed all through the
body. It was at first believed that the heat, or fire, worked
no inner change in the food, merely comminuting it and
so preparing it for absorption into the blood, but the
hypothesis was carried by Aristotle to the further stage
mentioned above, his views on digestion being accepted by
Galen and most of the other later medical authorities. 3 A

1 Heidel, op. cit., p. 142.

2 Heidel, op. cit., pp. 136, 141.
8 Heidel, op. cit., pp. 141-68.

39

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

great number of the Greek philosophers, however, just like
the modern psycho-analyst, refused to be satisfied with the
idea of fire as a self-sufficing primary agent, but broached
the question of its nature and origin. They concluded, or
rather accepted an age-old conclusion, that fire was sus-
tained and fed by water in the form of vapour, the analogy
being evoked of the sun drawing up or drinking moisture;
since, however, the very production of vapour is dependent
on the heat, it would seem as if a permanent cycle was
posited, the primordial construction of which it was im-
possible to determine. It was believed that water was the
primary nutrient element par excellence, though this was
inactive without the influence of the fire which it itself fed.
Presumably the ultimate source of the fire was the life-
instinct itself, for the greatest attention was paid to the
passage of heat from the mother to the child during pre-
natal life, but if one asks for a more explicit account of it,
particularly where it was supposed to reside, the only con-
clusion at all conformable with the different accounts
seems to be that it was carried in a gaseous form, constitut-
ing thus the very essence of pneuma. In short, the Greek
theory of nutrition, just as that of respiration, assumes the
closest possible association between the ideas of heat (or
fire) and of gas (or breath in the widest sense).

The idea of heat (or fire) played an equally prominent
part in the Greek non-physiological conceptions, e.g., the
philosophical and psychological ones. Some of the monists,
such as Heraclitus, posited fire as their &pxVj. The cosmic
process, which, as was indicated above, was imagined in
terms of respiration and nutrition, was supposed to depend
on evaporation and precipitation, i.e., on an alternation of
heat and cold; the continued existence of earth and sea
was maintained through their emitting warm vapours and
receiving back cooling showers. 1 The very word "psyche"

1 Heidel, op. cit., pp. 134, 137-40.

310

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

itself is derived from the word fe^, 1 which has the double
meaning of "I breathe" and "I cool", 2 and one of the
favourite images in which it was described, as it still is in
poetic diction, was that of a thin ascending flame. When
the Neo-Platonic Plotinus rejected the Stoic doctrine of
the material origin of the pneuma, he elaborated the follow-
ing ingenious view: As the association of the soul with
matter implies a degradation it cannot be placed in imme-
diate contact with the body, so it makes use of a mediating
element, a form of pneuma, in which to clothe itself and be
guarded from a defiling contact; this aerial garb is of the
nature of fire (!), in which the soul dwells and through
which it moves the body.

Another example of the association between the idea of
fire and the group under consideration is that to do with
speech. Jung 3 has brilliantly demonstrated the symbolic
equivalence of speech and fire, quoting numerous beliefs
in which the former is primary to the latter, though I
cannot agree with his conclusion 4 that "the origin of the
fire-speech phenomenon seems to be the Mother-Libido".
To the many passages he cites I might add one from the
Upanishads 5 in which both speech and fire are identified
with the Apana, or down-breathing. Thus fire originates in
speech, and both in pneuma, particularly the intestinal one:
a conclusion which is in complete harmony with the one
formulated above 6 on the basis of individual analyses which

1 Prof. G. S. Brett was good enough to call my attention to Plato's sarcastic
explanation of the word <|AJ^ ^l 9i>aiv fytt xat Ifyei, "that which conducts the
nature (vitality)". He adds: The word 6^et is not a natural one to use and is
philological ly connected with a number of words denoting (i) pipe, channel;
(2) it is the technical word for "ride" and in the form 'o/e^co means to perform
the sexual act.

2 Roscher, Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie,
S. 3202.

8 Jung, op. cit., S. 205-9.

4 Jung, op. cit.. S. 388.

8 Khandogya-Upanishad, III, 13, 3.

6 p. 292.

3"

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

show speech to be an unconscious symbol for flatus (and
sometimes urine also).

To the Assyrian Fire-God, Gibil, as to many others,
was ascribed a Logos part, 1 and we have noted above the
close association between speech and the Christian Trinity,
particularly the Holy Ghost. It is therefore quite consistent
that the Holy Ghost should be likened to fire. John the
Baptist preached: "I indeed baptize you with water unto
repentance: but he that corneth after me is mightier than I,
whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" (Matthew iii. n). To
be purified with fire (i.e., re-born) is a familiar metaphor,
even in common speech, and the gaseous origin of it,
indicated also in this passage, has been explained above in
connection with the theme of baptism. In the Acts of the
Apostles we read further (ii. 3) the following description of
the descent of the Holy Ghost : "And there appeared unto
them cloven tongues, as of fire, and it sat upon each of
them."

In reference to the mention of the tongue in the last
passage quoted it will be convenient here to say a few
words on this subject in so far as it relates to the present
group of ideas. Symbolically the tongue is equivalent to
the beak of the Dove, both having an evident phallic
signification. Its physiological characters render it pecu-
liarly adapted for this symbolism : thus, the facts that it is a
red pointed organ, with dangerous potentialities, capable of
self-movement, usually discreetly concealed but capable of
protrusion (as in the defiant and forbidden exhibitionism of
children), which can emit a fluid (saliva) that is a common
symbol for semen.

In Bohemia a fox's tongue is worn by a timid person as
an amulet to make him bold, 2 the meaning of which is

1 Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte, 1886, S. 520.

* Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebrauche aus Bohmen und Mahren, 1864, S. 54.

312

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
patent. The term "spit-fire", applied to anyone having a
sharp tongue, is probably a relic of the belief in dragons,
which emitted fire from both extremities of the body. In
the Rig-Veda the fire-god Agni is called the "beautiful-
tongued one"; his tongue, like the phallic magic rods, is
so powerful that it can overcome all obstacles. 1 Fire, like
the tongue, is said to lick ("lingua" and allied words come
from the Sanscrit lib = to lick). The dangerous-weapon idea
is well shown in a literal fashion in St. John's vision of the
Being, of whom he writes (Revelations xix. 15) "And out
of his mouth goeth a sharp sword" (another favourite
phallic symbol); in another passage (Revelations i. 16) he
describes the Son of Man as having a sharp two-edged
sword proceeding from his mouth. The Holy Ghost was not
the only divine spirit to descend to earth in the guise of a
tongue, for precisely the same is narrated of the Egyptian
God Ptah, who, like Yahweh, created by means of the
Word.

Nor is the tongue bereft of connections with the aliment-
ary group of ideas. It is, indeed, situate in the alimentary
tract, and serves both for the taking in of food and for the
spitting out of what may have to be expelled (bad food,
phlegm, etc.); the Indians gave it the name of Atri, "for
with the tongue food is eaten, and Atri is meant for Atti,
eating." 2 It is also closely related to the gaseous ideas
discussed above. In many languages, e.g., English and
French, the same word is used to denote both tongue and
speech, and the association between it and inspired speech
or thought is indicated in the following passage from the
Acts of the Apostles (ii. 4) : "And they were all filled with
the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance." The association tongue

1 Hirzel, "Gleichnisse und Metaphern im Rigveda," Zeitschrift fiir Volker-
psychologie, Jahrg. XIX, S. 356, 357.
* Brihaddranyaka-Upanishad, II, 2, 4.

313 x

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

sexuality speech is manifest in a number of nightmare
superstitions collected by Laistner, 1 to which I will add one
from Bohemia 2 namely, that the tongue of a male snake,
if cut from the animal on St. George's Eve and placed under
a person's tongue, will confer the gift of eloquence; a
similar explanation must hold for the well-known Irish
belief of eloquence being conferred on whoever kisses the
almost inaccessible Blarney stone. The tongue, therefore, is
seen to be related to the ideas of fire, speech, sexuality,
and divinity, a fact that will be commented on later when
we discuss the idea of the combination of gas and an
emitting organ.

6. Odour

This attribute differs from the preceding ones in being
much more prominent with intestinal gas than with breath,
and is on this account the more important for our purpose
of elucidating the part played by the former. The essential
relation of the sense of smell to coprophilia is well known
to both ophresiologists and psycho-analysts, and it has been
plainly shown that much of the interest attaching to agree-
able perfumes and aromatics is a replacement of that
taken by children, and by primitive peoples, in the odour
of excretions; the adult attitude towards the latter odour
has become as a rule, though by no means invariably, a
negative one. For both these reasons it is legitimate to infer
that where the sense of smell has played a part in the
formation of complex-ideas these are more nearly related
to the phenomenon of intestinal gas than to that of breath. 3

1 Laistner, Das R&tsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. I, S. 41, 42.

2 Grohmann, op. cit., S. 81.

3 It may be conjectured that the antiquity of this buried association is one
reason for the mysterious affective power of odours, especially in the revival of
forgotten experiences (as screen-memories); as Marlitt says in her story
Das Eulenhaus, "Nichts in der Welt macht Vergangenes so lebendig wie der
Gcruch" ("Nothing on earth makes the past so living as does odour").

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

Even when the odour of breath itself is prominent it is
probable that it is secondary to the other; bad breath is
instinctively referred to digestive disorder. In the psycho-
analysis of patients who have an excessive repugnance for
the odour of bad breath it is always found that this has
originated in the repression of pronounced anal-erotism.
The same association is often manifested in popular sayings
and beliefs; "to breathe on" was in Sparta a designation
for the pederastic act, 1 and in Rome it was believed that
the mouths of pederasts stank. 2

We may begin with the part played in philosophical ideas.
Heidel 3 says: "Aromatics, which possess the power of
throwing off continuous streams of effluvia without per-
ceptible diminution, had great significance for Greek
thought, although it generally has been overlooked." This
gives, for instance, the clue to the curious paradox that,
although it is chemically pure water that is obtained by
evaporation or distillation, the Greeks nevertheless held
that it is through this process that various nutrient con-
stituents pass from water to the inner fire and pneuma.
They evidently seem to have regarded water not as a pure
element, but as a liquid which contained in it all possible
substances ; 4 this belief points to an infantile origin in the
idea of urine, the conception of which as an essence-
containing liquid has proved fertile to many trains of
thought. 5 The solution of the paradox is yielded by the
observation that when a liquid evaporates the most volatile
parts, not necessarily pure water vapour, are carried up-
wards, while the heavier, coarser parts are separated off
and remain behind. The whole process, therefore, one of
cardinal significance for the pneuma doctrine both of the

1 Fehrle, Die kultische Keuschheit im Attertum, 1910, S. 86.

2 Martial, Epigrammata, Lib. xii, 86.
8 Heidel, op. cit., p. 125.

4 See Heidel, op. cit., pp. 142, 143.
* See Chapter II, p. 51, 64 et seq.

315

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

individual and of the cosmos, was conceived as the evapora-
tion and passing over of the volatile, quintessential ele-
ments, which were perceptible only to the sense of smell.
The closest association was thus formed between this sense
and the idea of essential constituent, one which is still
retained in our use of the word "essential" (cp. "an essential
oil", "an essential idea").

The importance of odour is shown in more direct ways
than in that just indicated. One thinks at once of the
extensive part played by incense in so many religions, and
this in all probability replaced the earlier idea of the "sweet
savour" of burnt offerings. 1 (Taste and smell were not
distinguished until relatively late in civilization and are
still popularly confounded to a remarkable extent; the
Greeks, for instance, for some time denoted both by the
same word ^Sov/j.) The smell of the sacrifice was always
considered to be specially pleasing to the god. The Fountain
of Youth in Ethiopia, described by Herodotus, was aromatic
and so ethereal as to be almost comparable to a vapour-
bath, while the ambrosia on which the Gods fed had a
marvellous fragrance. Aromatics were quite generally
regarded in Greece as producing "enthusiasm" or possession
by the Godhead, 2 and inspiration altogether was connected
with the same idea; the Pythia, for example, Apollo's
priestess, derived her inspiration partly from the aroma of
the sacred laurel and partly from the vapours issuing from
her tripod. 3 It is interesting that in the Teutonic mythology
also poetic inspiration was attributed to the drinking of a
divine drink, Odrerir the "poet's drink" or "life-juice" of
Odin, which is psychologically equivalent to ambrosia,
nectar, soma, and semen. The sexual meaning of the drink
is plainly enough indicated in the myth that Odin won

1 See Atchley, A History of the Use of Incense, 1909, pp. 18, 76, etc.
8 Rohde, op. cit., Bd. II, S. 60 et seq.

8 Bethe, "Die doiische Knabenliebe," Rheinisches Museum, Bd. LXII, S.
438-75.

3l6

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

possession of it by penetrating into a mountain in the form
of a snake and so reaching the giant's daughter Gunnlod,
whose love he of course wins ; the Odrerir itself was generated
by mixing honey with the blood of Kvafir, a man of wisdom
who owed his existence to the mingling of two lots of saliva. 1
Customs of inducing inspiration by means of odours are
very widespread; they are quoted by Frazer 2 from Bali,
India, Madura, Uganda, etc. In Greece the foods partaken
at the wedding feast and at the sacramental meal of the
mysteries were all strongly pungent or aromatic, as were
also the herbs laid beneath the dead at funerals.

On the homoeopathic principle of "like repelling like"
odoriferous substances have been extensively used to
counteract unpleasant or dangerous influences. In Greece,
according to Heidel, 3 "exhalations or effluvia of various
kinds were the chief apotropaic and purificatory means
employed in the most diverse circumstances." Heat and
cold were thought of essentially as effluvia, so that it is
little wonder that fire became the purifying and apotropaic
agency par excellence, as possessing the most evident emana-
tions ; that these were concerned in the efficacy is testified
by Plato's remark, "the demons love not the reek of
torches". 4 Almost all cathartic simples known to the
materia medica of the Greeks possess a strong odour, rank
or aromatic; wines were diuretic, diachoretic, or con-
stipating according as they were aromatic or not. The
efficacy of olive oil as a daily unguent and at burial was

1 Mogk, Germanische Mythologie, 1906, S. 46, 47.

8 Frazer, The Magic Art, 1911, Vol. I, pp. 379, 383, 384.

8 Heidel, op. cit., p. 126.

4 Frazer (The Magic Art, Vol. II; The Scapegoat and Balder the Beautiful,
Vol. I and II) gives many examples of the protection against evil influences,
especially witches, by means of evil odours, smoke, fumigation, and so on.
Luther divined the original sense of these procedures (See p. 288). In the Dark
Ages evil spirits were exorcised by either purgation or by prayer and fasting;
their departure coincided with the cessation of internal rumblings that goes
with a state of internal emptiness (Private communication from Prof. G. S.
Brett).

317

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

no doubt partly due to its aromatic properties; hence the
use of it, or of wine, in the first bath given to the infant,
and subsequently in Christian baptism. Nor should we
overlook the extensive use of fumigations by Greek
physicians, such as the internal fumigation of women after
childbirth and as an emmenagogue. 1 But we need not go
to the ancient Greeks for such examples. Oil at baptism
and swinging censers are still universal in the Catholic
Church; the fumigating powers of sulphur, alluded to by
Homer, are still devoutly believed in by every house-wife,
in spite of all proofs of their non-existence; no one places
any faith in medicine that has no odour; the expelling of
the demons of hysteria by evil-smelling asafcetida and
valerian has not yet come to an end; and bacteriologists
have had the greatest difficulty in dissuading surgeons
from estimating the potency of a disinfectant by the
strength of its smell.

