The Origin of the Scientific and Heroic Urge (The Guilt of

Prometheus)
Anton Ehrenzweig
In a paper on the 'Unconscious Form-Creation in Art'1 I tried to show that the æsthetic feeling in our vision
served a dynamic function; it counteracted the intense sexual ('pan-genital') significance with which our
unconscious mind equips any seen form. I suggested that the pan-genital mode of our depth vision perpetuated
an archaic crisis of the voyeur libido. When mankind rose to an erect gait the female genitals and with them the
sole object of the male voyeur libido vanished from sight. The frustrated voyeur libido reverted to a less
differentiated stage and endowed any visual object with a genital significance. Mankind acquired the ability of
experiencing æsthetic feelings in order to overcome this sexual crisis. Freud, too, thinks that æsthetic feelings
derive from the sexual voyeur libido, and marvels that only non-genital parts of the body produce marked
æsthetic effects while the genitals could hardly be called beautiful. But the æsthetic feeling arose to destroy the
excess voyeur excitation of non-genital body parts or objects by transmuting it into beauty. Only the genitals
retained the maximum voyeur excitation. Our archaic unconscious mind still treats all visual objects as genital
objects. In the visual arts the archaic pan-genital urge rises nearer to the surface and has to be overcome by the
enhanced æsthetic graces of art. The artist projects order and beauty into the external world precisely because his
unconscious vision tends to dissolve all differentiation and order into the chaos of the pan-genital vision.
In the fourth part of my paper I tried to show that the scientist also projects order into the external world. It
is the order of causal necessity and compulsion, that is to say, the scientist projects an internal compulsion by
guilt on to the external compulsion by causality. According to Kelsen the modern myth of causality is a remnant
of a primitive world explanation by guilt. The primitive is only interested in disasters and explains them as
retribution for guilt. The rise of European science was preceded by a wave of intense guilt and anxiety feelings
which expressed themselves in the prosecution of heretics and witches. This search for guilt as the cause of
disaster was already the first step towards our modern scientific curiosity. In the early Middle Ages all interest in
exploring the secrets of the external world had ceased. When the new curiosity awakened as the precursor of the
modern scientific quest it assumed a very primitive form. We said that the primitive mind was only interested in
disasters and explained them by guilt. The newly awakened mediæval curiosity again turned to disaster and guilt,
but not to the guilt of the person on whom disaster had fallen as a divine retribution; the mediæval scientist and
witch hunter blamed the Witch and the Devil, while mediæval myth formation blamed the hereditary sin
committed in Paradise on 'the Witch and the Devil'. The tempting serpent, promising forbidden knowledge, was
held to be the Devil himself; so the first guilty knowledge of Good and Evil was ascribed to the guilt of the
'Witch and the Devil'. Is it coincidence that the first mediæval curiosity strove for knowledge of guilt committed
by the 'Witch and the Devil'?
I suggested that the scientific world explanation either by guilt or by a compelling causality externalizes an
internal compulsion by guilt feelings from which the scientist tries to escape. The externalization of guilt feelings
is a familiar psychological process. All too easily are we inclined to blame others for our own sins, the
schizophrenic even projecting the voice of his own conscience into the external world where he hears it as
hallucinated voices of reproach and warning. It could be that some archaic guilt feeling surged up in the Middle
Ages and forced the learned witch hunters to
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1 Brit. J. Med. Psychol., 1948, 21, i and ii; 1949, 22, iii and iv.
project it on to the figures of 'the Witch and the Devil' as the hereditary sin from Paradise and the blasphemies of
the Black Mass.
The hereditary sin in Paradise which was the price of the first guilty knowledge was to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Such oral origin of the scientific guilt feeling was only to be expected considering
the close relationship which we found to exist between the creative processes of art and of science. We found
that the æsthetic process of art rested on the archaic pan-genital voyeurism. Now the voyeur libido has also an
oral source. The pleasure of seeing a loved object derives from the infantile pleasure of devouring. According to
the psycho-analytical theory the child overcomes his destructive oral urge to devour a loved object by learning to
content himself with the mere enjoyment of its sight. We still 'devour' a loved person with our eyes. (More
obscure is the origin of exhibitionism from a wish 'to be devoured' by the loved person. This self-destructive
unconscious meaning of exhibitionism will, however, become very important for our discussion.) At a later stage
of the infantile development the oral voyeur libido is absorbed into the genital libido and becomes concentrated
in the genitals so that the sight of these arouses the maximum voyeur excitation.
It may be that the severe frustration of the genital voyeur libido during the pan-genital crisis of sexuality
undid both these developments. It appears that the genitally differentiated voyeur libido reverted not only into an
undifferentiated pan-genital voyeurism (which endowed all visual forms with genital significance), but also into
the oral aggression of physically devouring a loved object. The frustration of the pan-genital crisis made man
and woman attack each other in the name of love, a horrible picture indeed. We shudder as we recognize the
apple which Eve offered to Adam for devouring; we understand which fruit it was which Eve broke from the tree
growing 'in the centre' of the garden. In the Walpurgis Night (Black Mass) in Goethe's Faust we find two dream
interpretations which conform with the suggested fruit and tree symbolism. Faust tells a young witch about a
'beautiful' dream. He dreamt of an apple tree bearing two beautiful apples which aroused his desire. The young
witch interprets the dream as a desire for the fruit which Adam had already coveted in Paradise and feels
gratified that her garden also contains such apples. Mephistopheles adds the castration symbolism of the tree by
narrating an 'ugly' dream of a tree in which he saw a big hole in a cleft tree (gespaltner Baum). The hole had
certain repelling qualities, nevertheless he liked it. The witch promptly interprets the dream in a sexual sense.
The symbol of a cleft tree attracting the Devil has a definite castration symbolism. The Devil and other demons
in fairy tales are apt to get caught in cleft trees, bags, bottles and similar vagina symbols. The tree in Paradise
which Eve despoils represents Adam's genitals. The Devil serpent who tempts Eve into her crime is a phallic
symbol too; his punishment clearly expresses the castration symbolism—Eve will crush his head.
