Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/54

 IV.—THE UNCONSCIOUS ORIGIN OF THE HERO               191

The cause of introversion—The forward and backward flow of the libido—The abnormal third—The conflict rooted in the incest problem—The "terrible mother"—Miss Miller's introversion—An internal conflict—Its product of hypnagogic vision and poem—The uniformity of the unconscious in all men—The unconscious the object of a true psychology—The individual tendency with its production of the hero cult—The love for the hero or god a love for the unconscious—A turning back to the mother of humanity—Such regressions act favorably within limits—Miss Miller's mention of the Sphinx—Theriomorphic representations of the libido—Their tendency to represent father and mother—The Sphinx represents the fear of the mother—Miss Miller's mention of the Aztec—Analysis of this figure—The significance of the hand symbolically—The Aztec a substitute for the Sphinx—The name Chi-wan-to-pel—The connection of the anal region with veneration—Chiwantopel and Ahasver, the Wandering Jew—The parallel with Chidher—Heroes generating themselves through their own mothers—Analogy with the Sun—Setting and rising sun: Mithra and Helios, Christ and Peter, Dhulqarnein and Chidher—The fish symbol—The two Dadophores: the two thieves—The mortal and immortal parts of man—The Trinity taken from phallic symbolism—Comparison of libido with phallus—Analysis of libido symbolism always leads back to the mother incest—The hero myth the myth of our own suffering unconscious—Faust.

V.—SYMBOLISM OF THE MOTHER AND OF REBIRTH               233

The crowd as symbol of mystery—The city as symbol of the mother—The motive of continuous "union"—The typical journey of the sun-hero—Examples—A longing for rebirth through the mother—The compulsion to symbolize the mother as City, Sea, Source, etc.—The city as terrible mother and as holy mother—The relation of the water-motive to rebirth—Of the tree-motive—Tree of life a mother-image—The bisexual character of trees—Such symbols to be understood psychologically, not anatomically—The incestuous desire aims at becoming a child again, not at incest—It evades incest by creating myths of symbolic rebirth—The libido spiritualized through this use of symbols—To be born of the spirit—This compulsion toward symbolism brings a release of forces bound up in incest—This process in Christianity—Christianity with its repression of the manifest sexual the negative of the ancient sexual cult—The unconscious transformation of the incest wish into religious exercise does not meet the modern need—A conscious method necessary, involving moral autonomy—Replacing belief by understanding—The history of the symbolism of trees—The rise of the idea of the terrible mother a mask of the incest wish—The myth of Osiris—Related examples—The motive of "devouring"—The Cross of