We thus see that the idea of odour is interwoven with
those of heat, fire, vapour, and speech (inspiration), that
odorous gas was believed to further the fruitfulness of
women, 2 herds, and land (See pp. 304-5), to be pleasing
to the gods and to drive away evil spirits and disease.
I would submit that this persistent over-estimation of the
idea, in both folk-lore and early philosophy, may in a great
measure be ascribed to the circumstance that it is a
prominent attribute of that down-going gas which is so
important in primitive thought. At all events no one would
derive it from the upper breath, the odour of which is so
much less a prominent feature.

1 These three sentences are taken from Heidel, op. cit., p. 127.
* A poetical reference to this may be found in Milton's Samson Agonistes,
who refers to Delilah as follows:

"Who also in her prime of love,
Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold,
Though offer* d only, by the scent conceived
Her spurious first-born, treason against me."

318

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

7. Summary

We may now briefly summarize our conclusions on the
subject of breath symbolism. Starting from the considera-
tion that the idea of breath has apparently played a part
in the history of human thought disproportionate to the
psychical significance inherently attaching to it, we inferred
that it must have derived some of its importance by dis-
placement from a still more primary idea. In the individual
we had found by psycho-analysis that respiratory processes
tend to be interpreted in the Unconscious in terms of
alimentary ones, which phylogenetically they originally
were and from the point of view of metabolic function still
are, and which the erotogenic value of the corresponding
sensations render of fundamental psychical significance in
individual life. This conclusion is amply confirmed by a
study of the ideas modelled on breath, the extensive
material offered by Indian and Greek philosophy being
specially chosen to illustrate this because of its accessibility
and the prominence given there to such ideas. We found
there that, just as in the child, the idea of respiration is
secondary to that of alimentation; that breath receives
much of its importance and interest from the conception
of it as something which swallows, projects, and dissem-
inates or expels food, besides intimately mingling with it in
digestion to form vapour the internal pneuma which
becomes the purveyor of nutrition to the system, the
transmitter of both afferent and efferent nervous impulses,
the generator of the fertilizing principle, of thought, intelli-
gence, and the soul itself. It is this internal pneuma, which
arises from intestinal decomposition, and in the generation
of which the inspired air may or may not be supposed to
take part, that is the true "breath" largely responsible for
all these secondary conceptions; and not solely, as is generally
supposed, the inspired breath in the usual sense.

319

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

In the ideas historically moulded on that of breath we
recognize again what in the unconscious are symbolic
equivalents of intestinal gas : thus, wind, fire, speech, music,
thought, soul, etc. The idea that is symbolized seems to
possess a peculiar facility for lending itself to the most
refined forms of sublimation, a quality which is psycho-
logically to be interpreted as a measure of the intensity
of the repression to which the idea is subjected. 1 Attention
may be drawn to two instances of this: the part played
by incense and music, especially singing, in religion; and
the prevailing conception of the soul. The latter is particu-
larly striking and the different stages of its growth can
be well traced in Greek thought. Beginning with the
nutrient water, the source of all things, we see the coarser
constituents being precipitated and discarded, while the
finer elements, the essence of essences, are distilled over
into vapour (pneuma), which in its turn is purified of any
grossness still remaining and is rarefied into an aerial
medium, ethereal and spiritual, intangible, invisible and
indefinable the psyche; such is the power ascribed to that
magic laboratory, the intestinal tract. This extraordinary
capacity for sublimation is probably the reason why the
conception of the soul derived from the primitive "breath-
soul" (Hauchseele) is definitely replacing that derived from
the "shadow-soul" (Schattenseele), being better adapted to
express the loftiest ideas of purity and spirituality.

It is highly probable that the sublimation of the original
interest proceeded historically by a series of steps, as it
does in the individual, and one might venture on the follow-
ing description of these. Such an attempt must necessarily
be schematic, for it is not to be supposed that the evolution
in question takes place in the same order in all individuals,
or in all races ; a given sublimated interest, therefore, may

1 See Freud on this correlation, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neuro-
senlehre, Vierte Folge, 1918, S. 284.

320

represent one of the described stages in one respect, but
perhaps not in others. To begin with we have the beliefs
and interests in external phenomena that in a crude way
nearly resemble the original personal ones: thus, the belief
that hot evil-smelling vapours explosively issuing from the
"bowels" of the earth lead to increased fertility and
strength. The first stage in sublimation probably consisted
in the replacement of disagreeable odours by agreeable
ones, the stage of aromatics, ambrosia and incense. The
second stage we may conceive as being brought about
through the element of odour being eliminated altogether.
Interest is then transferred to such ideas as those in which
sound plays a prominent part, either in the form of noise
(cries, savage instruments, "bull-roarer", thunder) or in
that of music; the ideas of speech and the spoken "Word"
also belong here. The third stage sees the removal of the
attribute of sound, when we have developed the pneuma
doctrine, theories of evaporation, and the idea of cosmic
respiration. In the fourth stage moisture disappears, and
interest gets concentrated on the importance of heat and
fire, both as cosmic processes and as individual ones
(respiration and digestion, refinements of the pneuma
doctrine). With the fifth stage this also vanishes, and we are
left with such ideas as "the breath of God", the winds and
the outer air, and so on. The sixth and final stage finds even
this notion of blowing movement too intolerable, as recall-
ing, however dimly, the original idea. The complex has now
been "purged of all material grossness", and is fit to render
such lofty thoughts as those of "the rational soul", universal
ether, and world-consciousness. Five of the six original
attributes (odour, noise, moisture, warmth, and movement)
have been eliminated by progressive processes of de-
odorization, silencing, desiccation, cooling and calming, and
there is left only the abstract conception of a fluid that is
invisible, intangible, inaudible and odourless, i.e., imper-

321

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

ceptible and inaccessible to any of the senses. As will be
noticed, however, the sublimation has only in certain cases
been carried through to its uttermost extreme, and all of
the attributes find various expressions at the present time
as well as in the past.

It should constantly be borne in mind that much of the
importance which has been attached to the present topic
owes its origin in the last resort not to physiological or
philosophical speculation, but to the sexual interest and
sensations of infantile life. For the young child, and for the
adult unconscious, intestinal gas is before all a sexual
material, the symbolic equivalent of urine and of the later
semen. That it still retains some of this primary sig-
nificance even in its conscious ramifications is indicated by
the numerous beliefs referred to above in which the
secondary ideas derived from that of breath, such as wind,
speech, fire, etc., are treated as fertilizing principles, and
have the capacity ascribed to them of leading to conception
in the literal sense.

There are two answers to the question put at the begin-
ning of this chapter, of why it was God's breath that was
chosen to represent the fertilizing material in the Madonna
legend, and they are of equal importance. One of them we
reserve until some other features of the legend have been
considered. The other is given by our analysis of the
infantile source of the material in question, which has
shown that this concerns a secretion that better than any
other lends itself to de-sensualization.

IV. THE DOVE AND THE ANNUNCIATION

At first sight it would seem in the legend under discussion
that the two figures of the Holy Dove and the Archangel
Gabriel merely represent, in a duplicate fashion, the same
idea, for both are divine agents that pour into the Virgin's

322

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

ear, one breath, the other the Word; they have the further
common attribute of being winged beings. There can be no
doubt that they considerably overlap in their signification,
but reflection shows that this doubling, as perhaps all
symbolic reduplication, is of the nature of mythological
"decomposition" : in other words, the two figures represent
attributes, dissociated from the main personality, which
are closely akin, but not quite identical.

It is clear that the notion of a messenger in general is
always based on this psychological process, which strictly
speaking is a form of projection. A messenger represents
one or more aspects of the main personality; for example,
the king's thoughts on a given topic. Psychologically he may
be called a part of the king, being an agent of his wishes in
the same way as the king's hand or tongue might be.
Otherwise expressed, he symbolizes the king, by represent-
ing one or other of his attributes. The primary conception
of a messenger, well illustrated by the stories of the angels
and of Satan in the Old Testament, was thus of an agent
who carried out the king's wishes, rather than that of a
mere conveyer of news. In ages when less attention was
paid to the reality-principle this was clearly recognized,
the messenger being treated as fully responsible for the
news he brought and executed if this was bad. Even to-day
we see or did at least until before the War indica-
tions of this early attribute in the special deference paid
to ambassadors and other accredited representatives of
power.

The same primitive attribute is also evident in the
present legend, for the Annunciation is exactly synchronous
with the conception; more than this, it may be said in a
certain sense actually to effect it. And it is here that we
can see the distinction between the parts played by the
angel and the Dove. For while in older mythologies, e.g., the
Greek, the Supreme Being wishing to impregnate a mortal

323

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

maiden appeared to her in the symbolic guise of an im-
pregnating agent alone, a snake, a swan, or some other
phallic symbol, in the Christian myth He is not content
with this, but appears also in the guise of a man. The
Archangel Gabriel thus represents the Divine Being in
human form, or, more precisely, that aspect of Him which
wishes to effect a human act. This wish, the cause of the
act, is identical with the Annunciation, and since the
wishes of God, just like those of an obsessional patient, are
all-powerful, it is little wonder that we have a certain
difficulty at first in distinguishing between the part played
by the symbol of the wishing personality (the angel) and
that played by the symbol of the means of execution
(the Dove). The true significance of Gabriel is naively
revealed by St. Ephrem 1 thus: "The Archangel Gabriel
was sent under the form of a venerable aged man, lest so
chaste and so modest a maiden should be troubled, or
seized with any fear, at a youthful appearance."

In the Annunciation scene the Archangel Gabriel holds
a flower ', usually a lily, in his right hand. Flowers have
always been emblematic of women, and particularly of
their genital region, as is indicated by the use of the word
"defloration" and by various passages in the Song of
Solomon. A flower in symbolic language signifies a child
(an unconscious equivalent of the female genitalia); the
association is formed through the origin of flowers in the
mother-earth, favoured by watering and manuring, 2 and is
represented in consciousness by the supposed innocence
and sexlessness of both as fictitious in the one case as
in the other. The flower here, therefore, represents the

1 St. Ephrem, De Divers. Serm., i, 600. In a Syriac tradition of the fourth
century (The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Edited by Wallis Budge,
1899, p. 22) I also read that "Gabriel appeared unto her in the form of a
venerable old man, so that she might not flee from him."

8 The coprophilic association here hinted at is strengthened by the fact that
an attractive odour is one of the most striking attributes of flowers.

324

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

child 1 that the divine ambassador is promising and proffer-
ing or rather giving to the Virgin.

The- lily was considered a special attribute of the
Madonna, representing both her motherhood and her inno-
cence, and before the fourteenth century was always
depicted in the Annunciation scene at her side; later it
was placed either between her and Gabriel, as in the accom-
panying picture, 2 or in the hand of the latter. Both aspects
of the metaphor are expressed in the following description: 3
"Mary is the lily of chastity, but glowing with the flames
of love, in order to spread around her the sweetest perfume
and grace." A delightful odour was one of the Madonna's
most prominent physical characteristics, and is constantly
mentioned by the Fathers: thus, St. Chrysostom 4 calls her
"the Paradise that is filled with the most divine per-
fume".

The lily is a flower with a long history in antiquity,
and has always been especially associated with the idea
of innocence. The very name comes from the Greek Xetpiov
( = simple). The Romans called it Rosa Junonis, because
it was supposed to have sprung from the pure milk of the
Queen of Heaven. It was associated with the Chaste
Susanna, the Hebrew name for lily being "shusham". (In
other Semitic languages it is "susanna"; in Persia, from
where the lily is said to have come, the ancient capital,
Susa, was named after it. 5 ) It was a favourite attribute of
the youthful Aphrodite. The lily has also a close connection
with the soul-idea. The Greeks, particularly the Athenians,
strewed lilies on the graves of their dead. The Egyptians
believed that the spirit-body in heaven transformed itself

1 1 have published an exact illustration of this connection (Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse, 1913, Bd. V, S. 90, Fall III), the flower being there also, as it
happens, a lily.

8 See Frontispiece.

8 Petr. Dam., De Nat. Beat. Virg., iii.

4 St. Chrysostom, De Beatae Mariae Virg., vii.

8 See Strauss, Die Blumen in Sage und Geschichte, 1875 S., 78-80.

325

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

into the celestial lily which the God Ra held to his nose. 1
Turning now our attention to the other figure, the
Holy Dove, we have two principal questions to answer:
why was the Holy Ghost depicted in the form of a bird,
and why particularly in that of a dove ? Up to the present
we have considered the idea of the Holy Ghost in its
aspect as symbolizing the fertilizing principle, but from
what has just been said it is plain that it symbolizes as
well the agent that transmits this in obedience to the will
of the Father. 2

Birds have always been favourite baby-bringing symbols,
and are still used for this purpose in the familiar stork
legend; 3 winged phalli were among the commonest Roman

1 Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, 1911, Vol. I, p. in.

* In this essay the idea of the Holy Ghost is treated only in its masculine
aspects, as is proper in Christian mythology. As is well known, the Christian
Trinity is a distortion of the original one, as obtaining in all the older religions,
e.g., the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, etc., where it comprised Father,
Mother, and Son. The sternly patriarchal Hebrew conception banned the
Mother to a subordinate part and the Son to a remotely distant future, but
retained their original relationship. The Christian theology changed the Mother
into the male Holy Ghost (combination of phallus and fertilizing principle), but
in practice reinstated her importance. The attempt made by the Melchite sect
in Egypt to retain the original Trinity of Father, Mary, and Messiah was
crushed at the Nicene Council, though even the memory of it led Cardinal
Newman to wax so ecstatic as to have his words termed "the very poetry of
blasphemy" (Hislop, The Two Babylons, p. 82), Hebrew theology and Christian
worship thus form the obverse of Hebrew worship and Christian theology in
their attitude towards the Mother, who could not be completely abolished from
either religion. It was reserved for Protestantism to make this final step in the
evolution of a purely androgenic procreation myth, which has ended in a
universal feminine protest in the countries professing this faith.

Now it is interesting to note that the idea of the Holy Spirit was intimately
connected with that of a bird, and especially with that of a dove, even in its
original maternal meaning. The passage in Genesis (i. 2), for instance, "And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" should really run "The
Mother of the Gods brooded (or fluttered) over the abyss and brought forth
life". According to Wallis Budge this Ruach is feminine and has descended
from an earlier mythology (probably Babylonian) as the wife of God. The act of
creation in Genesis is commonly portrayed (e.g., on a stained-glass window in
the cathedral of Auxerre) as being performed by a dove, and we shall see that
this bird was peculiarly emblematic of most of the supreme Goddesses.

8 An exact analysis of this has been published by Otto Rank, Die Lohen-
grinsage, 1911, S. 55-8.

326

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

amulets. 1 The ways in which this association became forged
are evident as soon as we consider the most striking
characteristics of birds, which we will proceed to do in
order.

I. Power of Flight

Certainly the characteristic of birds which has most
impressed itself on the human imagination is the extra-
ordinary power they have of rapidly ascending into the
air at will, an idea the fascination of which may be measured
by the appeal made by aviation. Psycho-analysis has
revealed the underlying source of this interest namely,
that the act of rising in the air is constantly, though quite
unconsciously, associated with the phenomenon of erection. 2
This characteristic of birds alone, therefore, would make
them well suited to serve as phallic symbols.

Several religious similes are based, at least in part, on
this association. Thus the upward flight of the bird was
used to represent the aspiration of a soaring soul, and in
the catacombs the idea of such souls being released from
sin is depicted by birds escaping from their cages and
flying upwards. In the same way the idea of a bird's flight
came to represent that of resurrection, i.e., of arising again.
Tertullian seems to have been the first to point out the
resemblance between a flying bird with outstretched wings
and the Saviour nailed to his cross, a fancy which was later
much used in religious art; in most pictures, for instance,
of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, the descending
Saviour is portrayed, in cruciform fashion, as a bird with a
human head.

1 See Vorberg, Museum eroticum Neapolitanum; Ein Beitrag zum Geschlechs-
leben der Romer, Privatdruck, 1910.

a A fact first pointed out by Federn (Cited by Freud, Die Traumdeutung,
3 Aufl., S, 204).