The primeval guilt of the 'Witch and the Devil' was re-enacted in the ritual of the Black Mass and frequently
culminated in an oral tribute by the witches to the Devil, whom they kissed under his tail. This anal kiss again
symbolizes oral castration, and the Devil retaliates by sucking the witches' blood. The marks on the witches'
bodies where the Devil was supposed to have sucked their blood were considered the most reliable proof of their
guilt. In many other respects the learned witch hunters showed great circumspection and deliberation. Their
uncritical acceptance of the marks produced by the Devil's vampyrism as infallible proof makes somewhat
strange reading. The particular irrationality and strength of the belief points to its strong unconscious motivation.
The thorough and indecent search for the hidden marks may re-enact the primeval crisis of the voyeur libido
when the frustrated voyeur urge frantically searched for the vanished genitals in any part of the female body. The
pre-scientific curiosity of the witch hunters would satisfy also the pan-genital voyeurism which we found
underlying the æsthetic form process of art. This most archaic and irrational form of pre-scientific curiosity
pointed to the common origin of the scientific and artistic urge in an oral-sadistic voyeurism.
The first knowledge gained by Adam and Eve from the oral crime of devouring breast and genitals is also closely
related to voyeurism and its counterpart, exhibitionism; the first result of this crime was recognition of their
nakedness and the feeling of shame. Freud, too, connects the origin of the shame-feeling with a primeval sexual
crisis following the adoption of an erect gait by humanity. While the female genitals vanished from sight, the
male genitals became fully exposed. Freud thinks that the feeling of shame arose to protect the now exposed
male genitals. If our previous conclusions are right we are in a position to name this danger. Shame is opposed to
exhibitionism, i.e. to the pleasure taken in being seen. In the primeval crisis of the voyeur libido the wish to be
seen by the loved partner constituted a very considerable danger. The exhibition not only aroused the voyeur
libido but also the more primitive urge to devour the loved object in those terrible acts of oral aggression which
are symbolized by the hereditary sin committed in Paradise. It makes sense of the fact that the oral aggression
against breasts and genitals produced the first recognition of being naked and unprotected, and aroused the
mercy of God who presented the first garments to the sinners.
Language reveals the original meaning of exhibitionism as a wish 'to be devoured' by the loved partner.
American salesman's slang does not tire of extolling the virtues of successful exhibitionism in offering wares or
services and speaks of a sales talk 'going down well', or of a successful applicant for employment who is 'lapped
up' by an eager employer. The pleasure in being devoured could not be more clearly expressed. Adam had to
protect himself not so much from the oral aggression of the woman, as from his own self-destructive
exhibitionism, which literally invited his own castration. It was the phallic serpent himself who tempted Eve into
her oral aggression against the tree growing in the centre of the garden. He represented Adam as pars pro toto
and he was to be punished by the crushing of his head. Shame developed to inhibit the self-destructive wish 'to
be devoured' underlying exhibitionism. We already mentioned that while the oral-sadistic origin of the voyeur
libido was readily acknowledged the self-destructive tendency of exhibitionism as an oral wish 'to be devoured
by the eyes' was not so recognized. The concept of a self-destructive wish in itself has only slowly penetrated
into psycho-analytical thought. Freud, in the later years of his life, arrived at the growing conviction that the
primary direction of the aggressive urge was inwards and tended to destroy the self, and opposed this primary
self-destructive urge as Thanatos urge to the sexual urges of Eros. Considering the hesitation and doubt which
first met Freud's concept of the Thanatos urge, one can understand the unwillingness to acknowledge a self-
destructive tendency in specific cases such as exhibitionism. Yet an abstract concept like Freud's Thanatos urge
will prove its usefulness only if it can be applied to concrete examples.
Ferenczi thought2 that the tendency towards autotomy, i.e. the animal's tendency to drop or to sever a part of
the body which has become overloaded with pain or tension was a basic tendency of life. Autotomy would thus
be a direct expression of the basic Thanatos urge and would help us to understand why the original self-
destructive tendency of exhibitionism broke through during the pan-genital crisis. Then the frustration of the
voyeur libido would bring into play the urge towards autotomy as a wish to sever the male genitals which had
become overloaded with undischargeable tension. The pan-genital search for the female genitals equated the
woman's mouth with the vanished genitals. (The mouth—which women like to pain red—still possesses an
intense genital significance—vagina dentata.) The male's wish for oral castration satisfied not only the self-
destructive urge for severing a painful part of the body, but also the genital urge which was now directed to the
woman's mouth.
In the revolting picture of man and woman devouring each other in the name of love we must not overlook
the Thanatos urge for autotomy which made the sick male yearn for his own destruction, though this self-
destructive component in the oral wish is deeply repressed. In the tale of Paradise Adam seems curiously
passive. The part he really plays is taken over by the phallic serpent who tempts Eve into her crime. Since then
man never tires of accusing the woman and the devil of active aggression in order to hide his own self-
destructive impulses. We shall see that the Middle Ages had to create the many myths of the 'Witch and the
Devil' who threatened external aggression in order to repress the rising self-destructive wishes that had been
slumbering since the Fall of Man (the 'hereditary' sin).
The guilt feelings attaching to the hereditary sin of self-destruction may be interpreted as a direct
satisfaction of the wish for oral self-destruction. Melanie Klein has pointed out that language speaks of 'gnawing'
remorse
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2 Ferenczi, S., 1924, 'Versuch einer Genitaltheorie, ' p. 39 (Int. Psycho-Anal. Verlag.).
