Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/113

 MYTHOLOGY 105

that he is able to contribute to the "dismemberment" my^-motif (9) analysed by Rank and none of the new views and results which had been confidently expected of him. Confining ourselves to what he does give us in his article, it amounts to this, that it cannot be asserted that psychological stratification, as shown in the disguised or weakened forms of the myths, always corresponds to liistorical alterations of the myths or proves an earlier or later origin. But the time-determination of myth-formation and of its psychological levels would seem a secondary affair and in no way to be solved by analysis. Further, analysis by no means leaves out of sight, though Silberer seems to think it may, that myth-contents may undergo coarsening as well as softening as time goes on: in fact full account is taken of this in the analytic attempt to explain the mechanism of the reappearance of repressed material. Silberer's admonition to caution would be more in place if not only were one obliged to banish the idea when reading his works but if also such discretion were counted by himself the better part of valour. Meanwhile the mystical bent of his .views is unmistakable. Less marked is the influence of Jung on Lorenz whose striking con- tribution on QEdipus in Colonus (5) calls special attention to the blessings which at the end of his troubles the grey-haired hero brings to the land that harbours him and to his mythical union with the earth. MacCurdy (6) investigates the Hephaestos myth and endeavours to prove the inner connection between the imagined "Omnipotence of thought" and the idea which he discovers in the myth, of life in an abode under the earth i. e. the body of the mother.