Rank's theories
The following selection, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, by Otto Rank, is a good example of how scholars in a field such as psychology or anthropology make connections with studies in mythology in order to solve problems in their own fields. In this case, Rank is a psychologist and the problems involve relationships among family members.
Rank, whose work first appeared in his native Germany in 19--, was a student of Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis. And like Freud, Rank emphasized the interaction of family members and the psychological development of the individual. In short, Freud was a therapist who was greatly affected by the experiences and pathologies of his patients. His work led him to believe that a son is strongly attracted to his mother and is capable of directing substantial anger at his father for also wanting her attention (the Oedipus Complex). Rank generally agreed, but insisted that daughters as well as sons exhibit such behavior. This, he maintained, constitutes and propels the dynamic of the family and motivates the creation of the hero myth. Therefore, we might say that Rank saw myth as arising out of basic human conflicts. He saw the child's wanting the mother for itself as one of the most basic conflicts in life.
Like Freud, Rank was a clinical practitioner. As part of this profession, he studied the bahavior of his patients who were neurotics. However, Freud used the bahavior of these neurotics to explain human nature in general, while Rank preferred to consider the bahavior of normal subjects and derive from it an understanding of neurotics. His theories about family relationships developed from his actual clinical experiences with both parents and children. He found that relationships among family members change as children develop and try to reason their place in the family and the world and as they assert their independence from parents.
Rank calls this the "Family Romance": first the child idealizes its parents, but ultimately he or she is disenchanted with them. He sees that his parents are not perfect and that they are not of the high social stature he would like. He also notices that there are sexual relationships and begins to imagine his role as part of the sexual relationship of his parents. The child then resents the role his father enjoys and wishes such a relationship with his mother. And because the child notices that the parents do not live up to his expectations, he fantasizes about getting rid of them. Rank emphasizes that the child does not really want to do away with his parents, but that he enjoys imaginary scenarios which work things out to his advantage.
Illustrating the theories through myths
One of the mechanisms for coping with this dilemma is seeng oneself as an exceptional person who is unjustly treated by tyrannical older relative (usually a father), but who accomplishes great deeds and is recognized far and wide for these actions. The way that these ideas of the child are reflected in the myth is outlined in the section "Looking Back at Heroes" (p.xx).
The most important elements in the Myth of the Birth of the Hero are:
Rank has described this pattern in stories dating from 2,800 BC. Children create heroes as a way of counteracting their sense of powerlessness in the family. If, like the hero, the child can fulfill the unlikely task of defeating the powerful oppressor, then he can succeed in satisfying his individual psychic needs. For the child, who resents the power wielded by his parents, the hero is task is always overpowering the parents. And Rank points out that the great hero myths across the ages emphasize such defeats of oppressive power by the proscribed hero.
Rank says that daydreams, which rise from this activity of the imagination, contribute to mythologizing, And, although children themselves do not create great myths, as adults they contribute to the existing lore of their culture, adding to or modifying stories in ways that reflect their own experiene and feelings. In this way, the myths of a group become the illustrations of psychological situations and the embodiment of human fears and anxieties.
Rank includes us all, for he says that all humans share psycological experiences. He says we create hero myths because we unconsciously represent our infantile struggles in the adventures of the hero. We idealize ourselves through our conception of the hero, the ego.
The Interpretation of the Myths
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"The standard saga" - Rank uses the term "saga" to mean the story of the hero. Hero-Myth Format:
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1. The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following outline: the hero is the child of most distinguished parents, usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, there is a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father (or his representative). As a rule, he is surrendered to the water in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds), and is suckled by a female animal or by an humble woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion. He takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other. Finally he achieves rank and honors. |
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"something in the nature of the hero" - Rank is saying that there is always a problem in the family situation of the hero. He will explain this as the result of the child's frustrated desire for his mother. Propp (p.xx) would note that fairy tales begin as the hero leaves home. |
2. Since the normal relations of the hero toward his father and his mother regularly appear impaired in all these myths, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood-and may be noted in the modern imitations of the heroic age-that for the hero, who is exposed to envy, jealousy, and calumny to a much higher degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. |
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The story of the hero, in Rank's view, arises from the experiences and imagination of children.
