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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    suckler—which really endeavors to remove the bodily mother entirely, by means of her substitution through an animal or a strange nurse—does not express anything beyond the fact: The woman who has suckled me is my mother. This statement is found directly symbolized in the Moses legend, the retrogressive character of which we have already studied; for precisely the woman who is his own mother is chosen to be his nurse [similarly also in the myth of Herakles, and in the Egyptian-Phenician Osiris-Adonis myth, where Osiris, encased in a chest, floats down the river to Phenicia, and is finally found under the name Adonis, by Isis, who is installed by Queen Astarte as the nurse of her own son].°^ Only a brief reference can here 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 [Zal, CEdipus, 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, with the appropriate accentuation, the hero being endowed with the same weakness which burdens the self-respect of the individual. This explanation of the psychological significance of the myth of the birth of the hero would not be complete without emphasiz- ing its relations to certain mental diseases. Also readers with- out psychiatric training—or these perhaps more than any others, must have been struck with these relations. As a matter of fact, the hero myths are equivalent in many essential features to the 83 Usener (Stoflf des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of Greek Epics, p. S3) says that the controversy between the earlier and the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered to the rank of a nurse. Thero may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.