(Gewissensbisse; the word 'remorse' also means 'bite'). She thinks that early aggressive wishes connected with
sucking and devouring are turned inwards by the super-ego which so carries its oral aggression of gnawing
remorse against the ego. Unlike Freud, who thought that the super-ego and its ability of arousing guilt feelings
dated only from the Oedipus situation (experienced in about the fifth year of life), Melanie Klein traces the
origin of the child's guilt feelings back into the early oral stage of the first year of life when the child develops
his oral aggression of sucking and devouring. These oral guilt feelings might have a more simple origin than the
later guilt feelings of the Oedipus stage. Melanie Klein has assumed that the very young infant suffers from
strong self-destructive Thanatos tendencies. Could it not be that the oral guilt feelings which have their source in
the early oral phantasies of devouring are a direct transmutation of the oral self-destructive tendencies underlying
those early phantasies? Instead of suffering or wishing physical mutilation, the ego submits to the less dangerous
mental attacks by the 'gnawing' super-ego. When, according to Melanie Klein, the infant harbours in his mind
phantasies of devoured genitals and breasts, these phantasies would revive the inherited memory of the primeval
oral crimes (of the 'hereditary' sin in Paradise) which are based on the self-destructive tendencies of Thanatos
and had to be transmuted, by guilt feelings, into mental aggression so as to save mankind from extinction.
That both shame and guilt feelings serve to inhibit oral self-aggression makes sense. While shame inhibits
the sexual component of the wish to be devoured (exhibitionism), the guilt feelings would neutralize the physical
self-aggression by lifting it on to a mental plane. Instead of suffering the severing of a physical part of the body,
the ego itself splits and equips the split-off part (as the future super-ego) with the oral aggression of gnawing
remorse for which it longs.
A common origin of shame and guilt feelings arising from the same oral self-aggression accounts for the
difficulty which we may experience in keeping feelings of shame and of guilt apart. When, through no fault of
our own, we are put to shame, we may feel not only ashamed but inexplicably guilty. Mediæval punishments
often tried to work on the feelings of shame, thus showing remarkable psychological intuition. The criminal may
lack the ability to experience guilt feelings, but he will learn to feel something very similar when he is exposed
to shame in the stocks or on the pillory. The stocks would catch the legs, the pillory the neck. This catching or
trapping of head and limbs would be apt to arouse unconscious fears of castration which, as we thought, gave
rise to the shame feelings. The symbolic castration by the trapping of limbs cannot fail to sharpen the conscious
shame feeling whose function is to counteract the wish for castration.3 Modern anthropology suggests that some
non-European civilizations can get along without a concept of guilt. There the feeling of shame acts as a stopgap.
'Losing face' might produce, through feelings of shame, the inhibiting effect as it is produced in Western
civilization by feelings of guilt.
The current theory explains guilt feelings as derived from outward aggression which is inhibited by the
super-ego and then turned inward against the ego in form of guilt feelings. This interpretation fits only the guilt
feelings attaching to aggression against the external world, but it cannot explain, or does so insufficiently, guilt
feelings attaching to aggression against the ego. The intense and not wholly explained guilt feelings attaching to
male masturbation can be understood when we realize that the act of masturbation represents a residue of
physical self-aggression. Hence it calls forth in full virulence the process of super-ego formation which once
turned physical self-aggression into mental self-aggression. Though we may feel tormented by guilt feelings we,
at the same time, satisfy the forbidden self-destructive wish which is only lifted on to a mental plane where it can
no longer lead to physical self-destruction.
The avenging Erynies of Greek mythology personify not only the tormenting guilt feelings but also the
underlying wish for self-destruction, hunting the guilty man down and driving him to madness (i.e. madness
caused by the mental anguish of guilt feelings). According to Pausanias, Orestes recovers from his madness by
resorting to physical self-aggression—he bites off one of his fingers. This means that symbolically
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3It would not be surprising if the psycho-analysis of agoraphobia would yield an unconscious anxiety and fear of castrationa
part from the more superficial exhibitionism typical of this neurosis.
he inflicts on himself oral castration and so commits, according to our view, precisely that type of physical self-
aggression which the 'gnawing' guilt feelings have turned into mental anguish. (Similarly the guilty Oedipus
blinds himself. Should this symbolic self-castration be the reason why the merciless Erynies disdain to pursue
him?)
If the Erynies represent the fear and wish for oral castration we cannot wonder that according to Hesiod they
owe their origin to an act of 'oral' castration inflicted on Uranus, the All-Father, as a punishment for the wrong he
did to his wife, the All-Mother Gaea. She instigates her son Cronus to castrate his father during the matrimonial
intercourse. Though she herself does not perpetrate the deed, it becomes clear from the weapon which she gives
to her son that it is really she herself or rather, her genitals, who inflict the castration. The weapon is the famous
'jagged' sickle which Cronus holds in his hand; it represents the vagina dentata which bites off the husband's
genitals during intercourse. (This explains why Cronus commits the deed during his parents' intercourse.)
Cronus, in revenging his mother, represents her. In the same way the Erynies in revenging crimes committed by
sons against the mothers represent the offended mothers. The Erynies, too, like to inflict castration as a
punishment in the name of the offended mother. We shall see and have seen already in some instances that self-
destructive wishes are, for preference, disguised as punishment. Thus the most obnoxious element is repressed;
the man yearning for his own destruction is represented as the unwilling victim of external aggression. (It will
have to be considered whether the institution of punishment, which is the basis of ordered human society, has not
for its main purpose the turning of self-destructive wishes into external aggression, just as the ego neutralized
self-destructive wishes by splitting off the super-ego which then carries the aggression against the ego from
outside. The institution of capital punishment merges into the institution of human sacrifice as we go back in the
history of civilization. While the criminal is condemned to die against his will, in human sacrifice only the
highest born enjoyed the privilege of being chosen as sacrificial victims. Frazer in The Golden Bough describes
customs in which kings consented to be killed as human sacrifices, customs which fell into disuse as soon as,
with the progress of civilization, the kings began to object to their deaths. But the institution survived in popular
customs where ill-formed and base individuals were subjected to contemptuous treatment. According to Gilbert
Murray the ill-formed and ill-treated Thersites was originally a human sacrifice. Later when Greek humanism
put an end to such barbarism, Thersites became debased into that ridiculous figure whom we find in the present
version of the Iliad. This transformation of a noble self-sacrifice into ill-treatment or ignoble punishment
represses the essential element of voluntary self-destruction, an element still clear in the more archaic institution
of human sacrifice for which only kings and princes were eligible.)