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3. A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper inquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to save his family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination. The fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore, the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more handicapped mythological and artistic imagination in general. |
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"detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents"- like Freud, Rank believed that the infant at first identifies with the parents and then separates from them.
Stage I for the child: As the child meets others and compares his parents actions and abilities with others, he becomes dissatisfied.
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4. The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two generations. 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. Other parents become known to the child, who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents; and the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain ways is utilized for this attitude of the child toward the parents. |
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The child often feels rejected.
Sexual rivalry is often involved in the feelings of rejection. "The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly much less active in this respect."--Like Freud, Rank often exhibits a prejudice against women and girls, which is not supported by his facts. |
5. From the psychology of the neurosis, we have learned that very intense emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection. The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected. Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected, or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love of the parents, or at least regrets having to share this with the other children of the family. The feeling that one's own inclinations are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea-often consciously remembered from very early years-of being a stepchild, or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics very frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this fashion, usually under the influence of storybooks. 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. |
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Here Rank shifts from talking about conscious emotions to other feelings which he believes are present on the unconscious level, but still affect our development and our mythmaking. "Family romance" is Rank's term for the process of the child's early idealization of its parents and ultimate disenchantment with them. Children's daydreams express important emotions they are unaware of. |
6. These consciously remembered psychic emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the interpretation of the myth. 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, comprise a special activity of the imagination that is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of family relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty is represented by the familiar daydreams, which are continued until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these daydreams shows that they serve for the fulfillment of wishes, for the righting of life. |
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"the child's imagination is engaged upon the task of getting rid of the parents" - This does not mean that the child really wants to get rid of its parents, but he fantasizes about it. |
7. About the time in question, the child's imagination is engaged upon the task of getting rid of the parents, who are now despised and are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The child utilizes an accidental coincidence of actual happenings (meetings with the lord of the manor, with the reigning prince, with some great statesman or millionaire). Accidental occurrences of this kind arouse the child's envy, and this finds its expression in fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank. The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by this time have become conscious, depends upon the child's adroitness and also upon the material at his disposal. It is likewise a factor whether these fantasies are elaborated with more or less claim to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. |
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Stage II for the child: imagining situations rising from sexual circumstances. The child becomes aware of sexual relations and includes them in his own imaginary games. |
8. With the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and mother-with the child's realization of the fact that the father is always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain-the family romance undergoes a peculiar restriction: it is satisfied with ennobling the father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned, but accepted as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of sexual matters gives rise to the tendency to picture erotic situations and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs: In this way the primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved later understanding. |
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The child wants revenge against his parents for not living up to his fantasies. |
9. 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. |
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We have a tendency to think that children are innocent and sweet. Rank reminds us that they really love their parents, despite the games they play in their imaginations.
"the child does not actually remove his father but exalts him" - The child substitutes more exalted figures for his parents in his imaginings because he wants to return to what he sees as the vanished happy time of early childhood. In the child's view, the parents were ideals.
Freud used dream interpretation to help his patients recover. |
10. Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of the child mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such matters, should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection of the child for his parents is still preserved under their thin disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of these romantic fancies-the substitution of both parents, or of the father alone, by more exalted personages-the discovery will be made that these new and highborn parents are invested throughout with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father but exalts him. 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. 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. Thus the overvaluation of the earliest years of childhood again claims its own in these fancies. An interesting contribution to this subject is furnished by the study of dreams. Dream-interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the father and the mother. Thus the infantile overvaluation of the parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult. |
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Despite negative actions, the child still harbors his original affection for his parents. The aim of the child's hero-myth is to get rid of his parents. This arises as the child is trying to establish his independence. The hero of the myth represents the ego of the child. |
11. As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we feel justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero of the myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family romances and hero myths; keeping in mind that the myth throughout reveals an endeavor to get rid of the parents, and that the same wish arises in the fantasies of the individual child at the time when he is trying to establish his personal independence. The ego of the child behaves in this respect like the hero of the myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should always be interpreted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped with all the excellences. |
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Essentials of the hero-myth: The myth involves relations between two sets of "parents": the royal couple and the lowly couple. |
12. Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the descent from noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box, and the raising by lowly parents; followed in the further evolution of the story by the hero's return to his first parents, with or without punishment meted out to them. It is very evident that the two parent-couples of the myth correspond to the real and the imaginary parent-couple of the romantic fantasy. Closer inspection reveals the psychological identity of the humble and the noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and neurotic fantasies. |
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Noble parents in the myth correspond to the overvaluation of parents in early childhood. The myth of the hero is a dramatization of the "family romance." Exposure of the child-hero in the myth - The fantasy reverses the child's real feelings. He is angry with his father, but in his imagination he represents the father as angry with him. |
13. In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood, the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic fantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the actual conditions. Thus the fantasy 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 fictitious romance is the excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings which the child harbors against his father, and which in this fiction are projected against the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore, is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic fantasy. 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 fantasy. |
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Rank thought it was important to study both healthy people and neurotics. He did not think it was legitimate to explain the nature of human beings (as he believed he was doing) from studying only the disturbed. Exposure in the water is a symbolic expression of birth. The container represents the uterus.