327

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

2. Form of Head

The reptilian neck of birds, continued in a snake-like
way into the head, the darting pointed beak, and the
power of rapid protrusion, are all features that inevitably
recall a snake, thus explaining why this part of the bird
specially tends to be unconsciously conceived of in terms of
phallic symbolism.

3. Absence of External Genital Organs

This strikes a boy's mind as strange after his experience
of other animals, as well as of himself, and gives rise to a
contrast association which is probably of a compensatory
nature (denying the painful truth by excessive insistence) ;
in a similar manner flowers, which are also popularly
regarded as having no genital organs, are among the com-
monest of love-symbols. The importance of this observa-
tion, which will be discussed later, is that it leads to fancies
being formed to explain it of such a kind as to link up with
the infantile fancies of procreation we have considered
previously, and which throw much light on the question
of why a bird is chosen to depict the Holy Ghost.

4. Power of Song

This striking characteristic, almost unique in the animal
kingdom, is so obviously related to love-making that it
becomes associated with the series of symbolic equivalents
discussed in the previous chapter. Reference may also be
made here to the belief in the "thunder-bird" current
among the North American Indians, 1 in which the sound
element is emphasized in a connection that inevitably

1 Eels, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute for 1887, p. 674; Boas,
Sixth Report on the North- Western Tribes of Canada, 1890, p. 40.

328

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

reminds one of the thunder beliefs and thunder-weapons
mentioned earlier.

5. Relation to the Air

It is only natural that the idea of air should play a
prominent part in phantasies concerning birds, who show
such a supreme mastery over this element, and similarly
that birds should play a prominent part in symbolism
relating to air; indeed the absence of a bird in such sym-
bolism would need more explanation than its presence.
In the examples mentioned earlier of the beliefs in the
fertilization of animals by means of wind it is noteworthy
that nearly all of them relate to birds ; the idea of gaseous
fertilization would thus seem to be readily associated with
that of birds. The connection between the two ideas has
been made use of in various cosmogonies. Thus the Poly-
nesians describe the heaven- and air-God Tangaroa as a
bird hovering over the waters, 1 and it is probable that this
was the original sense of the reference in Genesis to the
wind of Elohim brooding over the waters 2 (See Footnote,
p. 326).

After what was said in reference to the previous charac-
teristics it is not very surprising that they should become
associated with the last-mentioned one, the head, neck
and beak being then regarded as a phallic organ which
expels the fertilizing gas. This is a more natural idea than
it might at first sight appear, for, after all, whatever the
nature of the fertilizing substance the male organ is the
typical expelling agent. I have come across this phantasy
several times in the course of individual psycho-analysis,
the explanation being that the person has in childhood con-
sidered the male organ to be a continuation of the rectum

1 Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, 1872, Bd. VI, S, 241.

2 Cheyne, Encyclop. Brit., Vol. VI, p. 447.

329 Y

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

or its contents; the two corresponding part-instincts are
always astonishingly closely connected in the unconscious. 1
The same association probably helps somewhat to explain
the fondness that so many boys have for blowing whistles
and trumpets (sound of course entering into the associa-
tion); as well as the use of trumpets, to which attention
was called above, for the purpose of raising the dead,
i.e., of infusing life into them. 2 Noise, especially in the
form of trumpet blowing, often plays an important part in
initiation ceremonies, a matter which will be discussed
later. The same association may also be found in erotic art,
of which two examples may be mentioned : In a picture by
Felicien Rops, entitled " Joujou", a nymph with satyr legs
and a Phrygian cap is creating planets by blowing bubbles
with the aid of a phallus which she holds to her mouth as a
trumpet; 3 in one published in UArt de *peter, a cupid is
depicted blowing bubbles through a tube with the mouth
and at the same time with the anus. 4 The legend of Athene,
who was born out of her father's head, the product of his
"thought", has to be interpreted in the same way to
follow the hint from Plotinus mentioned above (p. 311).
I would even suggest that this association 5 plays a part in
determining a feature of our Madonna legend namely, the
notion that the fertilizing breath of God issues from the
beak of the Holy Dove. In support of this the following
examples may be cited. The unicorn (a purely phallic con-
ception) was a recognized emblem of the Christian Logos,
or creative Word of God; its symbolic meaning, and its
close association with breath, becomes plain from an old

1 See Freud, "Uber Triebumsetzungen insbesondere der Analerotik,"
Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge. 1918.

2 Compare the sexual significance of tongue and speech pointed out above.

3 Das erotische Werk des Felicien Rops, 1905, Nr. 13.

4 Reproduced in Stern's Illustrierte Geschichte der erotischen Liter atur, 1908,
Bd. I, S. 240.

6 To this also may in part be attributed the use of such phrases as "inflated,"
"blown up", etc., as synonyms for excessive pride (narcissism).

330

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

German picture which was very popular at the end of the
fifteenth century. 1 In this the Annunciation is represented
in the form of a hunt. Gabriel blows the angelic greeting on
a hunting horn. A unicorn flees (or is blown) to the Virgin
Mary and plunges his horn into her "lap", while God the
Father blesses them from above. A second example is even
less ambiguous, for in it the passage of God's breath is
actually imagined as proceeding through a tube; over a
portal of the Marienkapelle at Wiirzburg is a relief-
representation of the Annunciation 2 in which the Heavenly
Father is blowing along a tube that extends from his lips
to the Virgin's ear, and down which the infant Jesus is
descending.

The extent to which the idea of a bird is connected with
the attributes of bodily gas enumerated in the previous
chapter is indeed remarkable: thus, with sound (singing),
with invisibility (difficulty with which it is caught sight of,
disappearance in the air), with heat (higher bodily tem-
perature than any other animal, nearness to the sun), with
movement and wind (rapid flight, mastery over air), and so
on. Two further illustrations may be given of the way in
which the idea of a bird enters into this circle of "gaseous"
ideas. In the first place the soul is frequently conceived of in
bird form 3 (especially in Christian art) and is then depicted,
appropriately enough, as leaving the body after death by
issuing from the mouth. 4 The second example, that of the
phoenix, displays an extraordinary richness in the present

1 Reproduced by P. Ch. Cahier, Caracteristiques des Saints dans I'art popu-
laire, 1867.

* Reproduced by Fuchs, Illustrierte Sittengeschichte; Renaissance; Ergan-
zungsband, 1909, S. 289.

* Frazer (Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 191 1, pp. 33-5) gives examples from
all parts of the world.

4 As was hinted earlier in this essay, in this belief the mouth is probably in
part a replacement of the other extremity of the alimentary canal ; the original
form of the belief sometimes comes to open expression, an example being in the
fourteenth century farce "Le Muynier" (Dupuoy, Medicine in the Middle Ages,
p. 84).

331

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

group of associations and epitomises most of the ideas we
have up to here discussed, while of interest in the present
connection is the circumstance that the early Christians
adopted the legend of its life-history to symbolize the
resurrection of Jesus. 1 The phoenix was a golden shining
bird, sometimes described as a ray emanating from the
sun. It prepares for its death by surrounding itself with
cinnamon, myrrh and other aromatic spices, and by
addressing to the sun a song that is "more beautiful than
the sound of the nightingale, the flutes of the Muses, or
the lyre of Hermes". It dies, amidst a blaze of fragrant
perfume, in a fire created by the fanning of its wings,
or as was at other times believed by the heat of the
sun's rays. The first act of the young phoenix born from
this fire is to carry the relics of its sire, in a casket of
myrrh, to a sacred temple and pronounce over them a
funeral oration.

The idea of a rara avis, usually a bird of fire, is common
to many nations, being found in Egypt, China, and most
oriental countries; the popular appeal of the idea is still
witnessed by the success attending Maeterlinck's UOiseau
bleu. A Slav fairy-tale tells how a certain Prince acquired
a feather from the wing of Ohnivak, the Fire-Bird, and
"so lovely and bright was it that it illumed all the galleries
of the palace and they needed no other light"; he falls
into a pensive decline and, summoning his three sons,
says to them: "If I could but hear the bird Ohnivak sing
just once, I should be cured of this disease of the heart." 2
In Namoluk, one of the Caroline islands, it is believed that
fire came to men in the following way : Olof aet, the master
of flames, gave fire to the bird "mwi" and bade him carry
it to earth in his beak; so the bird flew from tree to tree

1 Bachofen, Versuch iiber die Gr fiber symbolik der Alien, 1859, S. 109.
* Harding, Fairy-Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen, 1896, p. 269
et seq.

332

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

and stored away the slumbering force of the fire in the
wood, from which men can elicit it by friction. 1 In Shelley's
"To a Skylark" most of the preceding associations are
poetically illustrated. For example: soul (Hail to thee,
blithe spirit Bird thou never wert); fire (like a cloud of
fire) ; invisibility (Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill
delight); rising flight (thou scorner of the ground); voice
(All the earth and air with thy voice is loud).

With all these associations it is plain that nothing
could easily be better imagined than a bird to symbolize
a bringer of a wonderful message from the air. Children
keep a pretty reminder of them in the familiar saying
"A little bird told me", meaning "whispered a secret to
me".

The problem of why particularly a dove was chosen
in the present instance is most conveniently approached
by first considering some of the ways in which it has
played a part in other mythologies. This part has been a
rather extensive one, for the dove was a sacred animal
among the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hebrews, was an
attribute of Astarte and Semiramis (who was supposed to
have been transformed into one after her death), and was
the favourite bird of Aphrodite, whose chariot was drawn
by doves. At the Syrian Hierapolis, one of the chief seats
of her worship, doves were so holy that they might not
even be touched; if a man inadvertently touched one, he
was unclean or taboo for the rest of the day. 2 Figures of
doves played a prominent part in the decoration of Aphro-
dite's sanctuary at Old Paphos. 3 Frazer gives reason for
thinking that the Cyprian custom of sacrificing doves in
honour of Adonis dated from an older form of worship in

1 Girschner, "Die Karolineninsel Namoluk und ihre Bewohner," Baessler-
Archiv, 1912, Bd. II, S. 141.

2 Lucian, De dea Syria, liv.

3 A good description of this is given by Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907,
p. 29.

333

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

which a holy man, personifying the Goddess's lover, was
sacrificed. 1

The association of the ideas of dove and love has always
been a close one, and is met with in different ages. The
following is a love-charm used in Bohemia: A girl goes
into the woods on St. George's Eve and catches a ring-
dove, which must be a male one ; early in the morning she
carries it to the hearth, presses it to her bare breast, and
lets it fly up the chimney (a well-known vaginal symbol),
muttering an incantation the while). 2 In 1784 a mixed
pseudo-freemasonry, the object of which was the pursuit
of love, was formed at Versailles, the members being
termed the "Chevaliers et Chevalieres de la Colombe". 3

The phallic symbolism of the dove is also unmistakable
in the following examples. The Christian myth we are
considering can be closely paralleled by the Greek one in
which Zeus assumes the form of a dove in order to seduce
Phtheia on one of his human expeditions, just as on other
similar occasions he assumed other phallic ones, snake,
bull, swan, and so on. When Catullus mentions Caesar's
salaciousness he does so by using the expression "colum-
bulus albulus". According to Philo, the dove was the
emblem of wisdom, which in mythology, as with the snake,
unicorn, etc., is always a phallic attribute, 4 and Jesus
himself brought it into a contrast association with the
snake: "Be ye as wise as the serpent and as harmless as
the dove" (Matthew x. 16). Von Hahn 5 relates three stories
from modern Greek folk-lore in which the life of an en-
chanter or ogre is bound up with that of two, or three,
doves ; when they die, he dies also. The sense of this becomes

1 Frazer, op. cit., pp. 114, 115.
* Grohmann, op. cit., S. 77.
8 Dictionnaire Larouse, Art. "Colombe".
4 See Chapter II, p. 44.

8 Von Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Mdrchen, 1864, Bd. I, S. 187;
Bd. II, S. 215, 260,

334

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
clear when it is compared with another variant in which
the life of an old man is bound up with that of a ten-
headed serpent; when the serpent's heads are cut off one
after another, he feels ill, and when the last one is cut off
he expires. 1 But the most unequivocal indication of the
symbolic signification of the dove is to be found in the
extra-canonical legend which relates that a dove escaped
from Joseph's genital organ and alighted on his head
(an unconscious symbol of the erect phallus) to designate
him as the future husband of the Virgin Mary; 2 the story
is weakened in the writings of the later Christian Fathers,
who say that the dove escaped from Joseph's rod (!).

Appropriately enough it is a dove that furnishes Zeus
with ambrosia ( = soma), and in the legend of St. Remy
brings the bishop the oil-flask to anoint King Clovis (oil
being an equivalent symbol). 3 An interesting parallel to
this is the legend that Aeneas was guided by two doves
to the Golden Bough, 4 for Frazer has shown that the
Golden Bough represents mistletoe growing on an oak-
tree, 5 and mistletoe is as familiar a symbol of sperma (like
ambrosia and oil) as the oak is of the male organ. French
peasants think that mistletoe originates in birds' dung; 6
the ancients knew that it was propagated from tree to
tree by seeds that have been carried and voided by birds,
and Pliny 7 tells us that the birds which most often deposited
the seeds were doves and thrushes.

According to Apollonius, a dove guided the Argonauts
on their wanderings. The ideas of bringing, guiding and
leading have much in common with that of "messenger",

1 Von Hahn, op. cit , Bd. II, S. 23.

2 Protevang., St. Jacob, Cap. 9; Evang. infant St. Maries, Cap. 8. Cited after
Maury, Essai sur Us Ugendes pieuses du moyen-dge, 1843.

3 De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 1872, Vol. II, p. 305.

4 Virgil, Aen., VI, 190, 293 et seq.

5 Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, 1913, Vol. II, pp. 285, 315-20.

6 Gaidoz, Revue de I'histoire des religions, 1880, Vol. II, p. 76.

7 Pliny, op. cit., XVI, 247.

335

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

and a well-known Greek legend of the dove is that in which
it figures as the love-messenger carrying the billets doux of the
poet Anacreon, who had been presented with it by Aphrodite
in return for a song. Like most love-figures in mythology, in-
cluding even Aphrodite herself, the dove could represent
not only life, but also death; thus in the hymns of the Rig-
Veda the dove (Kapota) is Yama's messenger of death. 1

The dove was also associated with fire. When the Kapota
touches fire, Yama, whose messenger he is, is honoured; in a
Buddhistic legend Agni, the God of Fire, assumes the
shape of a dove when he is being pursued by Indra in the
shape of a hawk (the Sanscrit name of which, by the way,
is Kapotari, the enemy of doves). 2 In the "scoppio del
carro" festival at Florence the holy fire is renewed every
Easter Eve, and at the moment of celebrating High Mass
a stuffed bird, representing a dove (called the dove of the
Pazzi), is released from a pillar of fire-works in front of the
altar, flies along a wire down the nave, and ignites the
fire-works on the festive car that is waiting outside the
door. 3 Maury quotes as a reason why the Holy Ghost
appears sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in
that of a dove, the circumstance that in the Orient the
dove was the emblem of generation and of animal heat. 4
The association with heat is retained in Christian art,
where the Holy Dove is always depicted surrounded by
rays of light or flames of fire.