Cronus, who inflicts castration as a 'punishment' on behalf of his mother, and the Erynies who liked to
'punish' crimes committed by sons against their mothers, in reality fulfil the most repressed wish of their victims,
namely the wish to be orally castrated during sexual intercourse which is disguised as a 'punishment' inflicted
against their will. The dreadful countenance of the Erynies should not blind us to the fact that they symbolize,
like the nightmares of an anxiety dream, a deeply repressed wish.
The unending chain of crime and punishment, so characteristic of Greek thought, perpetuates the crime of
Uranus in his progeny.4 Cronus who helps Uranus to suffer oral castration by the jagged sickle (vagina dentata)
devours his own children. This crime, owing to the unconscious identity of children and male genitals, can be
taken to symbolize also oral castration. His son Zeus commits the same oral crime by devouring his wife Metis
when she becomes pregnant with Pallas Athene. True to the symbolic meaning of the devouring as oral self-
castration, Zeus now plays the part of the pregnant woman himself. Athene is born from his head after
Hephaestus, the God of Fire, has split his head with an axe. The splitting of the head
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4 The overthrow of Uranus by his son Cronus, and Cronus' dispossession by his own son, are also interpreted as the Oedipus
crime of the son against the father. But one interpretation does not necessarily preclude others. In our discussion of Freud's
analysis of a Devil Neurosis, we shall try to show that the Oedipus wishes directed towards the Phallic Father might cover
more deeply repressed wishes directed towards the Devouring Mother.
as a consequence of the guilty act of devouring is only another symbolization of castration. We shall see that the
midwifery of Hephaestus again emphasizes the castration symbolism. (See about the very definite oral castration
symbolism attaching to all Gods of Fire further below.)
Pallas Athene, conceived and born by symbolic acts of castration bears the strongest castration symbol, the
severed serpent covered head of the Medusa, on her Aegis shield. The genius of Athens changed the War
Maiden Athene into the peaceful Patroness of art and science; even the dreadful Erynies were revered at Athens
as benevolent deities and the unhappy Oedipus found rest in their sanctuary there. This transformation shows the
alternative method for neutralizing the self-destructive oral castration wish. Instead of transforming it into the
gnawing feelings of guilt, personified by the dreadful Erynies, the cultural process of science, personified by
Athene as Patroness of science, projects the internal compulsion and guilt into the compelling laws of nature, to
be explored in the scientific quest for knowledge and for truth.
Knowledge is often bought at the price of accepting castration. In mythology we meet with an unending
procession of blind or incapacitated seers. Tiresias, the greatest among them, was 'punished' by Pallas Athene
herself with blindness. Hephaestus, who among the Gods possesses the gift of prophecy, is lame. The Nordic
God Odin acquires knowledge by voluntarily sacrificing one eye. We shall recognize that the scientist
unconsciously connives in his castration. He can so identify himself with the Devouring Mother (the oral-sadistic
woman who is unconsciously equated with a castrated man) and assimilates her oral sadism. This feminine oral
sadism is then sublimated into the scientific curiosity and thirst for knowledge.
We owe the most overt myth telling of knowledge acquired through submitting to castration by the 'Witch'
to Richard Wagner's treatment of the Parsifal myth. One could object to the use as evidence of a very free
poetical elaboration of a mediæval myth. But much of what to-day goes for an authentic Greek myth is the work
of the great Athenian dramatists who often added the most significant myth elements. Wagner's treatment of the
Parsifal myth is most persistent in its symbolism of which the author was, of course, quite unconscious.
Wagner contrasts the ignorant but pure fool Parsifal to the cunning devil figure of Klingsor. It is quite
openly stated that Klingsor owes his magic knowledge to voluntary castration. Kundry jeers at his master's
enforced chastity. The 'devil' Klingsor uses the 'witch' Kundry to inflict castration on the heroic knights of the
Grail. Amfortas loses the holy spear in Kundry's sinful embrace. To make the castration symbolism of the spear's
loss even clearer he receives an 'incurable' wound in his side. His redeemer is Parsifal, the 'pure fool' who does
not share the forbidden desire and oral curiosity of the devil Klingsor. So Parsifal remains silent in view of the
miracle of the Holy Grail and is expelled from the Grail community because of his lack of sympathy for
Amfortas' sufferings. But Amfortas' cure is possible only by the redemption of the lost spear, i.e. by the
restitution of his lost manhood. Parsifal regains the spear or rather retains his own manhood by refusing the
dangerous intercourse with the witch Kundry. The danger threatening from this intercourse is expressed in the
scene of their meeting. Kundry approaches her chosen victim as the messenger of his dead mother Herzeleide
and promises him that he would enjoy his mother's love in her kiss. Parsifal's mother had kept him in perpetual
childhood and ignorance. Kundry, in order to rouse Parsifal's desire, reminds him of his mother's passionate
embraces and asks him whether he did not fear the vehemence of her kisses. But as Parsifal once attained his
manhood by escaping from his mother's possessive love, he now saves his manhood by rejecting Kundry who
offers herself as his mother-lover. As Kundry kisses him in his mother's name he suddenly feels Amfortas'
wound burn in his own side and guesses, as it were, the terrible injury which Kundry's laughing mouth once
inflicted on the guilty Amfortas. Kundry seduces by her laughing. She once met Christ on his way to Golgatha
and laughed at his sight. When she embraces Amfortas she must laugh again and 'a sinner falls at her bosom'.5 It
seems strange that laughter during intercourse should be sinful. But could not the laughing mouth of the witch,
distorted into compulsive laughter, symbolize the tempting mouth of the
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5 Margaret H. Glyn's translation in the Klindworth edition of Parsifal.

