Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/47

Rh were the son of an imaginary king, and the real father recedes into the position of a sort of foster-father. Thus springs into being that very common phantasy of youth in which the boy fancies; himself to be a prince.

Among the insane we frequently meet with delusions of noble birth which take their origin in ideas of hostility against the father. The same thing is to be found in myths and fairy tales; wherein the hero is brought up by lowly parents, but later comes into those princely rights to which he was from the first entitled by the nobility of his birth. In fairy stories of this sort the age-long conflict between father and son finds expression under all sorts of disguises. Both Amenhotep and Mohammed were so placed by the circumstances of their birth that, for each to rise to a higher degree of sovereignty than his father, it was necessary to appeal to the super-human. Although Mohammed was not, like Amenhotep, the son of a king, there was nothing, humanly speaking, greater for him than bis tribe, the Coreish, at the pinnacle of whose aristocratic eminence reigned the venerable patriarch, his grandfather, Abd-ul- Muttalib. What better replacement figure of his grandfather could be found than the god of the Hebrews, of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Moses? Did not the god of the Patriarchs bear the very features of the patriarchs themselves? As a product therefore of the same type of unconscious ideas that gave rise to the adoption of Aton by Amenhotep as the god of Egypt, and of Jehovah by Moses as the god of Israel,. there sprang into being that Allah, the Creator of All, the Originator, the Sustainer, the Destroyer, the Lord, the Master, the Just, the Merciful. Among the almost endless list of appellations wherewith Allah may be åddressed it is significant to find not only that the name of "Father" finds no place, but it is forbidden to address Allah by this name. We are therefore at liberty to conclude that this omission is yet another expression of the workings of Mohammed's mind under the influence of the "Father-complex".

Furthermore, as in Aton and Jehovah were reflected the personality of Amenhotep and Moses respectively, so Allah became the reflection, magnified perhaps, of the personality of Mohammed, and from these divine prototypes which were the outcome of their creative phantasies, each was able to draw that fiery zeal and wield that tremendous power which made their careers so remarkable in the history of mankind.