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14. In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as just sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to require a special explanation. The utilization of the same material in the dreams of healthy persons and neurotics indicates that the exposure in the water signifies no more and no less than the symbolic expression of birth. The children come out of the water. The basket, box, or receptacle simply means the container, the womb; so that the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although it is represented by its opposite. |
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The "family romance" originates from the child's feeling that its parents are hostile towards it. "the future hero has actually overcome the greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth," - see the Mwindo Epic (p.xx). Mwindo's father tries to prevent his birth.
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15. The vital peril, thus concealed in the representation of birth through exposure, actually exists in the process of birth itself. 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. 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 a pessimistic mood the inimical act which has called him to earth. He accuses the parents, as it were, for having exposed him to the struggle of life, for having allowed him to be born. |
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The hero is especially hostile towards his father, because it is usually the royal father who tries to get rid of his son in order to avert a disaster prophesied as coming through the son. The hostility toward the father in the hero myths is, Rank believes, related to a tension in the family where rivalries are always present, at least in the unconscious. Rivalries between father and son, or between brothers, result from competition for the mother's attention. Rank, like Freud, thought the Oedipus story was an important one for understanding family relationships. Most myths of the birth of the hero downplay the erotic, but emphasize opposition to the father. Oedipus is the exception.
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16. On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the hostile attitude of the hero toward his parents concerns especially the father. Usually, as in the myth of Oedipus 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. Looking at the relations between parents and children, or between brothers, as these exist in reality, a certain tension is frequently, if not regularly revealed between father and son, or still more distinctly a competition between brothers. Although this tension may not be obvious and permanent, it is lurking in the sphere of the unconscious, as it were, with periodic eruptions. Erotic factors are especially apt to be involved, and as a rule the deepest, generally unconscious root of the dislike of the son for the father, or of two brothers for each other, is related to be competition for the tender devotion and love of the mother. The Oedipus myth shows plainly, only in grosser dimensions, the accuracy of this interpretation, for the parricide is here followed by the incest with the mother. This erotic relation with the mother, which predominates in other mythological cycles, is relegated to the background in the myths of the birth of the hero, while the opposition against the father is more strongly accentuated. |
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Projection: the reversal of relationship roles. The son's real-life rebellion against the father is reversed in the myth so that it is the father who is hostile to the son, not vice versa. As the child realizes his hostility towards the father, he works to justify it and projects his hostile attitude onto the father. The child/hero eventually attempts to reduce his hostility towards his father. Rank calls this "attenuation. |
17. The fact that this infantile rebellion against the father is apparently provoked in the birth myths by the hostile behavior of the father, is due to a reversal of the relation, known as projection, which is brought about by very peculiar characteristics of the myth-forming psychic activity. This process, as illustrated by the two parent-couples, provides the foundation for the myth formation, and together with the projection mechanism supplies the key to the understanding of an entire series of otherwise inexplicable configurations of the myth. As the motor power for this projection of the hero's hostile attitude onto the father, there stands revealed the wish for its justification, arising from the troublesome realization of these feelings against the father. |
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Attenuation type 1: The tyrannical figure is the grandfather.