'Devouring Mother' which inflicts oral castration?
The much discussed mysterious lure of the Giaconda's smile might also rest on its oral-sadistic threat or
promise of oral castration. Freud explains Leonardo da Vinci's unquenchable thirst for knowledge from an early
mother fixation. Leonardo's mother was abandoned by her high-born lover and probably overwhelmed her child
with love. Freud deals with a childhood memory reported by Leonardo according to which a bird descended on
the child and beat his mouth, and he interprets this alleged memory as a phantasy of castration. The excessive
love of Leonardo's lonely mother must have intensified the child's oral wishes and fears. One cannot help being
reminded of Kundry's question whether the child Parsifal felt frightened under his widowed mother's passionate
kisses.
Freud explains the mystery of the Giaconda smile as the blissful smile of the satisfied breast-fed infant,
connects it therefore again with Leonardo's fixation to the oral stage of the libido. But is the smile not also the
projection of the child's fear and unconscious wish for oral castration which underlie the phantasy of the bird
descending on Leonardo's mouth? Not without reason the mysterious smile of a woman is called 'sphinx-like'.
The Sphinx asked her victims questions and devoured them if they could not answer them. Both the Sphinx's
curiosity and cannibalism make her the supreme symbol of feminine oral sadism. Leonardo accepted the oral
aggression of his mother and so connived in his castration; he became the greatest scientific mind among the
painters. Parsifal, in resisting the mother-lover's laughing mouth, retained not only his manhood, but also his
foolish ignorance. (The anxiety aroused by the question-asking woman is the subject of another myth of the Holy
Grail. Lohengrin flees from his 'pure' wife Elsa because she cannot restrain her oral curiosity.)
The mystery of the sphinx-like smile of the woman is a sham mystery. The scientist accepts his castration
and by identifying himself with his oral-sadistic mother sublimates her oral aggression into his own scientific
curiosity. The first object of his newly awakened curiosity is the Sphinx, i.e. the Devouring Mother herself. Her
smile, threatening and promising oral castration becomes the mystery which he never tires of exploring, but
never dares to understand. The sham mysteries of the Holy Grail and of many other secret (and therefore
exhibitionistic) male societies and their esoteric messages promising salvation and purification from guilt may be
the precipitates of the same guilty oral curiosity.
In Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra a horrible act of symbolic oral castration leads to explosive laughter.
Zarathustra finds a young shepherd in agony, for a serpent has crept into his mouth. The prophet grips the
serpent's tail and tells the shepherd to bite the serpent's head off. The shepherd follows the advice. And after
biting off the serpent's head he breaks into laughter as no man has ever laughed before. The connection between
laughing (smiling) and oral-sadistic castration could not be more strongly expressed. The laughing mouth means
two things: See, I am castrated myself; I am a woman (vagina dentata). I am willing to castrate you too.6
Wagner's Parsifal myth contains in a concise and scarcely veiled manner the oral guilt underlying the
scientific urge which we already extracted from the tale of Paradise and the witch belief. The Parsifal myth is
only another version of the eternal theme of mediæval thought which we called the motif of 'the Witch and the
Devil'. Klingsor, like the Devil, has submitted to oral castration by the Witch. The growing fear of witches in the
Middle Ages has to be interpreted as the rising memory of the primeval oral guilt. Then, too, the belief in the
Devil took shape and his countenance with his gaping mouth grinned from every Gothic pinnacle. The devouring
mouth of hell is depicted in sculpture and painting. As Rank pointed out, the Devil was first a female figure—a
super witch, as it were, who threatened oral aggression and only later changed into the male Devil. This
transformation was not so difficult because the unconscious mind does not distinguish a castrated man from a
woman. The Devil as we know him represents the castrated man who—like Klingsor and his adversary
Amfortas—lost his manhood in the dangerous intercourse with the Witch. Mediæval man projected his own
unconscious guilty wish for oral castration on to the Devil, the new mediæval God of Fire, and also on to the
Serpent in
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6 See Ernst Kris, 'Laughter as an Expressive Process', Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 21, 3, 332.
Paradise whom mediæval myth formation identified with the Devil.
It has not escaped attention, without having been ever explained, that the Devil as the mediæval God of Fire
shares many features with other Gods of Fire, such as Hephaestus and Logi. The growing literature on Devil and
Witch myths likes to explain them from earlier heathen beliefs which somehow revived in the Christian era.
Generally the writers of cultural history are eager to expose seemingly new cultural phenomena as elaborations
of earlier influences and so deny the possibility of their spontaneous growth from the depth of our minds. But
according to the hypothesis which I have just outlined and which I will now discuss in more detail the Devil
belief is a projection in symbolic form of deeply unconscious guilt feelings which surged upwards at the close of
the Middle Ages. We shall see that the symbol of the fire which unites the divine figures of Hephaestus, Logi
and of our Devil is perhaps the strongest embodiment of the oral castration guilt. It is hardly possible that the
features of Hephaestus, the Greek God of Fire, should have influenced our concept of the Devil. Hephaestus is a
very ancient deity whose significance in classical Greece had already diminished, perhaps because the oral guilt
feeling which he symbolized had been fully sublimated into the scientific urge. In comparing the three Gods of
Fire I will not dwell on common details in their myth formations, for these have been observed by Grimm.
