Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of ThoughtJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Philosophy
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Libido (Psychology); Mother and child; Psychoanalysis; Subconsciousness; Symbolism (Psychology)
Before turning to this new creation arising from introversion, there is
still a further significance of the preceding question to be considered:
whether life is dependent upon “these things”? Life may depend upon
these things in the degree that they serve _for nourishment_. We must
infer in this case that suddenly the question of nutrition came very
near the hero’s heart. (This possibility will be thoroughly proven in
what follows.) The question of nutrition, indeed, enters seriously into
consideration. First, because regression to the mother necessarily
revives that special path of transference; namely, that of nutrition
through the mother. As soon as the libido regresses to the presexual
stage, there we may expect to see the function of nutrition and its
symbols put in place of the sexual function. Thence is derived an
essential root of the displacement from below upwards (Freud), because,
in the presexual stage, the principal value belongs not to the genitals,
but to the mouth. Secondly, because the hero fasted, his hunger becomes
predominant. Fasting, as is well known, is employed to silence
sexuality; also, it expresses symbolically the resistance against
sexuality, translated into the language of the presexual stage. On the
fourth day of his fast the hero ceased to address himself to nature; he
lay exhausted, with half-closed eyes, upon his couch, sunk deep in
dreams, the picture of extreme introversion.
We have already seen that, in such circumstances, an infantile internal
equivalent for reality appears, in the place of external life and
reality. This is also the case with Hiawatha:
“And he saw a youth approaching,
Dressed in garments green and yellow,
Coming through the purple twilight,
Through the splendor of the sunset;
Plumes of green bent o’er his forehead,
And his hair was soft and golden.”
This remarkable apparition reveals himself in the following manner to
Hiawatha:
“From the Master of Life descending,
I, the friend of man, Mondamin,
Come to warn you and instruct you,
How by struggle and by labor
You shall gain what you have prayed for.
Rise up from your bed of branches;
Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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