Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/145

 technical difficulties, but no less into the beauty of the human mind and its endless problems. I intentionally brought into prominence the parallelism with mythology, to indicate the universally possible applications of psychoanalysis. At the same time, I should like to refer to the further importance of this position. We may see in the predominance of the mythological in the mind of a child, a distinct hint of the gradual development of the individual mind out of the collective knowledge or the collective feeling of earliest childhood, which gave rise to the old theory of a condition of perfect knowledge before and after individual existence.

In the same way we might see, in the marvellous analogy between the phantasies of dementia præcox and mythological symbolisms, a reason for the widespread superstition that an insane person is possessed of a demon, and has some divine knowledge.

With these hints, I have reached the present standpoint of investigation, and I have at least sketched those facts and working hypotheses which are characteristic for my present and future work.