Hephaestus, like the Devil, has once fallen from heaven. Logi lies eternally bound like the Devil in hell and also
like the second Greek Fire God Prometheus. Rather I will concentrate on a curious contradiction found in their
character; these Fire Gods are cunning or knowledgeable, terrible in their wrath, but at the same time ridiculous
and clumsy. The reason for their double aspect is the same, namely their castration. The terrible, clever Devil,
the master of magic knowledge, is also the poor, silly Devil of the fairy tales who allows himself to get trapped
in clumsy contraptions of a definite sexual symbolism like a bag or a cleft in a tree. (Let us remember how in
Goethe's Walpurgis Night Mephistopheles sings of the hole in the tree which attracted him.) In a Baltic fairy tale
told by Grimm he is even tricked into being blinded. The Devil is lame while the dangerous witches (who are
responsible for his secret incapacitation) ride high in the air. Hephaestus, the Greek God of Fire, is lame too.
Though he has powerful shoulders he has weak legs and in his statues invariably wears a loin cloth, an
expression of shame which is rare among the Greek deities. (Compare Freud's derivation of the shame feeling
from the fear of castration.) But at the same time he is terrible and spiteful like the Devil (Klingsor) who
revenges his incapacitation on all mankind. It is Hephaestus' curse which pursues Oedipus and his family. But
we understand his wrath. Oedipus' ancester Cadmus killed a dragon who was Hephaestus' son. Keeping in mind
the unconscious identification of children with the genitals, we understand that Hephaestus revenges his own
castration as a 'hereditary' sin to be punished in eternity. (We shall see that Prometheus' theft of the heavenly fire
from Hephaestus has the same castration significance. Again Hephaestus as the God of Fire is the sufferer and in
devilish wrath revenges the crime by making the 'witch' Pandora, who by her forbidden curiosity caused all the
ills which have befallen mankind.) Despite this terrible aspect Hephaestus is also ridiculous. Homer tells us he
was the object of merciless mirth among the Olympian Gods. He is the unmanly cuckold who has to suffer the
adultery of his wife, the dangerous Goddess of Love Aphrodite. (See about his curious voyeuristic revenge in our
later discussion of the Hephaestus-Ares relationship.) The deeper meaning of the ridicule adhering to his figure
is more openly revealed in a myth concerning his Nordic counterpart, Logi, the God of Fire. He tries to move a
girl to laughter who is unable to laugh. He succeeds by a strangely self-destructive trick: he binds his testicles to
a goat and suffers great pain as the goat tries to free itself. His contortions make the girl laugh. We understand
the oral-sadistic meaning of this laughter which we already analysed when discussing Kundry's compulsive
laughter. The goat (who is so very much the Devil's animal) possesses powerful horns but has also spindly legs,
just as Hephaestus combines powerful shoulders with weak legs. This combination of phallic attributes with a
castration symbolism is also characteristic for the Fire itself which the Devil, Hephaestus and Logi embody. (See
about the phallic and castration symbolism of the fire later on.)
Hence one should not hold against our picture of the castrated Devil his numerous phallic attributes—his horns,
his tail and his protruding tongue. The castrating Erynies too carry serpents in their hands and hair; the severed
head of the Medusa, the acknowledged symbol of castration, is also covered with serpents. As castration is
aggression against the phallus it is understandable that the symbols of castration should contain also strongly
phallic elements. We have to remember that the Devil, in spite of his pronounced maleness, was originally
female and retains the female symbolism in the image of the gaping hell mouth. If the devil's tongue protrudes
from his mouth it is not so much a phallic symbol, but a symbol of the oral aggression against the phallus.
Michelangelo depicts the hell judge Minos wreathed into the coils of a giant serpent which bites into his genitals.
Again the serpent is not so much a phallic symbol, but the symbol of oral aggression against the phallus.
Freud in his analysis of a Neurosis of Demoniacal Possession in the Seventeenth Century, arrives at the
conclusion that the neurotic painter represses a homosexual wish for passive castration by the phallic Father as
he binds himself to the service of the Devil. (The drop of blood with which devil pacts are suitably signed
indicates the same mutilation.) The Devil, complete with horns and tail, would represent the phallic Father who
inflicts castration on his willing son. In the neurotic painter's visions the Devil appears first as an elderly burgher.
Later he displays his phallic attributes, as well as female breasts. Freud thinks that his female attributes derive
from the painter's wish for oral satisfaction by the mother. The apparitions of the Devil intermingle with divine
images of indistinct sex and at last the Holy Mother herself appears in her glory and persuades the suffering artist
to enter her monastery at Mariazell. The painter obeys and appears to have been cured.
I submit, therefore, that the gradual change of sex in the apparitions, and even more, the ultimate exchange
of the bond with the Devil for a bond with the divine Mother, represent an element in the Devil figure which so
far has been neglected. The Devil myth owes its origin to a projection of Adam's guilty wish for oral castration
by the woman (Mother). Mediæval man externalized his own self-destructive wish into the figure of the Devil
and also into a re-interpretation of the serpent in Paradise as the Devil himself. In the course of the painter's
illness the Devil duly succumbs to the more powerful figure of the Holy Mother. At the same time the painter
recovers by renouncing the service of the Devil (which means unconconsciously the satisfaction of his
homosexual passive castration wishes by the Phallic Father) and entering instead the service of the Holy Mother.
If Freud interprets the painter's subservience to the Devil as a connivance into his castration the same
interpretation may hold good for his final renunciation of sensual pleasures in the service of the Mother. (Freud
points out how little material advantages the painter had derived from his bond with the Devil.) To my mind, the
painter's recovery is brought about by the symbolic satisfaction of the heterosexual wish for castration by the
Devouring Mother which—as a rule—remains hidden behind the fear and hatred of the male Devil. Freud sees in
the unconscious homosexual wish for passive castration the most deeply repressed element of the Oedipus
situation which is hidden underneath a conscious fear of castration. We begin to suspect that this repressed
homosexual wish for castration directed towards the Phallic Father hides the even more repressed heterosexual
wish for oral castration by the Devouring Mother belonging to an earlier phase of the child's development. (See
about the possible heterosexual basis of the homosexual features in Schizophrenia at the end of this paper.)
 But by far the most impressive proof that the Devil figure and the figures of Hephaestus and Logi represent
the self-destructive wish for oral castration is afforded by the element of which they are the personifications, by
the symbolism of the all-devouring fire!
