be simply victims of a folk superstition." As a matter of fact, patients substitute phantasies for reality, phantasies similar to the actually incorrect mental products of the past, which, however, were once the view of reality. As the Zosimos vision shows, the old superstitions were symbols[39] which permitted transitions to the most remote territory. This must have been very expedient for certain archaic periods, for by this means convenient bridges were offered to lead a partial amount of libido over into the mental realm. Evidently Spielrein thinks of a similar biological meaning of the symbols when she says:[40]
"Thus a symbol seems to me to owe its origin in general to
the tendency of a complex for dissolution in the common totality
of thought. . . . The complex is robbed by that of the personal
element. . . . This tendency towards dissolution (transformation)
of every individual complex is the motive for poetry, painting,
for every sort of art."
When here we replace the formal conception "complex"
by the conception of the quantity of libido (the
total effect of the complex), which, from the standpoint of
the libido theory, is a justified measure, then does Spielrein's
view easily agree with mine. When primitive man
understands in general what an act of generation is, then,
according to the principle of the path of least resistance,
he never can arrive at the idea of replacing the generative
organs by a sword-blade or a shuttle; but this is the case
with certain Indians, who explain the origin of mankind
by the union of the two transference symbols. He then
must be compelled to devise an analogous thing in order to
bring a manifest sexual interest upon an asexual expres-
