Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series Volume 15 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...All this takes place also in the myths. They originate in the prehistoric times of the race, and have come down to us from the indefinite traditions. They contain memory rests from their childhood. Can the wish-fulfillment theory of dreams also be transferred to myths? I maintain this and formulate my view, in harmony with reud's teachings in regard to dreams, as follows: The myth is a ragment of the repressed life of the infantile psyche of the race. It contains (in disguised form) the wishes of the childhood of he race. We have already found important evidence for this view by comparing certain myths with "typical" dreams. We saw that in the CEdipus saga, as in certain dreams, the infantile sexuality found expression. From the sexual transference of the libido of the son on to the mother arose wishes which as with many others availed themselves of repression. F.Hiirafinn is nothing but a forced, systematic repression of inborn tendencies. the youth of a face, when more natural relations still prevail, when the conventions have not yet assumed rigid forms, every tendency could be realized. At a later time they were suppressed by a process which we can designate in the individual as repression. But they do not die out wholly but are retained in the myths. This process, for which I might propose the name of "jnass repression," is the reason the people no longer understand the original meaning of their myths quite as we can not understand our dreams without some explanation.25 It appears that a people whose myths are concerned with its earliest childhood express in them such wishes as they have been accustomed to repress most strongly. Let us consider the biblical description of Paradise Freud has aptly characterized...