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

 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*