For this part of the Cyrus myth, see p. xx. "Descent fantasy "- As the father is separated from the king figure, the hero's father is usually depicted as a lowly man.
Attenuation type 2: Both the hero and his parents are persecuted by the tyrant, which brings the hero closer to his mother and lets him become the avenger of his father. In Shakespeare's play of the same name, Hamlet's father is murdered by his uncle, who then marries the boy's mother.
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18. The displacement process that begins with the projection of the troublesome sensation is still further continued, however, and with the assistance of the mechanism of separation or dissociation, it has found a different expression of its gradual progress in very characteristic forms of the hero myth. In the original psychological setting, the father is still identical with the king, the tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this relation is manifested in those myths in which the separation of the tyrannical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but not yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the hero, usually as his grandfather, for example in the Cyrus myth with all its versions, and in the majority of all hero myths in general. In the separation of the father's part from that of the king, this type signifies the first return step of the descent fantasy toward the actual conditions, and accordingly the hero's father appears in this type mostly as a lowly man ( see Cyrus, Gilgamesh, and others). The hero thus arrives again at an approach toward his parents, the establishment of a certain kinship, which finds its expression in the fact that not only the hero himself, but also his father and his mother represent objects of the tyrant's persecution. The hero in this way acquires a more intimate connection with the mother, who is nearer to him on account of the erotic relation; while the renouncement of his hatred against the father here attains the expression of its most forcible reaction, for the hero henceforth appears, as in the Hamlet saga, not as the persecutor of his father (or grandfather) but as the avenger of the persecuted father. |
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19. Attenuation Attenuation means "making thin" or "making less harsh." The myth often "softens" the hostile message about the father by displacing it onto some other tyrannical figure. The more distant the figure is, the easier it is for the child to accept hostility from him. Attenuation is expressed by the dynamics of the two parent-couples (royal and lowly) that are found in the myth. |
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Myth complex I: The son wishes to keep his mother to himself.
Myth complex II: The father wishes to keep his daughter for himself.
The father rejects all suitors for his daughter or makes winning her unreasonably difficult. The tales by the Grimm brothers, xx and xx (pp. xx and xx) show a variant of this phenomenon. |
20. The person of the grandfather himself, who in certain sagas appears replaced by other relatives (the uncle, in the Hamlet saga), also possesses a deeper meaning. The myth complex of the incest with the mother-and the related revolt against the father-is here combined with the second great complex, which has for its contents the erotic relations between father and daughter. Under this heading belongs, besides other widely ramified groups of sagas, the story which is told in countless versions of a newborn boy, of whom it is prophesied that he is to become the son-in-law and heir of a certain ruler or potentate, and who finally does so in spite of all persecutions (exposure and so forth) on the part of the latter. The father who refuses to give his daughter to any of her suitors, or who attaches to the winning of the daughter certain conditions difficult of fulfillment, 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 (Gilgamesh, Romulus ), and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the daughter and her offspring with insatiable hatred. However, the unconscious sexual motives of his hostile attitude, which is later on avenged by his grandson, render it evident that again the hero kills in him simply the man who is trying to rob him of the love of his mother; namely, the father. |
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Attenuation type 3: The lowly father is elevated to the rank of a god. The mother of the hero is represented as a virgin. In this version of the hero myth, the child separates his mother and father entirely by eliminating all physical contact between them.
