Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/212

 mental disorders in which a portion of the general human function of reality organized since antiquity has broken off. This portion can be replaced only by a generally valid archaic surrogate. We owe a simple and clear example of this proposition to the investigation of Honegger.[33] A paranoic of good intelligence who has a clear idea of the spherical form of the earth and its rotation around the sun replaces the modern astronomical views by a system worked out in great detail, which one must call archaic, in which the earth is a flat disc over which the sun travels.[34] (I am reminded of the sun-phallus mentioned in the first part of this book, for which we are also indebted to Honegger.) Spielrein has likewise furnished some very interesting examples of archaic definitions which begin in certain illnesses to overlay the real meanings of the modern word. For example, Spielrein's patient had correctly discovered the mythological significance of alcohol, the intoxicating drink, to be "an effusion of seed."[35] She also had a symbolism of boiling which I must place parallel to the especially important alchemistic vision of Zosimos,[36] who found people in boiling water within the cavity of the altar.[37] This patient used earth in place of mother, and also water to express mother.[38] I refrain from further examples because future work of the Zurich School will furnish abundant evidence of this sort.

My foregoing proposition of the replacement of the disturbed function of reality by an archaic surrogate is supported by an excellent paradox of Spielrein's. She says: "I often had the illusion that these patients might