The current interpretation of the fire symbolism is as narrow as the current interpretation of the Devil figure.
Both deal mainly with their phallic meaning and neglect their less manifest oral castration symbolism. The
phallic symbolism of fire is suggested by the oblong form of the steadily burning flame. But the untamed fire is
also nature's strongest symbol of oral aggression. With its myriads of greedy tongues it devours man and all that
he cherishes. Primitive man must have stood in abject horror when the 'licking' flames crept nearer to engulf him
and his possessions. No more apt symbol can be found to express both the phallus and the oral aggression
threatening it. We begin to understand why the Gods of Fire had to lose their manhood by their all too close
connection with the dangerous element.
The interpretation of fire as the strongest symbol for the wish for passive oral castration allows the
recognition of the similarity in the Hebrew and Greek civilization myths, i.e. in the tale of Paradise and the
Prometheus myth; both tell us how civilization and knowledge were bought by eternal (hereditary) guilt.
Prometheus, the Titan, is an even older deity than the Olympian God of Fire Hephaestus; they are in a way rival
Fire Gods. A myth reports that Hephaestus approached Prometheus with reverence. The Greek civilization myth
in its usual form tells us that Prometheus brought mankind the use of fire by stealing it from Hephaestus. As
punishment for the theft Prometheus is chained to a rock; daily Zeus' eagle descends on him to tear out his liver
which grows again until the next day so that the punishment can be repeated. We mentioned that a forbidden
self-destructive wish can express itself most freely in the disguise of a punishment which represses the most
obnoxious element of voluntary self-destruction. The cruel eagle's beak tearing into Prometheus' side symbolizes
Prometheus' own wish for oral castration. As in Shylock's bargain and in Amfortas' incurable wound the myth
displaces the mutilation upwards. The crime which precedes the punishment expresses the same self-destructive
wish through the symbol of the fire. The person slighted by the theft of the fire is the lame Hephaestus who again
suffers castration by the loss of the phallic fire. But as the symbol of self-consuming phallic fire contains in a
condensed manner the full symbolism of oral self-aggression against the genitals, its theft from poor Hephaestus
is yet another expression of the same meaning. Thus Prometheus' guilt and punishment contain the same oral
castration symbolism which we extracted from the Hebrew civilization myth telling of the Fall of Man in
Paradise. There the phallic serpent counsels his own destruction symbolized by the devouring of the phallic fruit
on the tree growing in the centre of the Paradise garden. Both myths tell of oral self-destruction which lead to
mankind's acquisition of knowledge and skill. While the Greek myth welcomes the arrival of civilization as a
blessing, the Hebrew tale turns the progress of civilization into a punishment. The knowledge of Good and Evil,
the learning of shame feelings, the invention of clothing and of agriculture are presented as the ill consequences
of sin.
If we are to choose a name for the wish for oral self-destruction underlying the scientific urge for truth, no
more fitting name could be found than 'Prometheus wish', named after the hapless Prometheus who brought
knowledge and civilization to mankind by delivering his body to the merciless beak of the eagle.
When after the decay of classical rationality during the Middle Ages the urge for knowledge awakened
again the serene figure of the Fire God Prometheus was reborn in 'Lucifer', the 'bringer of light', who dispensed
forbidden magic knowledge to his victims at the price of eternal damnation. When the stakes burned throughout
tormented Europe the guilty Prometheus wish expressed itself again in its strongest symbol, the all-devouring
fire, the punishment indicated the guilty self-destructive wish with greater clarity.
We mentioned that while the oral-sadistic basis of the voyeur urge was well recognized, the wish for oral
self-destruction underlying exhibitionism was usually neglected. We thought that in the same way as the
pleasure of seeing rested on a wish to devour, so the pleasure to be seen derived from a passive self-destructive
wish to be devoured (to 'go down well', to be 'lapped up'.) Had this self-destructive nature of exhibitionism been
fully recognized the analysis of phallic exhibitionism would have soon led to the discovery of the 'Prometheus
wish' for oral castration.
It is well known that phallic exhibitionism is frequently connected with the symbol of fire. Gulliver
extinguishes a dangerous conflagration in the Lilliput Imperial Palace by urinating. This deed is interpreted in
the psycho-analytical literature as the exhibitionistic deed of the hero who braves the phallic fire with his own
phallus. But the aftermath reveals the superficiality of such an interpretation. The Empress of Lilliput is enraged
by the gross defilement of her apartment and demands the hero's punishment. The punishment of blinding, i.e. of
symbolic castration—which is only threatened, but not carried out—reveals, as so often, the secret nature of the
crime preceding it. The exhibitionistic hero exposes his genitals for castration by the Devouring Mother, once
represented by the devouring fire, once by the revengeful Empress.
The hero braves the 'burning vagina'. Siegfried triumphantly penetrates the wall of fire surrounding his bride.
Hercules perishes in the fire. The symbolism of the 'burningvagina' is unmistakably expressed by the searing
garment which Hercules receives from his wife. It clings to his body and sears his flesh with burning pains. To
end his agony, the hero decides to burn himself alive on the funeral pyre. Each of these two successive 'burnings'
contains an essential element lacking in the other. The searing garment given by the hero's wife and symbolizing
the vagina which clings to the penis contains the sexual element. The hero's subsequent suicide on the funeral
pyre, though consciously motivated by intolerable pain, contains the more repressed self-destructive wish. The
hero is not tricked into submitting to the 'burning vagina', but braves and secretly desires his own destruction.
It is interesting to note that the important motif of the 'searing garment' is also found among the suggestions
put forward by Gulliver's enemies as possible methods of his execution. Gulliver is to be burned alive by setting
fire to his house; or his servants should 'strew a poisonous juice' on his shirts and sheets which would soon make
him 'tear his own flesh, and die in the utmost torture'.