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21. Another attempt at a reversal to a more original type consists in the following theme: The return to the lowly father, which has been brought about through the separation of the father's role from that of the king, is again nullified through the lowly father's secondary elevation to the rank of a god, as in the sons of virgin mothers (Romulus, Jesus). The secondary character of this godly paternity is especially evident in those myths where the virgin who has been impregnated by divine conception later on marries a mortal, who then appears as the real father, while the god as the father represents merely the most exalted childish idea of the magnitude, power, and perfection of the father. At the same time, these myths strictly insist upon the motif 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. |
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Attenuation type 4: The royal persecutor of the myth is an enemy who has no relationship at all with the hero's family. The child's real parents are simple people who are on his side. For example, Moses' parents are devoted to him; and they put him into the water in order to preserve him. |
22. The last stage of this progressive attenuation of the hostile relation to the father is represented by that form of the myth in which the person of the royal persecutor not only appears entirely detached from that of the father, but has even lost the remotest kinship with the hero's family, which he opposes in the most hostile manner, as its enemy. Although of his original threefold character as the father, the king, and the persecutor, he retains only the part of the royal persecutor or the tyrant, the entire plan of the myth conveys the impression that nothing had been changed-as if the designation "father" had been simply replaced by the term "tyrant." This interpretation of the father as a "tyrant," which is typical of the infantile ideation, will be found later on to possess the greatest importance for the interpretation of certain abnormal constellations of this complex. |
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23. Briefly summarizing the outcome of the previous interpretation-mechanism, to make matters plainer, we find the two parent-couples to be identical, after their splitting into the personalities of the father and the tyrannical persecutor has been connected--the highborn parents are the echo, as it were, of the exaggerated notions the child originally harbored concerning his parents. The Moses legend actually shows the parents of the hero divested of all prominent attributes; they are simple people, devotedly attached to the child, and incapable of harming him. Meanwhile, the assertion of tender feelings for the child is a confirmation of bodily parentage. The amicable utilization of the exposure motif, which occurs in this type of myth, is referable to such a relationship. The child is surrendered in a basket to the water, but not with the object of killing him (as, for example, the hostile exposure of Oedipus and many other heroes), but for the purpose of saving him. The danger-fraught warning to the exalted father becomes a hopeful prophecy for the lowly father (compare, in the birth story of Jesus, the oracle for Herod and Joseph's dream) entirely corresponding to the expectations placed by most parents in the career of their offspring. |
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Myths are not created by the hero, but by adults who unconsciously represent their own infantile struggles in the adventures of the hero.
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24. 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 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. This extraordinary childhood of the hero, however, is constructed by the individual myth-makers-to whom the indefinite idea of the folk-mind must be ultimately traced-from the consciousness of their own infancy. In investing the hero with their own infantile history, they identify themselves with him, as it were, claiming to have been similar heroes in their own personality. The true hero of the romance is, therefore, the ego, which finds itself in the hero, by reverting to the time when the ego was itself a hero, through its first heroic act, i.e., the revolt against the father. The ego can only find its own heroism in the days of infancy, and it is therefore obliged to invest the hero with its own revolt, crediting him with the features which made the ego a hero. This object is achieved with infantile motives and materials, in reverting to the infantile romance and transferring it to the hero. Myths are, therefore created by adults by means of retrograde childhood fantasies, the hero being credited with the myth-maker's personal infantile history. Meanwhile, the tendency of this entire process is the excuse of the individual units of the people for their own infantile revolt against the father. |
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The adult-myth-maker aims to vindicate himself through the hero. The father's hostile behavior provides the hero with grounds for his own hostility. Rank believes that sexual rivalry of the child with the father underlies the hero myth, but the myth does not directly mention this conflict. The basket in the water symbolizes the child in the womb surrounded by amniotic fluid.
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25. Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellion, the myth therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his revolt against the father. This revolt has burdened him since his childhood, as he has failed to become a hero. He is now enabled to excuse himself by emphasizing that the father has given him grounds for his hostility. The affectionate feeling for the father is also manifested in the same fiction, as has been shown above. These myths have therefore sprung from two opposite motives, both of which are subordinate to the motive of vindication of the individual through the hero: on the one hand the motive of affection and gratitude toward the parents; and on the other hand, the motive of the revolt against the father. It is not stated outright in these myths, however, that the conflict with the father arises from the sexual rivalry for the mother, but is apparently suggested that this conflict dates back primarily to the concealment of the sexual processes (at childbirth), which in this way became an enigma for the child. This enigma finds its temporary and symbolical solution in the infantile sexual theory of the basket and the water. |
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Doubling: A multiplication of the personages in a myth in order to represent facets of the father's personality. Thus, the story may contain pairs of similar characters In the story of Cyrus, Astyages, Cyrus' grandfather, and his daughter Mandane are a couple with two doubles: the cattle herder and his wife, and Harpagos and his wife. Harpagos, like Astyages, gives up the child to a person of lesser stature. In the process, Harpagos also gives up his own son.