It is comprehensible that a bird symbolizing generation
should also come to represent the ideas of re-birth, resur-
rection and salvation, which in the unconscious are
practically equivalent. 5 De Gubernatis 6 quotes a number of

1 Rig-Veda, X, 165, 4.

2 De Gubernatis, op. cit., p. 297.

3 Weston, "The Scoppio del Carro at Florence," Folk-Lore, 1905, Vol. XVI,
pp. 182-4.

4 Maury, op. cit., p. 179.

6 See my Papers on Psycho-Analysis, Second Edition, 1918, Ch. X.
8 De Gubernatis, op. cit., pp. 297-303.

336

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

stories from folk-lore, in which the dove warns or saves
from danger. The dove was the messenger of salvation in
the Deluge myth, which is now known to represent a
glorified birth-phantasy; the meaning is brought to clear
expression in a sketch found in the catacombs of Rome,
in which Noah is seen floating in a little box that flies
open at the appearance of the dove with its leaf. 1 It is
perhaps significant that in another Old Testament birth-
myth the name of the hero, Jonah, is the same as the
Hebrew word for dove. It was a dove also that appeared
to the three young Hebrews in the furnace at Babylon and
announced to them their deliverance from the flames. The
natives at Cape Grafton say that a dove brings the babies
to mothers in their dreams. 2 To the same group of ideas
belongs the association between the dove and the re-birth
rite of baptism, 3 both in the New Testament and in
ecclesiastical decorative art. Jesus himself, the figure of
salvation and resurrection, is occasionally depicted in the
form of a dove; 4 for example, in a lamp in Santa Caterina
in Chiusi a dove is portrayed bearing an olive branch in
its mouth and having a cross on its head. The dove is in
the Catholic Church also an emblem of martyrdom, i.e., of
attainment of eternal life through death.

In early Christian art the soul of a dying saint was
depicted as escaping from the mouth in the form of a dove, 5
this being replaced in later art by the figure of a little child.

1 Reproduced in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,
1875, Vol. I, p. 575.
8 Roth, cited by Rank, Die Lohengrinsage, 1911, S. 23.

3 It is of interest that the German words for baptism and for dove (Taufe and
Taube) are derived from the same root.

4 We have seen in order the Holy Ghost as a symbol of the creative material,
the creative agent, and the child created. (In later art he is often depicted in
the form of a child instead of that of a young man, just as Eros became
replaced by Cupid.)

6 Many examples are cited by Didron, Christian Iconography, Engl. Transl.
1896, Vol. I, pp. 460, 461; and Maury, Croyances et Ugendes du moyen-dge,
1896, Vol. II, p. 266.

337

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

In this equating of dove child soul breath we see
another example of the infantile birth theory that was
discussed earlier in this essay.

An equally plain illustration of the Logos association
of the dove is furnished by its connection with the idea
of inspiration (spiro = I breathe). In Lybia a dove com-
municated the sacred oracles, and in Dodona two doves
performed the same function and were supposed to cry
"Zeus was; Zeus is; Zeus will be; O Zeus, the greatest of
the Gods". We noted earlier, in discussing the topics of
speech and tongue, the important part played by the Holy
Dove (Holy Ghost) in a similar connection. When St. Cath-
erine of Alexandria confounded the learned doctors by her
wisdom the Holy Dove kept flying over her head, and a
dove, known to French art as the "colombe inspiratrice",
is frequently depicted on the shoulder of a great saint,
speaking into his ear and thus inspiring him. 1 The symbolic
significance of this, which should be clear from the preceding
chapter, may be further illustrated by quoting the following
dream related by the Welsh poet Vaughan, in a letter
written in 1694: "I was told by a very sober and knowing
person (now dead) that in his time, there was a young lad
father and motherless, and soe very poor that he was forced
to beg; butt att last was taken up by a rich man, that kept
a great stock of sheep upon the mountains not far from the
place where I now dwell, who cloathed him and sent him
into the mountains to keep his sheep. There in Summer time
following the sheep and looking to their lambs he fell into a
deep sleep; in which he dreamt, that he saw a beautifull
young man with a garland of green leafs upon his head,
and an hawk upon his fist: with a quiver full of Arrows
att his back, coming towards him (whistling several
measures or tunes all the way) and att last lett the hawk
fly att him, which (he dreamt) gott into his mouth and

1 Maury, op. cit., pp. 267-9; Larousse, loc. cit.

338

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

inward parts, and suddenly awaked in a great fear and
consternation: butt possessed with such a vein, or gift of
poetrie, that he left the sheep and went about the Countrey,
making songs upon all occasions, and came to be the most
famous Bard in all the Countrey in his time." 1

Etymology fully sustains our view of the sexual connota-
tion of the dove idea, indicating its association both with
phallicism and with the group of "gaseous" ideas enum-
erated earlier. The word "dove" comes from the Anglo-
Saxon "dufan" = to plunge into, and is probably allied
to the Greek xoXufxpfc; = a diver; it is cognate with "dip",
"dive", and "deep", the notion of penetration evidently
being the fundamental one. The more generic word "pigeon"
comes from the Greek mnl&w = to chirp; from the
latter also comes the word "pipe", which has the meanings
of a tube (cp. the Wiirzburg relief mentioned above), an
instrument for making smoke, to chirp or sing, and, in
slang, the male organ. A whole series of words are derived
from the same root (probably of onomatopoetic origin),
which mean "to blow", "the back parts", or "child", and
Jung 2 has pointed out that the connecting link of these
three apparently disparate ideas is to be found in the
common infantile notion that children are born from the
rectum. Thus: (i) "pop", "puif", "to poop" ( = to pass
flatus. Compare the French "pet" = flatus, the same word
in English meaning darling, little dear, and the German
"Schatz" = darling, treasure, which also comes from a
vulgar word for defaecation) ; (2) French "poup6e" and
Dutch "pop", both meaning doll (German "Puppe"), Latin
"pupus" = a child, "pupula" = a girl, and English
"puppy" and "pupa", meaning the young of the dog and
the butterfly respectively. That words of such widely

1 This letter, which has never been published, is to be found in the MS.
Bodleiana, Aubrey 13, Fol. 340. I am indebted to Mr. L. C. Martin for calling
my attention to it and for giving me the opportunity of making use of it.

* Jung, op. cit., S. 230.

339

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

different signification as "pupil", "fart", "peep", "fife",
"pigeon", "puff", "petard", and "partridge" 1 should all
be derived from the same root illustrates the astonishing
propagating power possessed by sexual words, to which
Sperber 2 has recently directed special attention.

The choice of the dove for the purposes above mentioned
was doubtless determined by many factors, perhaps by
extrinsic ones as well as psychological ones: that it con-
stituted a numerous genus and attracted much attention
in ancient times is shown by the fact alone that there
existed in Sanscrit some twenty-five or thirty names for
pigeon. 3 It is generally said that its use in Christian sym-
bolism was due to its association with the ideas of purity
and immaculateness, but it is likely that cause and effect
are here reversed; even its white colour cannot be cited in
favour of this association, for most doves are not white,
while other birds, e.g., swans, most often are. A more
important feature is the tenderness they display in their
love-relations, the activity of which must, as is evident from
the extensive connotations related above, have vividly im-
pressed itself upon the attention. Now this tenderness is
chiefly manifested in a manner that is of particular interest
to the present theme, in what is a very prominent charac-
teristic of doves namely, the soft, delightful cooing that
plays a leading part in their love-making; we still use the
expression "billing and cooing of turtle-doves" to denote
a special relationship between lovers. In view of the exten-
sive associations that subsist between the idea of birds in
general, and of doves in particular, on the one hand and
the group discussed in the previous chapter (sound, breath,
sexuality, etc.) on the other, it seems to me probable that
this striking feature of doves must have been a principal

1 In view of the ancient belief that this bird could be impregnated by either
the wind or the voice it is interesting that its name should enter into this series.
a Sperber, op. cit.
8 Larousse, loc. cit.

34

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

reason for the choice of them to symbolize phantasies based
on the idea in question. This suggestion may be illustrated
by reference to the Christian belief that "the voice of the
turtle-dove is an echo on earth of the voice of God". 1

This peculiar tenderness in the love-making of doves is
to be correlated with a feature in the associations surround-
ing the idea of them on which I have only lightly touched
namely, femininity. It would lead us too far to enumerate
instances of this association, but it is a curiously extensive
one, so that one is forced to say that of all phallic emblems
the dove is one of the most gentle and effeminate. The
significance of this to our main theme will be indicated in
the following section.

V. THE EAR AS THE RECEPTIVE ORGAN

The infant's psychical interests and digital manipulations
relating to the lower alimentary orifice are early transferred
to the nostril, which, from its nearness to a less objectional
part of the alimentary canal, its relation to the sense of
smell, its size, its connection with breath and with mucoid
secretion, is well adapted for the purpose. A patient of mine
used even to impregnate himself in his phantasy by inhaling
through the nose breath that had been exhaled from the
mouth, 2 and in Genesis we read of Yahweh using a nostril
for the same purpose in the creation of Adam, from which
it is evident what the "dust of the ground" out of which
Adam was moulded must have originally signified. 3

By the time of the Christian era, however, a greater
refinement had taken place, one corresponding with the
increasing displacement that is to be observed in the
progress of individual repression, and the nostril, which

1 Conway, Solomon and the Solomonic Literature, 1899, p. 123.
* Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1912 Bd. IV, S. 598.

3 1 have elsewhere dealt with the symbolism of dirt at some length, Jahrbuch
der Psychoanalyse, 1913, Bd. V, S. 90, Fall III.

34 1

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

can receive a palpable gas, is replaced by the ear, which
can receive only impalpable sound for instance the Word
of God a rarefied abstraction of the primitive gas idea.
That in the Madonna legend 1 the ear symbolizes the lower
alimentary orifice, and not the vagina, is a conclusion
based not only on logic, for the idea of the vagina would
be a meaningless intrusion into a series of themes that
have nothing in common with it (they are all of infantile
origin, while the infant knows nothing of the existence of
the vagina), but through numerous analyses of persons
in whom this orifice has acquired a symbolical significance ;
such habits as nose and ear-picking, for instance, invariably
prove on analysis to be derivatives of, and substitutes for,
anal masturbation. The exact symbolical equivalency of
the two orifices, however, can be demonstrated quite apart
from psycho-analysis.

In several of the medieval pictures of hell the devil is
portrayed in the act of swallowing sinners (through the
mouth, of course) and excreting them through the ear
alone, the cloaca alone, or through both indifferently and
simultaneously; instances of each of these in Florence
alone are to be found in the Baptisteria, in Orcagna's
fresco in the Santa Maria Novella, and in Fra Angelico's
picture in the Academy. We see here a complete parity
of the two orifices, one which can be matched by beliefs
drawn from another part of the world, India: In the
Ramayana 2 a sun-hero, Hanumant, is described as entering

1 That in this legend the ear was thought of as the receptive organ in a quite
concrete sense is clear from the evidence produced earlier in this essay, and is
proved by consideration of such a presentation as the Wiirzburg relief alone.
To the numerous passages already quoted from the early Fathers the following
two may be added: "And because the devil, creeping in through the ear by
temptation, had wounded and given death to Eve, Christ entering by the ear
to Mary, dried up all the vices of the heart, and cured the woman's wound by
being born of the Virgin" (St. Zeno: Epist. ad Pulcheriam Augustam); "None
other was born of Mary, than He who glided in through her maternal ear, and
filled the Virgin's womb" (St. Gaudentius, De diversis Capitulis, Serm. xiii).

2 Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, 1904, Bd. I, S. 173, 174.

34 2

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

into the mouth of a sea-monster and emerging through
the "other side" at the tail, evidently through the cloaca;
in another part of the poem, however, he is made to
emerge through the ear, the two orifices being again
treated as equivalent. According to the Taitiriyaka-
Upanishad, 1 the Apana, or down-going breath, corresponds
with the ear.

The ear figures as the receptive organ in other and earlier
myths than the Christian one, which is doubtless derived
from them. The Mongolian legend of Maya, who was im-
pregnated through this orifice during sleep, has been
referred to already (p. 272). Just as Eve, after having
been seduced by the "serpent", tasted of the fruit of
knowledge, 2 so Cassandra became a prophetess when the
"serpent" licked her ear. The Sumerian word-sign for "ear"
in its earliest form was written by the pictograph of a pair
of ears, with the phonetic value of "wa" in the Sumerian
and "uznu" in the Semitic-Akkalian or Assyrian; it is
defined in the bilingual cuneiform of about 2000 B.C. and
later as "the bent member". 3 In these glosses the Semitic
"uznu" or "ear" is also defined as a title of the Mother-
Goddess Ishtar, and particularly of her form as Antu, the
Creatress and Goddess of generation, a usage which is
explained as arising from the idea "bend down, bend over"
in sexual intercourse. 4 This is perhaps the source of the
large ears assigned to the woman in the presence of the
Father-God as figured on the ancient Babylonian seals
described by Pinches. 5 This word-sign for "ear" is moreover
used as a synonym for the "cedar", 6 which through its
ever-greenness was the "Tree of Life" of the Garden of
i. 7, i.

i.e., the knowledge of sexual matters. See Ludwig Levy, op. cit.

Prince, Sumerian Lexicon, 1908, pp. i, 373; Barton, Babylonian Writing,

1913, P- 179-

Prince, op. cit., pp. 338, 339.

Pinches, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 1917, Vol. XXIX.

Barton, loc. cit.; See also Muss-Arnolt: Assyrian Dictionary, p. 103.

343

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Eden in the Hebrew legend 1 and an emblem of the Mother-
Goddess Ishtar. In the Persian cosmogony the first man
was created by the Divine Being inserting his "hand" into
the ear of the female one; in another version, on which
the preceding Babylonian myth throws light, it is his
"main branch" that is inserted. This "main branch" is
presumably the branch held in the hand of the Father-God
in the archaic Babylonian seal-cylinders of the third and
fourth millennium B.C.; 2 it may perfectly well be the origin
of the modern expression "olive branch" for a child, since
the olive came in Greece and Rome to replace the cedar
as the special tree of the Virgin Mother-Goddess, Athene.
In connection with the ancient Semitic-Babylonian hymn
on the "Wailing of Ishtar" for the killing of her son-lover
Tamnuz the origin of the wailing of the Jewish women of
Jerusalem for Tamnuz is described by Ezekiel in a familiar
passage, 3 but it would seem that the word usually translated
as "cedar" might well mean "ear", when the stanza in
question would read :

"Ah me, my child (now) far-removed!

My son-consort, the far-removed!

For the sacred ear where the mother bore him,

In Eanna, -high and low there is weeping,

Wailing for the house of their lord, the women raise." 4

A faint indication of the meaning of this symbolism is
furnished in the pictures 5 where the Archangel Gabriel
makes his appearance through a door at the back of the

1 See Cheyne, Traditions of Ancient Israel, passim.

2 Ward, Seal Cylinders of West Asia, 1910, pp. 96, etc.

3 Ezekiel viii, 14.

4 This rendering, based on Longdon's translation in his Tamnuz and Ishtar,
is by Dr. Jyotirmoy Roy of Calcutta, who also kindly suggested to me several
of the preceding points.

8 Many examples are referred to by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art,
1890 edition. Vol. I, p. 124.

344

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
Virgin, who is aware of his presence without seeing him.
This expresses the same idea as the Kwakiutl myth of the
hero who was conceived by the sun shining on the small of
his mother's back. 1 We are not told whether Jesus was
actually born, like Rabelais's Gargantua, through his
mother's ear, as well as being conceived through it; the
real passage is hinted at in St. Agobard's description
(See p. 269) of how the holy fertilizing principle, after
entering by the ear, emerges "through the golden gate".

That the danger of this form of conception is regarded
by Catholics as not having entirely passed is shown by
the custom with which all nuns still comply of protecting
their chastity against assault by keeping their ears con-
stantly covered, a custom which stands in a direct historical
relation to the legend forming the subject of this essay. 2
This is the acme of chastity, for it protects even against
the most innocent form of conception, one reserved for
the most modest women. An Indian legend, which may
serve as a pendant to the Persian one mentioned above,
well illustrates this connection between aural conception
and modesty. Kunti, the mother of the five Pandava
princes, the great heroes of the Mahabarata, when still a
virgin, made use of a mantra charm to test its alleged power
of calling up the Gods. It worked, and the Sun God
appeared to her. She became very confused and bade him
go, but he said that as she had called him she could not
refuse him a reward. On learning that the reward the
God wanted was carnal knowledge she explained that she
was a Virgin. To this objection the Sun God suggested
sexual intercourse via the ear, and to this she consented,
with the result that the hero Kama (whose name means
ear) was conceived. 3 The same association with extreme

1 Boas and Hunt, Jesup Expedition. Bureau of Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 80.

2 See Tertullian, De Virginibus Velandis.

3 Mahabharat-Adiparva, Ch. Ill, 1-20. I am indebted to Dr. Roy for calling
my attention to this legend.

345 z

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

innocence is also indicated in the passage quoted above
from Moliere (p. 272, Footnote).

