Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/55

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Christ: tree of death and tree of life—Lilith: the devouring
mother—The Lamias—The conquering of the mother—Snake
and dragon: the resistance against incest—The father represents
the active repulse of the incest wish of the son—He
frequently becomes the monster to be overcome by the hero—The
Mithraic sacrificing of the incest wish an overcoming of
the mother—A replacing of archaic overpowering by sacrifice
of the wish—The crucified Christ an expression of
this renunciation—Other cross sacrifices—Cross symbol
possesses significance of "union"—Child in mother's womb:
or man and mother in union—Conception of the soul a derivative
of mother imago—The power of incest prohibition
created the self-conscious individual—It was the coercion
to domestication—The further visions of Miss Miller.


VI.—THE BATTLE FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE
MOTHER 307

The appearance of the hero Chiwantopel on horseback—Hero
and horse equivalent of humanity and its repressed
libido—Horse a libido symbol, partly phallic, partly maternal,
like the tree—It represents the libido repressed through
the incest prohibition—The scene of Chiwantopel and the
Indian—Recalling Cassius and Brutus: also delirium of
Cyrano—Identification of Cassius with his mother—His infantile
disposition—Miss Miller's hero also infantile—Her
visions arise from an infantile mother transference—Her
hero to die from an arrow wound—The symbolism of the
arrow—The onslaught of unconscious desires—The deadly
arrows strike the hero from within—It means the state of
introversion—A sinking back into the world of the child—The
danger of this regression—It may mean annihilation
or new life—Examples of introversion—The clash between
the retrogressive tendency in the individual unconscious
and the conscious forward striving—Willed introversion—The
unfulfilled sacrifice in the Miller phantasy means an
attempt to renounce the mother: the conquest of a new life
through the death of the old—The hero Miss Miller herself.


VII.—THE DUAL MOTHER ROLE 341

Chiwantopel's monologue—His quest for the "one who
understands"—A quest for the mother—Also for the life-companion—The
sexual element in the wish—The battle
for independence from the mother—Its peril—Miss Miller's
use of Longfellow's Hiawatha—An analysis of Hiawatha—A
typical hero of the libido—The miraculous birth—The
hero's birth symbolic because it is really a rebirth from
the mother-spouse—The twofold mother which in Christian
mythology becomes twofold birth—The hero his own procreator—Virgin
conception a mask for incestuous impregnation—Hiawatha's
early life—The identification of mother-nature
with the mother—The killing of a roebuck a conquering
of the parents—He takes on their strength—He
goes forth to slay the father in order to possess the mother*