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26. Having thus outlined the contents of the birth myth of the hero, it still remains for us to point out certain complications within the birth myth itself: "splits" of the personality of the royal father and persecutor. In some myths, however, and especially in the fairy tales that belong to this group, the multiplication of mythical personages--and with them, of course, the multiplication of motifs, or even of entire stories-are carried so far that sometimes the original features are altogether overgrown by these addenda. The multiplication is so variegated and so exuberantly developed that the mechanism of the analysis no longer does it justice. Moreover, the new personalities here do not show the same independence, as it were, as the new personalities created by splitting, but they either present the characteristics of a copy, a duplicate, or a "double," which is the proper mythological term. An apparently very complicated example, namely, Herodotus' version of the Cyrus saga, illustrates that there doubles are not inserted purely for ornamentation, or to give a semblance of historical veracity, but that they are insolubly connected with myth formation and its tendency. Also, in the Cyrus legend, as in the other myths, a confrontation occurs. The royal grandfather, Astyages, and his daughter, with her husband, are confronted by the cattle herder and his wife. A checkered gathering of other personalities which move around them, are readily grouped at sight: Between the highborn parent-couple and their child stand the administrator Harpagos with his wife and his son, and the noble Artembares with his legitimate offspring. |
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27. Our trained sense for the peculiarities of myth structure recognizes at once the doubles of the parents in the intermediate parent-couples and all the participants are seen to be identical personalities of the parents and their child, this interpretation being suggested by certain features of the myth itself. Harpagos receives the child from the king, to expose it; he therefore acts precisely like the royal father and remains true to his fictitious paternal part in his reluctance to kill the child himself-because it is related to him-but he delivers it instead to the herder Mithradates, who is thus again identified with Harpagos. The noble Artembares, whose son Cyrus causes to be whipped, is also identified with Harpagos; for when Artembares with his whipped boy stands before the king, to demand retribution, Harpagos at once is likewise seen standing before the king, to defend himself, and he also is obliged to present his son to the king. Thus Artembares himself plays an episodal part as the hero's father, and this is fully confirmed by the Ctesian version, which tells us that the nobleman who adopted the herder's son, Cyrus, as his own son, was named Artembares. |
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Harpagos' son and Cyrus are also doubles: one dies and the other lives. For this part of the Cyrus myth, see p. xx..
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28. Even more distinct than the identity of the different fathers is that of their children, which of course serves to confirm the identity of the fathers. In the first place, and this would seem to be conclusive, the children are all of the same age-not only the son of the princess, and the child of the herder, who are born at the same time, but Herodotus specially emphasizes that Cyrus played the game of "Kings" (in which he caused the son of Artembares to be whipped) with boys of the same age as Cyrus. He also points out, perhaps intentionally, that the son of Harpagos, destined to become the playmate of Cyrus, whom the king had recognized, was likewise apparently of the same age as Cyrus. Furthermore, the remains of this boy are placed before his father, Harpagos, in a basket; it was also a basket in which the newborn Cyrus was to have been exposed, and this actually happened to his substitute, the herder's son. Cyrus is actually exchanged with the living child of the herders; but this paradoxical parental feeling is reconciled by the consciousness that in reality nothing at all has been altered by this exchange. It appears more intelligible, of course, that the herder's wife should wish to raise the living child of the king, instead of her own stillborn boy, as in the Herodotus version; but here the identity of the boys is again evident, for just as the herder's son suffered death instead of Cyrus in the past, twelve years later the son of Harpagos (also in a basket) is killed directly for Cyrus, whom Harpagos had allowed to live. |
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29. The impression is thereby conveyed that all the multiplications of Cyrus, after having been created for a certain purpose, are again removed, as disturbing elements, once this purpose has been fulfilled. This purpose is undoubtedly the exalting tendency that is inherent in the family romance. The hero, in the various duplications of himself and his parents, ascends the social scale from the herder Mithradates, by way of the noble Artembares (who is high in the king's favor), and of the first administrator, Harpagos (who is personally related to the king)-until he has himself become a prince; so his career is shown in the Ctesian version, where Cyrus advances from the herder's son to the king's administrator. In this way, he constantly removes, as it were, the last traces of his ascent, the lower Cyrus being discarded after absolving the different stages of his career. |
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30. The Cyrus myth, although very complex, can be reduced to the most basic elements: the hero and his parents. This complicated myth with its promiscuous array of personages is thus simplified and reduced to three actors-the hero and his parents. Entirely similar conditions prevail in regard to the "cast" of many other myths. For example, the duplication may concern the daughter, as in the Moses myth, in which the princess-mother (in order to establish the identity of the two families) appears among the poor people as the daughter Miriam, who is merely a split of the mother, the latter appearing divided into the princess and the poor woman. In case the duplication concerns the father, his doubles appear as a rule in the part of relatives, more particularly as his brothers, as for example in the Hamlet saga, in distinction from the foreign personages created by the analysis. In a similar way, the grandfather, who is taking the place of the father, may also appear complemented by a brother, who is the hero's granduncle, and as such his opponent, as in the myths of Romulus, Perseus, and others. |
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"the hero does not want a family" - This may be the basis for the sexual renunciation Jewett and Lawrence find an important element of many myths. (See p.xx.)