We may conclude the present topic by briefly consider-
ing an animal myth which offers interesting resemblances
to the legend under discussion and which also possesses
certain historical connections with it. The myth of the
phoenix and other fire-birds, of which the aureole-sur-
rounded Holy Dove is the lineal descendant, is paralleled
by that of the salamander, the fabulous lizard born, like
those, of fire. It would not be easy to imagine animals more
unlike each other than a dove and a lizard, or crocodile,
and yet the positions both have occupied in mythology and
religion show a far-reaching similarity, one which should
throw a new light on the legend of the Virgin Mary. The
lizard has been an extensive object of worship, by the
Slavs in Europe as late as the sixteenth century, 1 by the
Egyptians in the form of the crocodile, by the Mexicans in
that of the alligator; the crocodile is the protective totem
of one of the chief Bechuanaland tribes. 2 It was specially
sacred to the sun, and was, largely on that account,
adopted by the Gnostics as a symbol of the Life-Giver;
the Sun God Sebek was figured as a crocodile-headed man.
On the other hand it was identified at Nubti with Set,
one of the fore-runners of our devil, and like most phallic
animals, lion, dragon, serpent, etc. it had to be overcome
by the young God-Hero; thus at Adfou it was supposed
to have been speared by the young Sun God Horus. In the
Book of Gates the monster serpent Apep is described as
being accompanied by a friend in the shape of a crocodile
which had a tail terminating in the head of a serpent, its
name being Sessi.

1 Morfill, The Religious Systems of the World, p. 272.

2 Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1891, p. 15.

34 6

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

There seem to have been two principal associations
between the idea of a lizard, or crocodile, and that of the
Deity. One was the observation that "it veils its eyes with
a thin transparent membrane which it draws down from
the upper lid, so as to see without being seen, which is the
attribute of the Supreme Deity" (Plutarch); this idea is
naturally connected with that of the Sun-Father, 1 and in
Egypt the crocodile was the chief symbol of Cheops, the
"Ever-Existent Eye". A more important association, how-
ever, and one which is closely related to the group of ideas
under discussion here, was that the crocodile was the
symbol of silence, being "the only land animal which
lacks the use of its tongue" (Pliny); "it is said to have
been made an emblem of the Deity, as being the sole
animal destitute of a tongue. For the Divine Reason stands
not in need of voice, but walking along a silent path and
rule guides mortal affairs according to justice" (Plutarch).
Representing the silence of the wise, it became the emblem
of the mind, of reason, of intelligence, and particularly of
wisdom; 2 as such it figures on the breast of Minerva, the
Goddess of Wisdom. The only instance of its use in this
respect that I know of in Christian art is in Seville, where
one dating from the Moorish occupation still stands over
the portal of the entrance to the Cathedral leading from the
Patio de los Naranjos; there is, of course, the well-known
crocodile on St. Theodore's column in the Piazzetta in
Venice, which doubtless had an apotropaeic signification.

The attributes of the crocodile that have attracted
interest thus appear to be mainly negative: it is an animal
which has no visible genital organs, and is said to have no
tongue and to be dumb two ideas which, as we have seen
earlier, symbolize impotence.

Side by side, however, with this conception of the croco-

1 Cp. Chapter XII.

2 For the symbolism of this see pp. 135, 334.

347

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

dile as an impotent animal, one having the most elementary
defects, we find the precise opposite namely, the idea that
it represents a glorification of phallic power; consideration
of this remarkable antithesis will prove highly instructive
for the main theme of this essay. The phallic significance
of the crocodile may be suspected from the circumstance
alone that it is closely associated with the ideas of wisdom,
the sun, and the snake, but grosser facts than these can be
cited. In the text of Unas, written during the Sixth
Dynasty, are passages expressing the desire that a deceased
person may attain in the next world to the virility of the
crocodile and so become "all-powerful with women". 1 At
the present day in the Egyptian Soudan the belief is acted
on that the penis of the crocodile eaten with spices is the
most potent means of increasing sexual vigour in the male. 2
Both in Ancient Egypt and in the modern Soudan the
belief has prevailed that the crocodile has the habit of
carrying off women for sexual purposes. Two physiological
facts concerning the animal probably contribute to these
ideas: the copulatory act is unusually ardent and lasts a
long time; and the male organ, 3 though never visible in the
ordinary way being concealed within the cloaca is un-
usually large. 4

The ancients, in pondering over the question of how
the crocodile propagated its species, indicated consideration
of both these opposite attitudes. They concluded that it
must take place in some way that expressed the animal's
independence of the ordinary means and, following the

1 Budge, op. cit., pp. 127, 128.

2 Bousfield, 'Native Methods of Treatment of Disease in Kassala," Third
Report of the Wellcome Research Laboratories, p. 274. Stanley, Through the Dark
Continent, 1878, Vol. I, p. 253. Budge, op. cit., p. 128.

3 It is perhaps of some interest in the present connection to note that this
organ is situate in the rectal part of the cloaca, being separated from the
anterior urinary chamber by a wide transverse fold. Of further interest in relation
with the "gaseous" group of ideas is the circumstance that during the rutting
period a pungent odour is emitted from the submaxillary glands of the creature.

* Gadow, Cambridge Natural History, Vol. VIII, p. 445.

348

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

path of associations indicated above, reached the belief
that the female conceived, like the Virgin Mary, through the
ear. According to this the crocodile would represent a
force greater even than that of the Deity whose Word
was all-powerful and all-creating, 1 for to execute its wishes
it needed not even speech, being possessed of the still
more potent Silence of the Wise. We have here, therefore,
a beautiful example of the "omnipotence of thought",
which is evidently higher than the "omnipotence of
speech"; invisible and silent action is the highest limit of
imaginable power. The ear is the orifice best designed to
receive thought, even though this be inaudible to the
uninitiated.

According to King, 2 it was this belief about the crocodile's
natural history that later made it come to be regarded by
the early Christians as "the type of the generation of the
Word, that is, the Logos or Divine Wisdom". Plutarch
(De Iside et Osiride) makes a similar statement about the
cat : he refers to the belief that the cat "conceives through
its ears, and brings forth its young through its mouth;
and the Word, or Logos, is also conceived through the ear
and expressed through the mouth". In the Egyptian Book
of the Dead four crocodiles are said to reside in the four
quarters of the world, and to attack the dead in order to
seize the magic words on which they depend for existence
in the Other World. 3

The great characteristic on which I wish to lay emphasis
in the preceding beliefs concerning the crocodile is their
striking ambivalency. Herodotus 4 noticed that the creature
was held sacred in some parts of Egypt and was slain as a
noxious reptile in others, and the double attitude here
indicated may be traced throughout Egyptian religion.

1 Like, for instance, that of Ptah (First Dynasty).

2 King, The Gnostics and their Remains, Second Edition, 1887, p. 107.
8 Budge, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 239.

4 Herodotus, ii. 69.

349

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

We have remarked above on the contrasting beliefs whereby
the crocodile was endowed, now with absolute impotence,
now with the maximum of procreative power.

Proceeding from this we may venture to develop a
view that will afford a more complete answer to the ques-
tion instituted at the beginning of the present inquiry
namely, why breath was chosen in the Virgin Mary legend
to represent the fertilizing material. The view is that the
idea of gaseous fertilization constitutes a reaction to an un-
usually intense castration-fantasy. It is one of the most
remarkable of the various modes of dealing with the
primordial CEdipus situation.

The idea of intestinal gas is inextricably associated with
three others of the father, of the male organ, and of
power. We have already considered here and there each
of these connections, so that only a few words need be
added by way of summary.

Little need be said about the associations between the
idea of father and the various "gaseous" ones discussed
above, for in most of the examples quoted the latter have
constituted attributes of the Heavenly Father himself, the
Deity. The breath of a Maori chief ( father) is so powerful
that he dare not blow on the fire, for a brand might be
taken from the fire by a slave and so cause his death; or
the sacred breath might communicate its qualities to the
fire, which would pass them on to the pot on the fire,
whence they would reach the meat in the pot, the future
eater of which would surely die. 1 In the phoenix myth,
one of the most characteristic of the whole series, the idea
of piety to the father is of central importance, a sign of
ambivalency. That this association applied not only to
the more refined derivatives, but also to the gaseous

1 Taylor, opt. cit., p. 165.

350

MADONNAS CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

notion itself, is indicated by the fact that oriental nations,
and also Rome, worshipped a special Deity who presided
over the function in question. 1 The connotations of intes-
tinal gas are almost exclusively male and predominantly
refer to the father, one reason for this being fairly obvious
in the greater reticence displayed by women and the much
greater openness by men in regard to the act concerned,
especially during effort (e.g., coitus).

The association with the idea of the male organ has also
been pointed out and explained above (pp. 329, 330). Some-
thing more may be added on the subject of initiation cere-
monies, for it is now recognized that these are the expres-
sion of castration threats. 2 Throughout Australia women
are strictly forbidden ever to see the bull-roarer (See p. 289),
so essential is the relation of this to the idea of maleness ;
the Chepara tribe punish with death a woman who casts
eyes upon it, or a man who shows it to a woman. 3 In Brazil
also no woman may see the equivalent jurupari pipes on
pain of death. 4 The association penis gas (noise) castra-
tion is well illustrated by the Kakian initiation ceremonies,
the following account of which I abstract from Frazer. 5
The Kakian ceremonial house is situate under the darkest
trees in the depth of the forest and is so built as to admit
so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on
within; the boys are conducted there blindfold. When all
are assembled before the house the High Priest calls aloud
on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is heard
to proceed from the house. It is made by men with bamboo
trumpets who have been secretly introduced into the build-
ing, but the women think it is made by the devils and are

1 Bourke, Scatologic Rites of All Nations, 1891, pp. 129, 154-7.
* See Reik, Probleme der Religionspsychologie, 1919, Cap. 3, "Die Puber-
tatsriten der Wilden."

3 Lang, op. cit., p. 34.

4 Lang, op. cit., p. 43.

8 Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, 1913, Vol. II, pp. 249, 250.

351

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

greatly terrified. Then the priests enter, followed by the
boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy disappears within
the precincts a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry
rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is
thrust through the roof of the house. This is a token that
the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried
him away to regenerate him. In some places the boys are
pushed through an opening made in the shape of a croco-
dile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the
devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed
for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the
blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time the
sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. As they
sit in a row cross-legged, the chief takes his trumpet and,
placing the mouth of it in the hands of each lad, speaks
through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the
spirits; he warns the lads, under pain of death, to observe
the rules of the Kakian society.

The association with the idea of power has also been
manifest throughout all the examples quoted above, and
is an extraordinarily intimate one. To create or destroy
with a word, a wind, a breath, or a vapour obviously
implies a higher degree of power than to do so with an
instrument of might, however wonderful and impressive
this might be. With the primary idea (intestinal gas) the
sense of power is in adult life usually manifested in the
form of contempt ; in many countries the passage of wind
is regarded as the deadliest possible insult and in certain
circumstances may involve such penalties as expulsion from
the tribe or even death. 1 In an analysis, carried out from
a different point of view, of two Old Testament myths,
Lorenz 2 has shown how the might of God against his most

1 Bourke, op. cit., pp. 161, 162.

2 Lorenz, "Das Tkan-Motiv in der allgemeinen Mythologie," Imago, 1913,
Bd. II, S. 50-3.

352

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

desperate foes was displayed, in the one case by means
of wind, in the other through the blowing of trumpets.
The myths in question are those of the destruction of the
tower of Babel and the walls of Jericho, and he shows,
as I think convincingly, that both of these are variants
of the Titan motive. In the first of them the destruction
is brought about by a mighty wind that disperses the
people by confounding their speech, in the second by God
getting his chosen people to give a loud cry and to blow
their trumpets.

The preceding considerations are in full accord with the
conclusions I have reached on the basis of psycho-analytical
experience with actual persons. In such study it becomes
plain that the infantile complex concerned with gaseous
fertilization is integrally related to the castration thoughts.
The total complex is a characteristically ambivalent one,
corresponding with the child's ambivalent attitude towards
his father, and its manifestations express at once a denial
of his power and an affirmation of his supreme might ; his
impotency and his omnipotence. Through the conception
of the male organ as a flatus-emitting agency (See p. 330)
these two opposite components become fused into a perfect
unity.

Further psycho-analytic study throws still more light on
the nature of this paradoxical attitude. It has elucidated
the source of the two-fold attitude towards the father. The
hostile and depreciatory one, the wish that he were im-
potent, originates in the rivalry between the boy and
father over the possession of the mother. The admiration,
which exalts the father's greatness, has a more personal
source: it is a substitute for the primary narcissism and
feeling of omnipotence which the child is unable to sustain
in the face of experience, a failure which is largely con-
tributed to by the presence of the obviously powerful
Father. By transferring his own congenital sense of omnipo-

353

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

tence 1 to the Father and identifying himself with him, he
is enabled to maintain the feeling of power for some time
longer, until the time comes for him to discover his Father's
limitations also, when he has to repeat the same psycho-
logical process by substituting a heavenly for an earthly
Father. There is a further important gain in both cases
namely, the reconciliation with a potentially hostile being,
and the allaying of a sense of sin that arose from disobedient
or hostile thoughts concerning him.

The curious way in which the attitude towards the
Father is dealt with and reconciled in the compromise we
have considered above, and even the specific form of this
compromise, is also a mirror of changes within the indi-
vidual himself, changes which are only secondarily trans-
ferred to the idea of the Father. For, in my experience, the
particular group of phantasies that have constituted the
main theme of this essay arise in persons who, chiefly on
account of the incest barrier, have experienced a difficulty
in passing from the pregenital stage of development to that
of the genital one, 2 and who have thereby reacted by
reverting to the former stage. In this earlier stage, which is
principally composed of a combination of sadism and anal-
erotism, the element most suitable for fusion with the
genital attitude that could not be encompassed is that of
the passing of flatus, with its close relation to the sense of
power, 3 to expulsion and projection. As was pointed out
above, the uniting of these elements to the actual genital
one, in the phantasy of a flatus-expelling organ, fulfils all
the wished-for conditions to an extent that one could
hardly otherwise conceive. That the idea of supreme
power is here recaptured under the guise of phantasies that

1 See Ferenczi, op. cit., Ch. VIII, "Stages in the Development in the Sense
of Reality."

2 See Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zuv Neurosenlehre, Vierte Folge,
Cap. Ill, "Die Disposition zur Zwangsneurose."

8 See my Papers on Psycho- Analysis, 2nd Ed., p. 546.

354

MADONNA'S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR
have numerous feminine, anal, masochistic and homosexual
implications e.g., by means of the gentle dove is in
entire accord with the fundamental method of Christian
salvation, so that further studies on these lines should lead
to a deeper understanding of the psychology of this idea.

