stages of the hypnosis are designated technically as "Engourdissement" (stiffening). The word Sphinx in the whole civilized world signifies the same as riddle: a puzzling creature who proposes riddles, like the Sphinx of Oedipus, standing at the portal of his fate like a symbolic proclamation of the inevitable. The Sphinx is a semi-theriomorphic representation of that "mother image" which may be designated as the "terrible mother," of whom many traces are found in mythology. This interpretation is correct for Oedipus. Here the question is opened. The objection will be raised that nothing except the word "Sphinx" justifies the allusion to the Sphinx of Oedipus. On account of the lack of subjective materials, which in the Miller text are wholly lacking in regard to this vision, an individual interpretation would also be excluded. The suggestion of an "Egyptian" phantasy (Part I, Chapter II) is entirely insufficient to be employed here. Therefore we are compelled, if we wish to venture at all upon an understanding of this vision, to direct ourselves—perhaps in all too daring a manner—to the available ethnographic material under the assumption that the unconscious of the present-day man coins its symbols as was done in the most remote past. The Sphinx, in its traditional form, is a half-human, half-animal creature, which we must, in part, interpret in the way that is applicable to such phantastic products. The reader is directed to the deductions in the first part of this volume where the theriomorphic representations of the libido were discussed. This manner of representation is very familiar to the analyst, through
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