inconsolable father of the bride, on the other as the secret digger of his son-in-law's grave, whose fate he foresees. This beautiful fable has become a cherished paradigm for my analysis, for by no means infrequent are such cases where the father-demon has laid his hand upon his daughter, so that her whole life long, even when she does marry, there is never a true union, because her husband's image never succeeds in obliterating the unconscious and eternally operative infantile father-ideal. This is valid not only for daughters, but equally for sons. A beautiful instance of such a father-constellation is given in Dr. Brill's recently published: “Psychological factors in dementia præcox. An analysis.”[1]
In my experience the father is usually the decisive and dangerous object of the child's phantasy, and if ever it happens to be the mother, I have been able to discover behind her a grandfather to whom she belonged in her heart.
I must leave this question open: my experience does not go far enough to warrant a decision. It is to be hoped that the experience of the coming years will sink deeper shafts into this still dark land which I have been able but momentarily to light up, and will discover to us more of the secret workshop of that fate-deciding demon of whom Horace says:
“Scit Genuis natale comes qui temperat astrum,
Naturae deus humanse, mortalis in unum,
Quodque caput, vultu mutabilis, albus et ater.”
- ↑ Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. III., p. 219, 1908.