VI. CONCLUSION

If we now regard the theme as a whole, we cannot but
be impressed by the ingenuity and fine feeling with which
an idea so repellent to the adult mind has been transformed
into a conception not merely tolerable, but lofty in its
grandeur. In the endeavour to represent the purest and
least sensual form of procreation that can be imagined, the
one most befitting to the Creator Himself, the mind worked
surely and on the soundest lines by reaching for its basis
to the crudest and grossest idea obtainable; it is always
through such violently extreme contrasts, as we know from
the analytic study of literature, that the grandest psycho-
logical effects are achieved. Of all infantile theories of pro-
creation that persist in the Unconscious there is perhaps
not one more repellent than that described above, and no
more astounding contrast could well be conceived than the
original form of this and the form given to it in the legend
here analysed. In the original one we have a Father
incestuously impregnating his daughter (i.e., a son his
mother) by expelling intestinal gas, with the help of the
genital organ, into her lower alimentary orifice, one through
which her child is then born. In the legend, the site of exit
is completely omitted, and that of ingress is denoted by the
receptive organ of music, an orifice with fewer sensual im-
plications than any other in the whole body, than the navel,
the mouth, or even the eye. What more innocent symbol
exists than that gentle messenger of hope and love, the
dove ? And in the tender breath of the dove, reinforced by

355

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the solemn words of the Archangel, who would recognize
the repulsive material thus symbolized, with its odour
replaced by the fragrance of lilies, its moisture and warmth
by the aureole of light and fire, and its sound by the gentle
cooing "the echo on earth of the very Word of God".

The Christian myth is perhaps the most gigantic and
revolutionary phantasy in history, and its striking charac-
teristic is the completely veiled way in which this phantasy
is carried through to success under the guise of sacrificial
submission to the Father's will. It is therefore entirely
appropriate that such an important episode as the birth
of the hero should be portrayed by symbolisms that signify
a complete denial of the Father's power, and which at the
same time, under the mantle of the Father, glorify the son's
might in the most supreme terms imaginable.

Turning lastly to the accompanying picture by Martini 1
(see Frontispiece), painted over six hundred years ago, we
see, although its marvellous colour cannot be here repro-
duced, that the whole theme which has occupied us is
portrayed with a charm and fidelity hardly to be surpassed.
One of our leading critics, Edward Hutton, writes of it:
"Who may describe the colour and the delicate glory of
this work ? The hand of man can do no more ; it is the most
beautiful of religious paintings." To show how deeply the
artist has reached for his inspiration I will call the reader's
attention to one little detail, a trait characteristic of
Martini's Annunciation pictures, though often copied from
him later by other painters. 2 It has to do with the cam-
panulas that stand between Gabriel and the Virgin. Our

1 The picture is usually attributed to both Simone Martini and Lippo
Memmi, but the latter painted only the setting and the angels at the side,
which are not here reproduced.

* For instance, by Taddeo Bartoli (in the Siena Academy) . A very clear hint
of the function of the holy words is given by those painters who make them
issue from the Archangel's mouth in the form of a snake. (An example of this
is offered by the altar at Klosterneuburg, reproduced by Beissel, Geschichte
der Verehrung Marias in Deutschland wahrend des Mittelalters, 1909, S. 466.)

356

MADONNA S CONCEPTION THROUGH THE EAR

artist indicated, quite unconsciously, why the lily is the
flower chosen for the present purpose. Of all flowers the
lily is the most noted for the delicate fragrance of its odour :
better than the luscious and half-lascivious rose, the heavy
jasmine, or the fleeting wild flowers, the lily can serve as no
other flower can to express the acme of purity that is
necessary to conceal the exactly opposite original idea. In
the picture, the artist makes the words of Gabriel, which are
the counterpart of the Breath of God, pass through the
lilies, as if to purify the fertilization principle of the last
trace of early uncleanness, to cleanse it of any possible
remaining dross.

In work done, as this must have been, under the direct
inspiration of the unconscious, we realize the difference
between true and pseudo-art. It also illustrates how happy
was the union between Christian religion and art, before
the divorce came with the decadence of the Renaissance
and the reign of "Puritanism" in religion. The whole topic
of this essay shows how important was the part played by
aesthetic feeling in the elaboration of religious beliefs the
legend we have analysed may well be compared to an
exquisite poetic conception a fact that is throughout
intelligible when we remember how intimate is the associa-
tion between the unconscious roots of both. Religion has
always used art in one form or another, and must do so,
for the reason that incestuous desires invariably construct
their phantasies out of the material provided by the uncon-
scious memory of infantile corophilic interests; this is the
inner meaning of the phrase "Art is the handmaid of
Religion". The increasing separation between the two, and
the diverting of art to other purposes, constitutes the first
serious stage in the transformation of religion, and in the
supersession of the pleasure-principle by the reality-
principle.

357

XIV

A PSYCHO-ANALYTIC STUDY OF THE
HOLY GHOST CONCEPT 1

WHATEVER time may reveal about the historical person-
ality of the Founder of Christianity, there is no doubt
in the minds of those who have instituted studies into the
comparison of various religions that many of the beliefs
centring about Him have been superadded to the original
basis, having been derived from extraneous Pagan
sources, and the name of Christian mythology may very
well be applied to the study of these accretions. As
Frazer 2 puts it: "Nothing is more certain than that myths
grow like weeds round the great historical figures of the
past."

Some of the more important elements of this mythology
have already been investigated by means of the psycho-
analytic method by Freud. 3 According to him, the central
dogma itself of the Christian religion the belief that man-
kind is to be saved from its sins through the sacrifice of
Jesus Christ on the cross represents an elaboration of the
primitive totemistic system. The essence of this system
he sees in an attempt to allay the sense of guilt arising
from the CEdipus complex, i.e., the impulse, gratified in
primordial times, towards parricide and incest, there being
good reason to think that this complex is the ultimate
source of the "original sin" described by the theologians.
This was the first great sin of mankind and the one from

1 Read at the Seventh International Psycho-Analytical Congress, 27th Sep-
tember, 1922.

a Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd Ed., 1914, p. 160.
8 Freud, Totem und Tabu, 1913, S. 142.

358

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

which our moral conscience and sense of guilt was born.
The early history of mankind in this respect, the tendency
towards this great sin and the moral reaction against it,
is repeated by every child that comes into the world, and
the story of religion is a never-ending attempt to overcome
the QEdipus complex and to achieve peace of mind through
atonement with the Father. Freud has pointed out that
the most striking characteristic of the Christian solution as
compared with others, such as the Mithraic, is the way
in which this atonement is achieved through surrender to
the Father instead of through openly defying and over-
coming him. This surrender, the prototype of which is the
Crucifixion, is periodically repeated in the ceremony of the
Holy Mass or Communion, which is psychologically equiva-
lent to the totemistic banquet. In this way the Father's
wrath is averted and the Son takes his place as co-equal
with Him. In the banquet is lived over again both the
celebration of the original deed of killing and eating the
Father and the remorseful piety which desires re-union and
identification with him. It will be seen that, according to
this view, the Christian reconciliation with the Father is
attained at the expense of over-development of the fem-
inine component.

The present communication will, it is hoped, afford
confirmation of Freud's conclusions by a study on parallel
lines. Some ten years ago I published in the Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse an essay on the impregnation of the Madonna
and what I have to present here is largely based on a
recently written expanded edition of the essay which is to
appear in English. 1 The research there pursued led incident-
ally to consideration of the following problem.

In the Christian mythology a startling fact appears. It
is the only one in which the original figures are no longer
present, in which the Trinity to be worshipped no longer

1 Chapter XIII of this volume.

359

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

consists of the Father, Mother and Son. The Father and
Son still appear, but the Mother, the reason for the whole
conflict, has been replaced by the mysterious figure of
the Holy Ghost.

It seems impossible to come to any other conclusion
than the one just enunciated. Not only must the Mother
logically constitute the third member of any Trinity whose
two other members are Father and Son, not only is this
so in all the other numerous Trinities known to us, but
there is a considerable amount of direct evidence indicating
that this was originally so in the Christian myth itself.
Frazer 1 has collected some of the evidence to this effect
and makes the conclusion highly probable on historical
grounds alone. The original Mother, who was accepted by
for instance the Ophitic sect as the third member of the
Trinity, would appear to have been of mixed Babylonian
and Egyptian origin, although there are not wanting indica-
tions to show that a misty Mother-figure floated in the
background of Hebrew theology also. Thus the passage in
Genesis (i. 2) "And the Spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters" should properly run "The Mother of
the Gods brooded (or fluttered) over the abyss and brought
forth life", a bird-like conception of the Mother which
must remind us not only of the Holy Dove (i.e., the Holy
Spirit that replaces the Mother), but also of the legend
that Isis conceived Horus while fluttering in the shape of
a hawk over the dead body of Osiris. While the sternly
patriarchal Hebrew theology, however, banned the Mother
to a subordinate part and the Messiah-Son to a remotely
distant future, it nevertheless retained the normal relation-
ship of the three. It is probable, therefore, that any eludica-
tion of the change from Mother to Holy Ghost would

1 Frazer, The Dying God, 191 r, p. 5. [Ewald Roellenbleck, in his Magna Mater
im alien Testament, 1949, has made a comprehensive study of this matter and
shown conclusively tjiat indications of the original Mother Goddess are strewn
throughout the Old Testament, even if many are in a veiled form.]

360

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

throw light on the inner nature of the psychological
revolution betokened by the development of Judaism into
Christianity.

The mode of approach here adopted will be by consider-
ing the circumstances of the conception of the Messiah.
This approach is justified on two grounds. In the first
place, as is well known, the figure of the Holy Ghost
appears in the myth only as the procreative agent in the
conception of the Son, and as an ambrosial benediction
poured out on to the Son when the latter undergoes the
initiatory rite of baptism (later on also in connection with
the followers of the Son). In the second place, Otto Rank 1
has long ago shown that the tendencies of a myth are
revealed already in its earliest stages, in what he has
termed the Myth of the Birth of the Hero. Consideration
of the Christian myth makes it probable that this law
holds good here also, so that a study of the conception of
Jesus may throw light on the main tendencies and purposes
of the whole myth.

To begin with, the very idea of a conception being
induced by a supernatural and abnormal means yields a
clue to the mythical tendency. It tells us at once that
there is some conflict present in the attitude towards the
Father, for the unusual route of impregnation implies, as
we know from other studies, a wish to repudiate the idea
of the Father having played any part in it. There may
or may not be present as well the opposite tendency to
this the desire to magnify admiringly the special power
of the Father. This ambivalency is clearly seen in the
primitive belief that children are begotten not of their
Father, but through impregnation of the Mother by the
particular clan totem, for the totem is simply an ancestral
substitute for the Father, a super-Father. It is thus not
surprising to learn that the Christian myth must, like most

1 Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909.

361 AA

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

other religious myths, be concerned with the age-old
struggle between Father and Son.

It will be remembered that the conception of Jesus took
place in a most unusual manner. As a rule, whenever a
god wishes to impregnate a mortal woman, he appears
on earth either in human form or disguised as an animal
with specially phallic attributes (a bull, a snake or what
not) and impregnates her by performing the usual act
of sexual union. In the Madonna myth, on the other hand,
God the Father does not appear at all, unless we regard
the Archangel Gabriel as a personification of Him; the
impregnation itself is effected by the angel's word of
greeting and the breath of a dove simultaneously entering
the Madonna's ear. The Dove itself, which is understood
to represent the Holy Ghost, emanates from the Father's
mouth. The Holy Ghost, therefore, and His breath play
here the part of a sexual agent, and appear where we
would logically expect to find a phallus and semen respec-
tively. To quote St. Zeno: "The womb of Mary swells
forth by the Word, not by seed" ; or, again, St. Eleutherius :
"0 blessed Virgin . . . made mother without co-operation
of man. For here the ear was the wife, and the angelic
word the husband."

It will be seen that our problem is immediately com-
plicated. To find that the mysterious figure replacing the
Mother is a male being, who symbolizes the creative
elements of the Father, only adds a second enigma to the
first. Before taking this up, however, it is necessary to
consider more closely the details of the impregnation
itself.

A comparative analysis of these leads to an unexpected
conclusion. When we seek to discover how the idea of
breath could have become invested in the primitive, i.e.,
unconscious, mind with the seminal connotation just
indicated, we find that it does so in a very circuitous way.

362

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

As I have shown in detail in the work referred to above, the
idea of breath does not have in the primitive mind the
narrow and definite signification we now give to it. A study
of Greek and Hindu physiological philosophy in particular
shows that breath used to have a much broader conno-
tation, that of the so-called pneuma concept, and that an
important constituent of this concept probably the greater
part of at least its sexual aspects were derived from
another gaseous excretion, namely that proceeding from
the lower end of the alimentary canal. It is this down-
going breath, as it is termed in the Vedic literature, which
is the fertilizing element in the various beliefs of creation
through speech or breath. Similarly, analysis of the idea
of the ear as a female receptive organ leads to the con-
clusion that this is a symbolic replacement, a "displace-
ment from below upwards", of corresponding thoughts
relating to the lower orifice of the alimentary canal.
Putting these two conclusions together, we can hardly
avoid the inference that the mythical legend in question
represents a highly refined and disguised elaboration of
the "infantile sexual theory", to which I have elsewhere
drawn attention, 1 according to which fecundation is sup-
posed to be effected through the passage of intestinal gas
from the Father to the Mother. I have also pointed out
why this most repellent of sexual phantasies should lend
itself better than any other to the conveyance of
the most exalted and spiritual ideas of which the mind is
capable.

Now there are certain characteristic features accom-
panying this infantile theory which we can discover by
means of individual psycho-analyses of persons holding it,
as well as from a study of the comparative material in
association with it. Superficially considered it would appear
to imply a denial of the Father's potency and to represent

1 Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1912, Band IV, S. 588 et seq.

363

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

a form of castration wish, and no doubt this is in part true.
Yet, on the other hand, one is astonished to find that
throughout all the numerous associations to the idea of
creation in connection with wind there is nearly always
implied the very opposite idea of a powerful concrete
phallus which expels the wind. Thus in most of the beliefs
attaching in all parts of the world to the idea of divine
creative thunder there is also present some sort of thunder-
weapon, the best-known and most widely spread of which
is the bull-roarer. Further than this, the idea of impregna-
tion by means of wind itself would seem to be regularly
regarded by the primitive mind as a sign of peculiarly
great potency, as if the power to create by a mere sound,
a word or even a thought, were a final demonstration of
tremendous virility. This reaches its acme in the notion
of conception without even sound, by a silent thought
alone, such as in the belief cherished by various nuns in
the Middle Ages that they had conceived because Jesus
had "thought on them".

An excellent example of this complex of ideas, interest-
ing from several points of view, is aiforded by certain
Egyptian beliefs about the crocodile. They also bear
directly on the present theme, for the crocodile was taken
by early Christians to be a symbol for the Logos or Holy
Ghost; moreover, the creature was believed to impregnate
his mate, just like the Virgin Mary, through the ear. Now
on the one hand the crocodile was notable to the ancients
for having no external genital organs, no tongue and no
voice (symbolic indications of impotency), and yet on the
other hand in spite of these purely negative qualities (or
perhaps just because of them) he was regarded as the
highest type of sexual virility, and a number of aphrodisiac
customs were based on this belief. The crocodile was an
emblem of wisdom, like the serpent and other phallic
objects, and as such figures on the breast of Minerva, so

364

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

that the ancients seem to have reached the conclusion
that the most potent agent in all creation was the Silence
of Man, the omnipotence of thought being even more im-
pressive than the omnipotence of speech.

We know that this over-emphasis on paternal potency
is not a primary phenomenon, but is a transference from
personal narcissism in response to the fear of castration
as a punishment for castration wishes. We thus come to
the conclusion, which is amply borne out by individual
psycho-analyses, that a belief in a gaseous impregnation
represents a reaction to an unusually intense castration
phantasy, and that it occurs only when the attitude towards
the Father is particularly ambivalent, hostile denial of
potency alternating with affirmation of and subjection to
supreme might.

