Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/111

 MYTHOLOGY 103

in mind how great are the difficulties to be encountered, how circum- scribed and scanty are the nxeans available for the accomplish- ment of the task. Nothing but the psycho-analytic investigation of primitive relationships, opened up as it has been by Freud in "Totem and Taboo", joined with an understanding of the psychic peculiarities of the fairy-tale could make this bold attempt at all possible. According to Rank while the mytli reflects the measures of defence taken by the father against the rebellious sons, the hero-tales repre- sent the progressive stages of the development of the brother clan. This first synthetic attempt rests on the comparison of the motifs with the actual basic situations inferred as existing in primitive times. (We will not disguise the fact that the special accentuation of the respective fashioning of the tnotij in each case does not seem to us sufficient to warrant such a method of determination.)

The author thus brings us face to face with the ultimate and peculiar problems of myth-investigation; with nothing less than an exposition of the external, cultural, and the internal psychological situation out of which the forms of the fairy-tale necessarily arise Rank confines himself to carrying out this task in relation to one single though important motif namely, that of the conflict of the older with the younger generation (/wo/??/i of exposure, the imposition of a task, exile of the sons, etc.) The analysis of a number of myths shows that the myth is in general an attempt to find substitutes for the original objects (of hatred) and to subUmate the relations to them into culturally valuable acts (tlius the removal of the father is effected through the slaying of the destructive monster). On the other hand the special and characteristic form of the fairy-tale sets out to deny the tendencies which (in spite of substitutions) can still be recognised in the mj^: in fact in the fairy-tale the tendencies are often completely reversed. Many of the decisive differences between the two creations of phantasy are explained if we regard the myth as the outcome of the patriarchal time and the fairy-tale as having arisen out of the soil of the clan. In the myth the hero encounters external obstacles, in the fairy-tale the inhibitions are from within. Myth is polygamous, fairy-tale monogamous; myth is patriarchal, fairy-tale social, it is ethical while myth is non-moral. Rank considers of special importance the stress laid in the fairy- tale on material considerations and their driving force, particularly on the material difficulties of family life; from tliese the hero myth is completely aloof. This feature is both an indication of the external