Otto Rank

“ The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most beautiful woman. ”

“ Again, the apparent contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness, through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or incompatibility with historical facts. ”

“ In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood, the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family romance is simply realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to the actual conditions. The hostility of the father, and the resulting exposure, accentuate the motive which has caused the ego to indulge in the entire fiction. ”

“ The child turns away from the father, as he now knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy time having passed away. ”

“ Now we find ourselves confronted with the obligation to harmonize these assumptions and conclusions with the other conceptions of myth formation, which they seem to directly contradict.
The myths are certainly not constructed by the hero, least of all by the child hero, but they have long been known to be the product of a people of adults. The impetus is evidently supplied by the popular amazement at the apparition of the hero, whose extraordinary life history the people can only imagine as ushered in by a wonderful infancy. ”

“ For the present let us stop at the narrow boundary line where the contents of innocent infantile imaginings, suppressed and unconscious neurotic fantasies, poetical myth structures, and certain forms of mental disease and crime lie close together, although far apart as to their causes and dynamic forces. We resist the temptation to follow one of these divergent paths which lead to altogether different realms, but which are as yet unblazed trails in the wilderness. ”

“ The latter help us not only to understand the dreams themselves, but also show their symbolism and close relationship with all psychic phenomena in general, especially with the day dreams or phantasies, with artistic creativeness, and with certain disturbances of the normal psychic function. A common share in all these productions belongs to a single psychic function, the human imagination. It is to this imaginative faculty—of humanity at large rather than individual—that the modern myth theory is obliged to concede a high rank, perhaps the first, for the ultimate origin of all myths. ”

“ When the herder hurriedly arrived, on the command of Harpagos, the latter said to him: “Astyages bids thee take this boy and expose him in the wildest mountains, that he may perish as promptly as may be, and the King has ordered me to say to thee: If thou doest not kill the boy, but let him live, in whatever way, thou art to die a most disgraceful death. And I am charged to see to it that the boy is really exposed.” When the herder had listened to this, he took the boy, went home, and arrived in his cottage. ”

“ But whereas the paranoiac, in conformity with his passive character, has to suffer persecutions and wrongs which ultimately proceed from the father, and which he endeavors to escape by putting himself in the place of the father or the emperor—the anarchist complies more faithfully with the heroic character, by promptly himself becoming the persecutor of kings, and finally killing the king, precisely like the hero. ”

“ This intimate relationship between the hero myth and the delusional structure of paranoiacs has already been definitely established through the characterization of the myth as a paranoid structure, which is here confirmed by its contents. The remarkable fact that paranoiacs will frankly reveal their entire romance has ceased to be puzzling, since the profound investigations of Freud have shown that the contents of hysterical fantasies, which can often be made conscious through analysis, are identical up to the minutest details with the complaints of persecuted paranoiacs ”

“ The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally to the front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly those who were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive their predecessors of their advantage by fables of this kind (exactly as in the intrigues of history) . Frequently they do not hesitate in crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. ”

“ Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying arise and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life. ”

“ At the same time, these myths strictly insist upon the motive of the virginity of the mother, which elsewhere is merely hinted at. The first impetus is perhaps supplied by the transcendental tendency, necessitated through the introduction of the god. At the same time, the birth from the virgin is the most abrupt repudiation of the father, the consummation of the entire myth, as illustrated by the Sargon legend, which does not admit any father, besides the vestal mother. ”

“ The maiden never reveals her love, which is not sanctioned by her brother, but she visits the king, who is wounded unto death, in his chamber, and dying he procreates Tristan, “the son of the most daring and doleful love.” Grown up as a foundling in the care of Rual and his wife, Florete, the winsome youth Tristan introduces himself to Marke in a stag hunt, as an expert huntsman, is recognized as his nephew by a ring, the king’s gift to his beloved sister, and becomes his favorite. ”

“ The father who refuses to give his daughter to any of her suitors, or who attaches certain conditions difficult of fulfillment to the winning of the daughter, does this because he really begrudges her to all others, for when all is told he wishes to possess her himself. He locks her up in some inaccessible spot, so as to safeguard her virginity (Perseus, Gilgamos, Telephos, Romulus) , and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the daughter and her offspring with insatiable hatred. ”

“ The overcoming of all these obstacles also expresses the idea that the future hero has actually overcome the greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth, for he has victoriously thwarted all attempts to prevent it. [88] Or another interpretation may be admitted, according to which the youthful hero, foreseeing his destiny to taste more than his share of the bitterness of life, deplores in pessimistic mood the inimical act which has called him to earth. ”