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31. The duplication of the fathers (or the grandfathers) by a brother may be continued in the next generation, and concern the hero himself, thus leading to the brother myths, which can only be hinted at in connection with the present theme. The prototypes of the boy (who in the Cyrus saga vanish into thin air after they have served their purpose, 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, must die for the hero's sake. Not only the father (who is in the way of the maturing son) is removed, but also the interfering competitor (the brother), in a naive realization of the childish fantasies, for the simple reason that the hero does not want a family. |
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The lowly mother is often represented by a helpful animal. who suckles and cares for the infant-hero. |
32. But there is another conspicuous motif: the lowly mother is so often represented by an animal. This motif of the helpful animals belongs in part to a series of foreign elements, the explanation of which would far exceed the scope of this essay. |
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[She-wolf picture here?]
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33. The animal motif may be fitted into the sequence of our interpretation, on the basis of the following reflections. Much as the projection onto the father justifies the hostile attitude on the part of the son, so the lowering of the mother into an animal is likewise meant to vindicate the ingratitude of the son who denies her. As the persecuting king is detached from the father, so the exclusive role of wet nurse assigned to the mother-in this substitution by an animal - goes back to the separation of the mother into the parts of the child-bearer and the suckler. This cleavage is again subservient to the exalting tendency, in so far as the childbearing part is reserved for the highborn mother, whereas the lowly woman, who cannot be eradicated from the early history, must content herself with the function of nurse. 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, 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. |
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Rank's interpretation here explains why the story of children being brought by storks is so widespread. "playing the fool" - trickster tales explain this motif differently. The hero may appear as the buffoon, but not because of weakness. See p.xx for a discussion of liminality. |
34. Only a brief reference can be made to other motives which seem to be more loosely related to the entire myth. Such motives include that of playing the fool, which is suggested in animal fables as the universal childish attitude towards the grown ups; furthermore, the physical defects of certain heroes [Oedipus, Hephaistos], which are perhaps meant to serve for the vindication of individual imperfections, in such a way that the reproaches of the father for possible defects or shortcomings are incorporated in the myth, the hero being endowed with the same weakness which burdens the self-respect of the individual. |
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For the most part, Rank is interested in the myths and fantasies of normal or healthy people. Here, however, he uses his theory to explain the behavior of deviant personality types also.
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35. The egotistical character of the entire system is distinctly revealed by the paranoiac, for whom the exaltation of the parents, as brought about by him, is merely the means for his own exaltation. As a rule the pivot for his entire system is simply the culmination of the family romance, in the apodictic statement: I am the emperor (or god). Reasoning in the symbolism of dreams and myths-which is also the symbolism of all fancies, including the "morbid" power of imagination -all he accomplishes thereby is to put himself in the place of the father, just as the hero terminates his revolt against the father. This can be done in both instances, because the conflict with the father-which dates back to the concealment of the sexual processes, as suggested by the latest discoveries-is nullified at the instant when the grown boy himself becomes a father. |