Both of these attitudes are indicated in the Christian
myth. The occurrence of impregnation by action d distance,
merely through messengers, and the choice of a gaseous
route, reveal an idea of tremendous potency, one to which
the Son is throughout subjected. On the other hand, the
instrument employed to effect the impregnation is far from
being a specially virile one. Though the Dove is evidently
a phallic symbol it was in the guise of a dove that Zeus
seduced Phtheia, and doves were the amor-like emblems
of all the great love-goddesses, Astarte, Semiramis, Aphro-
dite and the rest still it plainly owes its association with
love principally to the gentle and caressing nature of its
wooing. We may thus say that it is one of the most
effeminate of all the phallic emblems.

It is thus clear that the Father's might is manifested
only at the expense of being associated with considerable
effeminacy. The same theme is even more evident in the
case of the Son. He attains greatness, including final
possession of the Mother and reconciliation with the Father,
only after undergoing the extremity of humiliation together

365

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

with a symbolic castration and death. A similar path is
laid down for every follower of Jesus, salvation being
purchased at the price of gentleness, humility, and sub-
mission to the Father's will. This path has logically led in
extreme cases to actual self-castration and always leads
in that direction, though of course it is in practice replaced
by various acts symbolizing this. There is a double gain
in this. Object-love for the Mother is replaced by a regres-
sion to the original identification with her, so that incest
is avoided and the Father pacified ; further the opportunity
is given of winning the Father's love by the adoption of a
feminine attitude towards him. Peace of mind is purchased
by means of a change in heart in the direction of a change
in sex.

We return at this point to the problem raised above
of the psychological signification of the Holy Ghost. We
have seen that He is composed of a combination of the
original Mother-Goddess with the creative essence (genital
organs) of the Father. From this point of view one ap-
proaches an understanding of the peculiar awfulness of
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the so-called "unpar-
donable sin", for such an offence would symbolically be
equivalent to a defilement of the Holy Mother and an
attempted castration of the Father. It would be a repetition
of the primordial sin, the beginning of all sin, gratification
of the CEdipus impulse. This is in complete harmony with
our clinical experience that neurotics nearly always identify
this sin with the act of masturbation, the psychological
significance of which we now know to be due to its uncon-
scious association with incestuous wishes.

So far the figure of the Holy Ghost may be held to
correspond with the terrible image of the phantastic
"woman with the penis", the primal Mother. But the
matter is more complicated. On union of the Mother with
the Father's creative agent all femininity vanishes, and

366

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

the figure becomes indisputably male. This reversal of sex
is the real problem.

For the reasons given above this change in sex must
have something to do with the act of begetting, and here
we are reminded of another curious change in sex con-
nected with the same act. In his brilliant researches into
the initiation rites and couvade ceremonies of savages
Reik 1 has shown that the most important tendency per-
meating these is the endeavour to counter the GEdipus-
complex i.e., the wish for Father-murder and Mother-
incest by a very peculiar and yet logical enough device.
Acting on the deeply-seated conviction that the foundation
of the fatal attraction towards the Mother is the physical
fact of one's having been born by her, a conviction which
has some real basis, savages enter upon various complicated
procedures the essential aim of which is so far as possible
to annul this physical fact and to establish the fiction that
the boy has been at all events re-born by the Father. In
this way the Father hopes to abrogate the incestuous
wishes on the one hand and to bind the youth more
closely to him on the other, both these aims diminishing
the risk of parricide. Put in terms of the instincts this
means that an incestuous heterosexual fixation is replaced
by a sublimated homosexuality.

When we reflect how widely spread is this tendency
the rites themselves, as Reik remarks, are found in
every part of the world it would not seem too bold to
ascribe to it also the substitution of the male for the
female sex in the case under discussion. I would therefore
suggest that the replacement of the Mother-Goddess by the
Holy Ghost is a manifestation of the desirability of renouncing
incestuous and parricidal wishes and replacing them by a
stronger attachment to the Father ', a phenomenon having the
same signification as the initiatory rites of savages. Hence

1 Reik, Probleme der Religionspsychologie, 1919, Ch. II and III.

367

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

the greater prominence in Christianity, as compared with
Judaism, of personal love for God the Father. In support
of the conclusion may further be quoted the extensive
part played by sublimated homosexuality throughout the
Christian religion. The exceptional precept of universal
brother-love, that one should not only love one's neighbour
as oneself but also one's enemies, makes a demand on
social feeling that can be met, as Freud has pointed out,
only from homosexual sources of feeling. Then the effe-
minate costume of the priests, their compulsory celibacy,
shaven head, and so on, plainly signify deprivation of
masculine attributes, being thus equivalent to symbolic
self-castration.

The figure thus created represents an androgynic com-
promise. In surrendering some elements of virility it gains
the special female prerogative of child-bearing, and thus
combines the advantages of both sexes. The hermaphroditic
ideal offered to the world by Christianity has proved of
tremendous importance to humanity. We have in it a
great reason for the enormous civilizing influence of Christi-
anity, since the civilizing of primitive man essentially
means the mastery of the CEdipus complex and the trans-
formation of much of it into sublimated homosexuality
(i.e., herd instinct), without which no social community
can exist. We realize also why a real conversion to Chris-
tianity is typically described as being "re-born of the
Holy Ghost", and why immersion in water (a birth sym-
bolism) is the official sign of it ; we have here, further, the
explanation of the curious finding, which I have pointed
out previously, 1 that the baptismal fluid is lineally derived
from a bodily fluid (semen, urine) of the Father. It should,
incidentally, be no longer strange that the most vivid
forms of religious conversion are seen either at puberty,
i.e., the homosexual phase of adolescence, or, in adult life,

1 Chapter II, p. 71, etc.

368

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

with drunkards; it will be remembered that drunkenness
is a specific sign of mental conflict over the subject of
repressed homosexuality.

The conclusions thus reached accord well with those
reached by Freud along other lines regarding the connection
between Christianity and totemism. Christianity con-
stitutes in large part both a veiled regression to the
primitive totemistic system and at the same time a refine-
ment of this. It resembles it in the sharpness of the ambi-
valency towards the Father, though in it the hostile com-
ponent has undergone a still further stage in repression.
It also agrees with the tendency of the primitive initiation
ceremonies as disclosed by Reik, but it indicates a progress
beyond these inasmuch as the shifting of procreative im-
portance from the female to the male sex is put backward
from the time of puberty to that of birth, just as, incident-
ally, the initiatory rite of baptism subsequently was.
Instead of the maternal birth being nullified by a symbolic
paternal rebirth at the time of puberty, the birth itself is
mythologically treated on these lines.

In discussing the fate of the original Mother-Goddess
and her transformation into the Holy Ghost we have passed
by a very obvious consideration. Although in the Christian
Trinity itself the Holy Ghost is the only figure that replaces
the primal Mother, nevertheless there is in Christian
theology a female figure, the Virgin Mary, who also plays
an important part. It would thus be truer to say that the
original Goddess has been "decomposed" to use a mytho-
logical term into two, one of which goes to make the
Holy Ghost and the other of which becomes the Madonna.
To complete our analysis a little should be said about the
latter figure.

By a divine Father or Mother, i.e., God or Goddess,
we mean, from a purely psychological point of view, an
infantile conception of a Father or Mother, a figure invested

369

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

with all the attributes of power and perfection and regarded
with respect or awe. The decomposition in question, there-
fore, signifies that the divine, i.e., infantile, attributes of
the original Mother image have been transferred to the
idea of the Holy Ghost, while the purely human, i.e., adult,
attributes have been retained in the form of a simple
woman. Apart from the change in sex tHat occurs in the
former case, which has been considered above, the process
is akin to the divorce that normally obtains during the
years of adolescence, when the youth, following the dicho-
tomy of his own feelings, divides women into two classes
human accessible ones and unapproachable forbidden
figures of respect, the extreme types being the harlot and
"lady" respectively. We know from countless individual
psycho-analyses that this splitting is simply a projection
of the dissociation that occurs in the feelings originally
entertained by the boy for the Mother; those that have
been deflected from a sexual goal become attached to
various figures of respect, while the crudely erotic ones are
allowed to appear only in regard to a certain class of
woman, harlot, servant, and so on. Both the "lady" and
the harlot are thus derivatives of the Mother figure. So we
infer that the division of the original Goddess into two
figures in Christianity is a manifestation of the same
repression of incestuous impulses.

Light is thrown on the part played by the Virgin Mary
both by these considerations and by comparison of the
woman in Christian mythology with the woman of other
Trinities. For this purpose we may select the three that
have been so fully studied by Frazer, three which seriously
competed with Christianity in its early days and which
were the sources of some of its most prominent elements.
I refer to the three Saviour-Gods Adonis, Attis and Osiris.
With all these we have a Son-Lover who dies, usually
being castrated as well, who is periodically mourned,

370

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

chiefly by women, and whose resurrection betokens the
welfare or salvation of humanity. Two of these contrast
with the third in the following interesting respect. With
Adonis and Attis the Mother-Goddess, Astarte or Cybele
respectively, towers in importance over the young Saviour;
Osiris on the other hand is at least as distinguished and
powerful as Isis. Frazer writes: 1 "Whereas legend generally
represented Adonis and Attis as simple swains, mere herds-
men or hunters whom the fatal love of a goddess had
elevated above their homely sphere into a brief and melan-
choly pre-eminence, Osiris uniformly appears in tradition
as a great and beneficent king." Later on, 2 however, he
suggests that "This . . . seems to indicate that in the
beginning Isis was, what Astarte and Cybele continued
to be, the stronger divinity of the pair". Thus, in the
series: Astarte, Isis, Mary we have a gradation in the
diminishing greatness of the primal Mother. Although
Mary retains the attributes of perfection, she has lost
those of divine and unapproachable grandeur and becomes
simply a good woman. This subordination of the primal
Mother, and her deprivation of the infantile conception of
divinity, would seem to accord well with the view expressed
above of the tendency in the Christian myth to exalt the
Father at the expense of the Mother. The significance of
this is, as has been indicated, to counter the incest wish by
instituting a closer bond with the Father.

Reflection on the history of Christianity shows that
its object has been gained only in part, that the solution
provided of the QEdipus complex was not one of universal
applicability, and that the age-old conflict between Father
and Son has continued to lead to further efforts to solve
it. The transition from the Mother to the Holy Ghost was
not accomplished without a struggle even at the beginning,

1 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1914, pp. 158, 159.
8 Ibid., p. 202.

371

ESSAYS IN APPLIED PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

as might have been expected in a community always accus-
tomed to Goddess worship. Several sects tried to maintain
the divinity of Mary, the obvious successor of Isis, Hera,
Astarte, Aphrodite and the rest, and the Melchite attempt
to retain the original Trinity of Father, Mary, and Messiah
was crushed only at the Council of Nice. For a thousand
years matters proceeded quietly, perhaps because of the
astounding syncretizing activity of those years in assimila-
ting Pagan mythology of all kinds, including most of that
pertaining to the earlier Mother-Goddesses. After this time,
however, voices were increasingly raised in favour of
according the Virgin Mary a loftier part in the hierarchy.
This tendency won the day in the Catholic Church and
may be said to be still proceeding, for it is hardly more
than half a century since the last step was taken of pro-
nouncing that she herself was also conceived immacu-
lately. 1 The human need for a Mother to worship was too
strong, so that She had to be reinstated. Christianity here,
therefore, as in so many other respects, effected a com-
promise between the Hebraic tendency towards an andro-
genic conception and the Classical tendency towards ack-
nowledgement of the Mother-Goddess as a central figure.

The peculiarly Christian solution, which was later adul-
terated by Catholicism, was thus a lineal descendant of the
Hebraic tendency. The Protestant Reformation was clearly
an attempt to reinforce the original solution and to carry
it to its logical conclusion by abolishing all traces of
Mariolatry from religion; only those who have witnessed
the horror with which the "Red Woman" is mentioned
among the extreme Protestant sections of the community
can fully appreciate the strength of this impulse. It is
interesting, further, to note that the more completely is
this process carried out the less necessity is there to adopt
a homosexual attitude in religion; the extreme Protestant

1 While this is in the press comes the doctrine of the corporeal assumption.

372

A STUDY OF THE HOLY GHOST CONCEPT

ministers not only marry, but discard all special costume
and other indications of a feminine role, whereas all the
self-castrating tendencies are more evident where Mari-
olatry is highly developed. One might perhaps say that
the Protestant solution of the QEdipus complex is the
replacement of the Mother by the Woman, while the
Catholic one consists in the change of the masculine to the
feminine attitude.

373

INDEX

Abercrombie, 281
Abraham, Karl, 47, 56, 83,

102, 118, 132, 141, 285,

308

Adanson, 131
Adonis, 216, 221, 370-1
aesthetics, 266-7
Agni, 313, 336
Aigremont, 12, 88
alchemy, 26
ambivalency, 97
ambrosia, 316
Anacreon, 336
Anaximenes, 296
Andree, 54
animal phobias, 7
anthropophagy, 94
anthropology, Chapter IV
Aphrodite, 336
Apollonius, 335
Anubis, 140

Archer, William, 239, 243
Aristophaneis, 287
Aristotle, 283, 298, 299, 309
Arneth, 271
Arnulphy, 298
Arrian, 33

Arthurian cycle, 168
Aruntas, 153, 156
Ashera, 12
Astarte, 217, 370
astronomy, 218
Atchley, 316
Athene, 294, 344

Atkinson, 172
84, Atman, 296
289, Attis, 205, 216, 370-1

Avebury, 151 (see also Lubbock)
avunculate organization, 149
Aubrey, 90
Aymonier, 48

Bab, 68, 281, 306

Bachofen, 146, 170, 332

Baker, 69, 72, 73

baloma, 156

Bancroft, 48, 68, 85, 274

baptism, 70, 208, 303, 318, 337,

368-9

Baptist sect, 71
barrenness, 45, 71
Barton, 343
Bayley, 24
Beissel, 356
Bekker, 56
Bent, 346
Berecinthia, 74
Bethe, 316
betel-nut, 91
Birlinger and Buck, 67
birth symbolism, 208
bisexuality, 133
Black, 72
Blinkenberg, 289
blood covenant, 78, 80
boar's head, 222
Boas, 66, 328
Boas and Hunt, 345

374

INDEX

Bodin, 29, 30

Bona Dea, 74

Bosman, 86

Bourke, 59, 60, 64, 66, 67, 71-3,

76-8,89,93,351-2
Bousjield, 348
Bousquet, 30
Bouvaine, 289
j&oyk, 55
Brahmanism, 274
rW, 24, 26, 28, 33, 38, 47, 54,

65, 89-92, 101-103
breath, 274 et seq.
breath-soul, 274, 295, 303, 320
Brett, 294, 297, 299, 300, 306,

3H,3i7
bride-ale, 65

Brill, A. A., 78

Brinton, 280

Broadley, 77

Bronzino, 286

Brown-Sequard, 51

Budge ', Wallis, 324, 326, 348-9

bull-roarer, 288-9, 35 r > 3^4

Burton, 118

Byron, 25

Burckbardt, 29, 30

Cabanis, 300

C*Ax>r, P. Ch., 331

Calvin, 181

cannibalism, 175, 209

Cassandra, 343

Cassirer, E., 188

castration, 20, 137, 142-3, 261,

264, 350, 353, 365
causality, 186, 189
Charlemagne cycle, 168

Chcyne, 329, 344
Chigemouni, 272
chimney, 53
Christmas, Chapter X
Cicognara, 272
Clamgero, 73
cleansing, 73
Clodd, Edward, 6
Cochrane, 72
cockle-bread, 90
C0*?, 190-1
compacts, 25
confarreatio, 92
Conway, 25, 30, 33, 341
Cook, 67

Copernicus, 231, 234
coprophilia, 303, 314
Cornford, 53
Cotter ill, 288
Co*, G. W., 54
Cox, Marian, 101
Coxe, 73

couvade, 160, 162, 367
Creuzer, 298
crocodile, 346 et seq.
Crooke, 49
Curtis s, 305

74, 205, 217, 371

Daly ell, 26, 31-2, 34, 38, 102
Darwin, 230-1, 234
Davenport, 190
death- wishes, 14, 123
Des Bancels, Largnier, 278
defloration, 12
Dekker, 38
Demeter, 204
dependence, 200

375

INDEX

determination, Chapter VII
Deussen, 274, 296, 301
Didron, 337
Dietericb, 305
"diffusionist" school, 9
Diogenes, 294, 297, 306
dove, 322 et seq.
dream-life, 112, 116
Dubois, Abbe*, 74
Dukes, 194
Dulaure, 65
Dupuoy, 331
Durckbeim, 192
Durville, 298
dying God, 205-6

Eddington, Sir Arthur, 187, 188

Eels, 328

egocentric, 14

Einstein, 188

Eisler, 293

ejaculatio praecox, 101

Elias Artista Hermetic a, 27

Elixir of life, 141

Elliot Smith, 118, 130-136, 140

Ellis, 168

emblem, n

Ennemoser, 34

Erman, 75

essence, 26

excrement, 60

exhibitionism, 247-8

exogamy, 160

family complex, 169
father-god, 343
father-imago, 164
feast of fools, 77, 222

Federn, 56, 327

Febrle, 315

Ferenczi, S., 62, 118, 276, 290,

293, 354

Fergus son, 118

fertility, 31,45,61, 88, 132, 156

festivals, 212-13, 215, 217, 220-1

Feuerbach, 192

F Hippo Lippi, 269

flatus, 339, 353, 354

Flemming, 81

Fletcher, 298

Flour noy, 190

flying snakes, 93

Folklore, Chapter I.