“ On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place the sole authority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them, i.e., the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father or mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child’s early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category to which the parents belong. ”

“ Not only the father, who is in the way of the maturing son, but also the interfering competitor, or the brother, are removed, in a naïve realization of the childish fantasies, for the simple reason that the hero does not want a family. ”

“ This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise follow one another in immediate succession. ”

“ The cyclic character of the Lohengrin saga is referred by him to the fantasy of being one’s own son, as revealed by Freud (p. 131; compare also pp. 96 and 990) . This accounts for the identity of father and son, in certain myths, the repetition of their careers; the fact that the hero is sometimes not exposed until he has reached maturity, also the intimate connection between birth and death, in the exposure-motive. (Concerning the water as the water of death, compare especially chapter IV of the Lohengrin saga.) ”

“ Under his rule occurred the great transmutation through which the rulership passed from the Medes to the Persians, through the following cause: The Medes had a law that a poor man who went to a rich man for his support, and surrendered himself to him, had to be fed and clothed and kept like a slave by the rich man, or in case the latter refused to do so, the poor man was at liberty to go elsewhere. In this way a boy by name of Kyros, a Mard by birth, came to the king’s servant who was at the head of the palace sweepers. ”

“ The exposure in the myth, therefore, is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic phantasy. The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic romance, while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child. Rescue and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the essence of the phantasy. ”

“ Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with the mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the consciousness of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression are still evident in a comparison of different myths or different versions of the same myth. For example, in the version of Herodotus, Kyros is a son of the daughter of Astyages, but according to the report of Ktesias, he makes the daughter of Astyages, whom he conquers, his wife, and kills her husband, who in the rendering of Herodotus is his father. ”

“ Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellious revolt, the myth therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his revolt against the father. This revolt had burdened him since his childhood, as he had failed to become a hero. ”

“ Animals are especially appropriate substitutes, because the sexual processes are here plainly evident also to the child, while the concealment of these processes is presumably the root of the childish revolt against the parents. The exposure in the box and in the water asexualizes the birth process, as it were, in a childlike fashion; the children are fished out of the water by the stork, [107] who takes them to the parents in a basket. The animal fable improves upon this idea, by emphasizing the similarity between human birth and animal birth. ”

“ There wilt thou find a very different father, and a very different mother than the herders, Mithradates and his wife.” Thus spake Astyages, and Kyros was sent away. When he arrived in the house of Kambyses, his parents received him with great joy when they learned who he was, for they believed him to have perished at that time, and they desired to know how he had been preserved. He told them that he had believed himself to be the son of the cattle herder, but had learned everything on the way from the companions whom Astyages had sent with him. ”

“ On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns especially the father. Usually, as in the myth of Œdipus, Paris, and others, the royal father receives a prophecy of some disaster, threatening him through the expected son; then it is the father who causes the exposure of the boy and who pursues and menaces him in all sorts of ways after his unlooked-for rescue, but finally succumbs to his son, according to the prophecy. ”

“ Nearly all authors who have hitherto been engaged upon the interpretation of the myths of the birth of heroes find therein a personification of the processes of nature, following the dominant mode of natural mythological interpretation. The new born hero is the young sun rising from the waters, first confronted by lowering clouds, but finally triumphing over all obstacles [Brodbeck, Zoroaster, Leipzig, 1893, p. 138] . The taking of all natural, chiefly the atmospheric phenomena into consideration, as was done by the first [Pg 5] representatives of this method of myth interpretation ”

“ The prototypes of the boy, who in the Kyros saga vanish into thin air after they have served their purpose, namely the exaltation of the hero’s descent, if they were to assume a vitality of their own, would come to confront the hero as competitors with equal rights, namely as his brothers. The original sequence is probably better preserved through the interpretation of the hero’s strange doubles as shadowy brothers, who like the twin brother, [Pg 88] must die for the hero’s sake. ”

“ The projection mechanism, which also bore its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well as certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed presently,—necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. ”

“ What is not often consciously remembered, but can almost invariably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from the parents, which may be designated by the term Family Romance of Neurotics. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family relations. ”

“ I have brought forth a dead child; take it and expose it, but the son of the daughter of Astyages we will raise as our own child. In this way, thou wilt not be found a disobedient servant, nor will we fare ill ourselves. ”

“ The influence of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater tendency to harbor hostile feelings against his father than his mother, with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the interpretation of the myth. ”