The myth of the birth of the hero : a psychological interpretation of mythology / by Otto Rank ; authorized translation by Drs. F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe.

  • Otto Rank
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The myth of the birth of the hero : a psychological interpretation of mythology / by Otto Rank ; authorized translation by Drs. F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    general unanimity of these myths in very general traits of the human psyche, than in a primary community or in migration. This assumption appears to be more justifiable as such general movements of the human mind are also expressed in still other forms, and in other domains, where they can be demonstrated as unanimous. Concerning the character of these general movements of the human mind, the psychological study of the essential contents of these myths might help to reveal the source from which has uni- formly flowed at all times, and in all places, an identical content of the myths. Such a derivation of an essential constituent, from a common human source, has already been successfully attempted with one of these legendary motives. Freud, in his Dream In- terpretation,^^ reveals the connection of the CEdipus fable [where CEdipus is told by the oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, as he unwittingly does later on] with the two typical dreams of the father's death, and of sexual intercourse with the mother, dreams which are dreamed by many now living. Of King CEdipus he says that his fate stirs us only because it might have been our own fate; because the oracle has cursed us prior to our birth, as it did him. All of us, perhaps, were doomed to direct the first sexual emotion towards the mother, the first hatred and aggressive desire against the father; our dreams con- vince us of this truth. King CEdipus, who has murdered his father Laios, and married his mother lokaste, is merely the wish fulfilment of our childhood.^° The manifestation of the intimate relation between dream and myth,—not only in regard to the contents, but also as to the form and motor forces of this and many other, more particularly pathological psyche structures,— entirely justifies the interpretation of the myth as a dream of the masses of the people, which I have recently shown elsewhere Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill. Macmillan Co. The fable of Shakespeare's Hamlet also permits of a similar inter- pretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how mythological investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely different view points into the correlation of the mythical circle.
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