Frazer, Sir James, 48-9, 52, 88,
127, 146, 151, 157, 163, 190,
192, 283, 287, 289-301, 305,
306-7, 217, 331, 333-5, 351,

35^, 3^0, 370-1

Free Will, Chapter VII

friendship, 24

Freud, 3, 8, 19, 22, 57, 62, 70,
104, 109, 113, 116-9, 125, 127,
133, I35> 137, i&>, 162, 165,
169, 172, 184, 193-4, 196, 199,
226, 229, 230, 234, 248, 251,
257, 263, 268, 282, 295, 308,

320, 330, 354> 358, 3^9
Frobenius, Leo, 46, 342
Frommann, 65-6
Fucbs, 331
fumigation, 318
Furlong, 118, 213

376

Gabriel, 271, 274, 324-5, 331

344> 356-7> 3^2
Gadow, 348

INDEX

Gaidoz, 335

Galen, 299

Gallicban, Walter, 67

Gaume, 32, 35

Gilbert, 305

Gilder, 73

Girscbner, 333

God Complex, Chapter XII

gold, 62

Gomara, 72

Gomme, Laurence, 6, 7, 14

Gon, 270

Gougb, 32

Gratian, 34

Grimm, 17, 30, 38, 62

Grobmann, 312, 334

Gubernatis, de, 74, 76, 335, 336

guilt, 19

Hadden, A. C., 288

Habn, Victor, 24

Hahn, von, 334-5

Hakluyt, 73

Hamlet, 168

Harding, 332

Hardy, Thomas, 139

Hartland, 59-63, 71, 78, 80-82,

90-93, 151-3, 156, 166, 168,

170-2, 278, 306
Hartmann, 46
Harvey, 121

#<?*/*, 153, 157-8
Hebn, 28, 99, 100
ff<W, 296, 300, 305, 309-10,

315, 317-8

Heilbronner, 174, 176
Heisenberg, 187
Henderson, 55, 86

Hera, 278

Heraclites, 310

Herodotus, 316, 349

Her rick, 26

Herzog, Guillaume, 272

Hiawatha, 280, 307

Hiong, 287

Hippocrates, 300

Hirzel, 313

Hislop, 326

Hoc art, 129

H of ding, 190, 192

Holy Eucharist, 92

Holy Ghost, 286, 303-4, 312-13,

336-7, Chapter XIV
Holy Water, 71, 77, 208
homosexuality, 174
Horus, 346, 360
hospitality, 24
Howard, Arthur, 50
Hume, David, 181-3
Hutton, Edward, 356

Id, 184

Immortality, 261

impotency, 61-2, 91, 102, 142-3,

196, 347
incest trends, 15, 19, 70, 113,

126, 140, 143, 161, 167, 366
infantile sexuality, 15
Inman, 52
Ishtar, 343-4
Isis, 206, 217, 360, 371

James, William, 193, 198, 232,

293
Jameson, 344

377

BB

INDEX

Janet, 196, 257

Jeans, Sir James, 187

Jefferson, Thomas, 242

Jennings, Hargrave, 85, 118

Johannes Agricola, 203

Johnson, 103

Jonah, 337

Jouan, 72

Jung, 273, 294, 307, 311, 339

Kalevala, 281

Kane, 69

Kant, 179, 182, 187, 258

Kama, 345

King, 1 1 8, 349

King Clovis, 335

King Ludwig of Bavaria, 250

King Rene', 284

King, Irving, 190, 193

Kingsley, 74

Kinkel, 194

Kipling, Rudyard, 216

Klein, Melanie, 174, 265

Knox, John, 181

Kolbein, 68

Koshti, 69

Krauss, 30, 84, 87, 88, 278

Krishna, 75

Kuhn, 32, 289

Laistner, 314

Lang, Andrew, 85, 288, 351

Langlois, 269, 270

lameness, 47, 51

Larousse, 338, 340

last trump, 286

Lavanapura, 29

Lawrence, 24-5, 29-31, 33-4, 36,
38, 40, 50, 53, 55, 83, 88, 100-
103

Law son, 52

Lecky, 271

Leibnitz, 181

Lenormant, 82

Leonhardi, von, 153

Leuba, 190-93, 198

Levy, Ludwig, 94, 292, 343

ligature, 45

Lisiansky, 73, 85

lizard, 346

Loewenstein, 194

Logos, 291, 294, 330, 338, 349,

364

Long, 69
Longden, 344
Longfellow, 280, 307
Lor em, 352
Lot's wife, 95
Louis XIV, 250
love charm, 81
loyalty, 24, 25, 90
Lubbock (see also Avebury),

170

Lucian, 333
luck, 12

lumen Christi, 93
Lumboltz, 49
Luther, 1 8 1-2, 288, 317
Luzel, 66

Madonna, Chapter XIII
Maeterlinck, 332
Maine, Sir Henry, 170
Mala Vita, 79, 80
malcficium, 45, 102

378

INDEX

Malinowski, 118, 153-6, 159, Mont em, 28

162-4, 168-70, 172, 202

Manichaeans, 74, 93

Manley, 25

Mann, 70

Mannhardt, 30

Marett, 289

Mariolatry, 217, 372

Marlitt, 314

Maronites, 269

Mars den, 281

Martial, 315

Martin, L. C., 339

matriarchy, 149

matrilineal descent, 148, 150

matrilocal marriage, 150

Maurice, 75

Maury, 335-8

Maya, 272

Me Gillicuddy, 73

MV Lennan, 151, 170

Melchite sect, 372

Melville, 64, 69, 73

Meredith, George, 246

Messenger, 323

Messiah, 307, 361, 372

Michibo, 280

Mill, John Stuart, 181

Milton, 318

mistletoe, 335

mistral, 284

Mithraism, 216-18, 222, 307

mock king, 221

Moffet, 88

Mogt, 317

Moliere, 272

Monier Williams, 68

Monophysites, 271

Mooney, 66
Moor, 75
More sin, 27, 35
Morfilly 346
Morgan, Lewis, 170
Morike, Eduard, 281
Mother Earth, 139

Goddess, 131, 134, 139,

206, 210, 2l6, 2l8,

220, 343-4, 366-7,

369, 372

Kin, 147-8

Pot, 132, 134
Mother right, 218, Chapter V

rule 147

mouth, 273 et seq.
Mudjekeewis, 279
Miihlhauser, 47
Miiller, Max, 69, 74, 302
Mungo Park, 64
Muss-Arnolt, 343

Napier, 35, 72
Napoleon, 252
narcissism, 247
Nassau, 35

Newton, Sir Isaac, 212, 231
Nicolas Verdun, 271
Nietzsche, 254, 264
Nightmare, Chapter III
Noah, 337
Norlk, 273

Obersteiner, 60
Oderir, 316
Odin, 284, 287, 316
odour, 314 et seq.

379

INDEX

Oedipus complex, 159-161, 168-
170, 172-74, 204, 210, 263,

35^-9, 3^7-8, 37^ 373
Oestrup, 6 1

omnipotence, 200, 246, 255, 257
of thoughts, 8, 123,

293, 349
Or i gen, 214, 282

Osiris, 134, 206, 216, 360, 370-71
Ovid, 281
Owen, 93

paganism, 220

palaeolithic art, Chapter VI

Pallas, 72

Paracelsus, 46

parricide, 207, 221-2, 367

parthenogenesis, 156

paternum salinum, 54

Paton, 90

patrilineal descent, 148-9

Paulus Aeginata, 112

Perry, W. J., 118,131, 133, 134,

H3-4
P'troff, 73
Pettazoni, 289
Pfannenscbmid, 34
P fitter, 194
phantasy, 16
Phelo, 83
Philo, 334
phoenix, 332
Phtheia, 334, 365
Picart, 74, 76
Pinches, 343
Pinkerton, 86
Pitre, 47
Planck, 187-8

de Plancy, Collin, 29-30

Plato, 23, 3H,3I7

Pliny, 45, 283, 290, 335, 347

Ploss, 68, 77, 84

Plotinus, 294, 311,330

Plutarch, 88,91,283, 347, 349

Pluto, 305

pneuma, 297 et seq., 363

polyandry, 152

polygyny, 152

Pragapati, 279

predestination, 180-1

Preller-Robert, 304

de Premare, 287

Preuss, 274

primal horde, 172

Prince, 343

Ptah, 349

puberty rites. 160

purification, 70, 75, 98

purity, 340, 357

Putnam, 53

putrefaction, 61

Pythia, 316

Quetzalcoatl, 274

Ra, 326

Rabelais, 345

Rank, Otto, 58, 130, 141, 279,

292, 326, 337> 3^1
and Sachs, 118, 285
Rationalism, Chapter XI
Read, Carveth, 153, 156, 159
rebirth, 136, 138, 140, 219, 261,

304

Reclus, 66, 69
regicide, 221

380

INDEX

Reik,Th., 127, 146, 160, 194, 351,

367, 369
Reinsberg-Diiringsfeld, von, 32,

46

Reitler, 278, 308
religion, Chapter VIII and IX,

267

repression, 118, 229

resistance, 119

respiration, 309-10, 319, 321

Rhea, 74

rhombus, 289

Rhys, 89-90, 92

Riedel, 280

ritual, 136

Rivers, W. H. R., 118, 133, 148,

167, 172

Roellenbleck, Ewald, 360
Rogers, 28
Robde, 304-5, 316
Roheim, Geza, 103, 106, 115, 194
Rops, Felicien, 330
Rose her, 3 1 1
Roth, 158,^37
Roy, Jyotirmoy, 344-5
ruach, 297, 326
Rumphius, 131
Ruscoe, 48
Russell, 48

St. Agobard, 269, 345

Augustine, 180, 269, 283
Catherine, 338
Chrysostom, 325
Eleutherius, 291, 362
Ephraim, 269, 292, 324
Francis, 263
Gaudentius, 342

St. Joseph, 335

Paul, 1 80, 241, 304

Proclus, 269

Remi, 335

Ruffinus, 269

Thomas a Becket, 269

Thomas Aquinas, 181

Zeno, 291, 342, 362
Saintyves, 281
Sal sapientiae, 24
Salacia, 88
salamander, 346
salary, 27
Sale, 274
saliva, 34, 63
salt, n, Chapter II
salt-cellar, 53-4
Saltcoats, 29
salvation, 197, 263
Salzburg, 29
Salzkotten, 29
Santa Claus, 223
savagery, 14
Saviour-God, 216, 218
scapegoat, 209, 221
Schell, 45
Schleiden, 25, 28-31, 34, 45-8,

53-6,62,78,84,95,98-9
Schnitzler, 176
Schouten, 151
Schurig, 68, 288
Schwarz, 280, 289
Schweinfurt, 69, 72
Scot, Reginald, 35,67
Seler, 285

Self-preservation, 135, 137-8
Seligmann, 30-1, 33-5, 38, 45, 47,

62, 88-9, 9 1 * 93

INDEX

Seligmann, Brenda, 166

Sellon, 118

sexual ignorance, 153

shadow-soul, 320

Shakespeare, 46, 78, 283

Shaw, Bernard, 242

Shelley, 140, 263, 264, 284, 333

Short, 75

Sibree, 35

Sierich, 283

Sikes, 55

Silberer, 307

Simone Martini, 270-1, 356

sin, 19, 70, 192, 197, 202, 209,

216, 354, 366
Smith, Preserved, 208
Smith and Cheetham, 337
Smyth, 85
Solovoof, 73
solstice, 213, 217
soma, 316
Southey, 81

speech, 290 et seq., 311-12
Spencer, Herbert, 151, 191
Spencer and Gillen, 153
Sperber, 290, 340
Spinoza, 181-3, 187
Stanley, H. M., 348
Starbuck, 190, 198
Statins, 182-3, 187, 192
Stebbing, Susan, 188
Stem, Aurel, 273
Steinach, 141
Ste<f/, W., 247, 250
stercophagy, 60
Stern, 330
Strack, 78
Strauss, 325

Streklow, 153, 280

Stuckius, 24

sublimation, 94, 320

Sudra, 69

sun, 213, 215, 217-19, 222, 251,

280, 288, 307, 310, 345, 348
sun-god, 215, 221, 250, 345-6
super-ego, 4, 184-5, 196
superstition, n, 108
swan, 73
sweat, 90-1
symbolism, 10, 125, 130, 132-3,

i55> 34> 344

Tamnuz, 344

Taylor, 287, 350

Tertullian, 327, 345

thanatophobia, 142

Thiers, 76

Theophagy, 94

Thomas, 48

Thor, 287, 289

Thorpe, 91

thunder, 287

thunder bird, 328

tongue, 312-13

Torquemada, 74

totemism, 7, 94, 127, 160, 222,

369

trident, 289

Trinity, 209, 359-60, 372

Trobrianders, 153, 163, 168

Tromp, 48

Trotter, Wilfred, 193

Trumbull, 68

Ukko, 83

382

INDEX

Unconscious, 2-4, 8, 118, 122-3,
126, 143, 183-4, I86 > J 93> 200,

" 226-7, 229, 237, 240, 245-6,
275, 293, 320, 33^

Unicorn, 330-1

Urine, 64, 308, 315, 322

Faerting, 145

Faugh an, 338

de Faux, 281

Vergil, 283, 335

Virgin Mary, 210-11, Chapter

XIII, 369-70, 372
virility, 142, 348
Forberg, 327

Waitz, 329

Wake, 118

Waldron, 28

wealth, 62

weather, 258

wedding ceremony, 80, 92

wedding cake, 92

Wells, H. G., 250, 261

Wernicke, 41

Westermarck, 153, 155, 171

Weston, Jessie L., 168, 336

Westropp, 118

westwind, 280, 284

Wheeler, 75

Willsford, 37

W ' interbottom, 152

wisdom, 23 et seq., 294, 334,

347-8

witchcraft, 112
Witzscbel, 284
von Wlislocki, 60, 91
word-deposits, 98
Wordsworth, 140
Wohler, 231
Wright, A. R., 6, 29
Wundt, 274, 294
Wuttke, 24, 28, 30-32, 35, 37-8,

52-3,61,67,86,91,101-3

Yahweh, 287, 341
Yama, 336
Yoni, 88

Zacharias, 291

Zeus, 208, 287, 289, 293, 334-5,
338, 365

383