Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/72

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CAVENDISH MOXON

means shares the moral dread of incef5t and death, the desire to think the father away persists in the Œdipus complex. And, with the exception of atheism, as Rank remarks, the belief in death as the (maternal) entrance to life is the most satisfying unconscious denial of the father.

The Christian Creeds, we conclude, are compromise formations. By their appeal to unconscious needs they have long escaped the moral and rational criticism of progressive intelligence. The result of the insight given by psycho-analytic study of the Creeds will hasten what Dr. Ernest Jones terms the "unmasking" of their symbols and the substitution of more adequate embodiments of human ideals.

Received November 20, 1920;