Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/265

 the hand has actually a phallic, generative meaning, and that this meaning plays a great part in the production of fire. In connection with this phantasy, there is but one observation to make: fire was bored with the hand; therefore it comes from the hand; Agni, the fire, was worshipped as a golden-winged bird.[12] It is extremely significant that it is the mother's hand. I must deny myself the temptation to enter more deeply into this. Let it be sufficient to have pointed out the possible significance of the hand of the Aztec by means of these parallel hand phantasies. We have mentioned the mother suggestively with the Sphinx. The Aztec taking the place of the Sphinx points, through his suggestive hand, to parallel phantasies in which the phallic hand really belongs to the mother. Likewise we encounter an antique setting in parallel phantasies. The significance of the antique, which experience has shown to be the symbol for "infantile," is confirmed by Miss Miller in this connection in the annotation to her phantasies, for she says:

"In my childhood, I took a special interest in the Aztec fragments and in the history of Peru and of the Incas."

Through the two analyses of children which have been published we have attained an insight into the child's small world, and have seen what burning interests and questions secretly surround the parents, and that the parents are, for a long time, the objects of the greatest interest.[13] We are, therefore, justified in suspecting that the antique setting applies to the "ancients," that is to say, the parents, and that consequently this Aztec has