An illustration for the self-destructive nature of phallic exhibitionism is found in the Roman myth of Mucius
Scaevola. Mucius, in order to prove Roman heroism, stretches his hand into the fire and suffers it to burn slowly
to cinder. The Thanatos wish for self-destruction (autotomy) is scarcely veiled by a heroic pose. The
corresponding heroic tale which was meant to instil heroic endurance into the youth of Sparta (the most 'Roman'
of all Greek states) is even more crude. A Spartan was allowed to steal, but was not expected to be caught for it.
One Spartan youth stole a live fox and hid him under his garment, and in order not to be detected as a thief,
suffered the fox to bite him cruelly. Again the heroic feat consists in submitting willingly to oral aggression
which is once symbolized by the 'devouring' fire, once by the biting fox.
The Spartan tale is, as it were, the heroic version of the Prometheus myth. A theft of a phallic symbol which at
the same time symbolizes oral aggression (fire, fox) is followed by a passive suffering of oral castration. But
while Prometheus' suffering is disguised as a punishment for guilt the heroic tale unashamedly extols the self-
destructive Thanatos wish which the heroic pose can hardly veil. The lack of guilt feelings characterizes the
heroic attitude. The hero does not suffer from guilt feelings because he submits to his physical self-destruction.
His super-ego has not yet succeeded to transmute the physical oral castration into the 'gnawing' oral aggression
by guilt feelings. The heroic challenge is either a threat to inflict oral aggression or the (ironical) invitation to the
enemy to dare and try to inflict oral aggression himself. To 'lick' the enemy, or even more distinctly, to 'lick him
into shape' (we know which alteration in his shape is meant) that is the heroic challenge. The invitation to the
anal kiss (which the witches had to perform on the Devil) is the ironical challenge with which Goethe's 'Götz von
Berlichingen' defies his besiegers. But the irony is not very deep and is not quite able to disguise the self-
destructive wish of the boastful challenger, i.e. his wish to be 'licked' or castrated which lies at the bottom of all
phallic exhibitionism. I suggested in the second part of my paper on 'Unconscious Form—Creation in Art' that
the tattooing of primitive man had the meaning of castration. The primitive warrior tattoos his face and body to
satisfy symbolically his self-destructive wish for castration which might otherwise bring him disaster in battle,
and only in the second place uses the castration symbol of his tattoo marks as a threat and challenge which
intimidates his enemy just as Perseus petrified his enemies by displaying the castration symbol of the head of the
Medusa. The display of the buttocks as an heroic challenge and the invitation to the anal kiss is the same display
of the castration symbol. Götz von Berlichingen calls himself the man 'with the iron hand'; he lost a hand in
battle and replaced it by an artificial limb. This mutilation serves to intimidate his enemies and to increase his
heroic attire. The phallic exhibitionism which displays boastfully the still intact phallus can have the same
challenging meaning as the display of the already castrated genitals. We shall find this confusion less
bewildering if we keep in mind that the display of the intact phallus has already the self-destructive meaning of
exhibitionism (the wish to be devoured). The Devil shows his pronounced phallic attributes of horns, tail and
protruding tongue not so much to emphasize his maleness as to display the manhood which he is ready to
sacrifice. In particular the protruding tongue in his gaping mouth is not so much a phallic symbol as an
indication of the oral aggression against the phallus. If children challenge their adversaries by cocking a snook or
stretching out their tongues, their heroic challenge means on thesurface: dare and try to castrate me (to 'lick' me),
but this irony is only skin deep and hides an invitation for passive castration which is contained in any act of
exhibitionism. The hero not only risks being 'licked', but in his heart desires his downfall. Thus Lucifer fell from
heaven as a punishment for his pride; Tantalus was hurled from Olympus because of his hybris. Our analysis of
the heroic exhibitionism explains the real crime contained in 'hybris'; it is the secret longing for self-destruction
which underlies any act of exhibitionism, but is consciously presented as the punishment for guilty pride.
While the hero is exhibitionistic, the scientist is a voyeur. He has already paid the price and connived in his
castration; by identifying himself with the (castrated) oral-sadistic woman he assimilates her oral aggression
which he sublimates into the scientific thirst for knowledge (scientific curiosity or voyeurism). The limping
Devil because of his mutilation is also the God of magic knowledge, the lame Hephaestus possesses the gift of
prophecy. As long as the sublimation of oral aggression into scientific curiosity is not complete we find the
intermediate type of the unmanly fiend who revenges his mutilation on other happier man (Klingsor, the spiteful
Hephaestus and Devil). Only his low cunning anticipates the scientific ability which grows from it by
sublimation. The cunning mediæval Devil survives in modern imagination in the figure of the sinister scientist
who is the stock in trade of current crime novels. The mediæval fear of the Devil persists also in the fear of the
cunning circumcized Jew. The Jew presents in the distorting mirror of anti-semitism the characteristical traits of
the mythological Gods of Fire. He is at once ridiculous and terrifying, credited with cunning and secret
knowledge unattainable by the simple gentile. This overrating of Jewish abilities has always been inexplicable to
me in view of the conscious anti-semitic belief in Jewish inferiority. I found it quite possible to make anti-
semites admit that there might be good men among the Jews just as among gentiles; but they would never accept
that there might be as many simpletons among Jews as among others. It appears that the figure of the
circumcized unheroic Jew (who practises oral aggression by devouring children and so threatens oral castration)
is the precipitate of the hero's own wish for oral self-destruction. It is understandable that the German nation
with its fatal tendency to heroic self-destruction should hate the Jew on whom it projects its repressed fears and
wishes for oral castration (the Prometheus wish). The stronger the exhibitionistic heroic attitude approaches
voluntary self-destruction, the stronger becomes the unconscious longing for passive castration personified by
the figures of the limping Devil and circumcized Jew. The conscious hatred of the witches, Devils and Jews is a
measure of the growing self-destructive urge.
The exhibitionistic self-destructive hero and the already castrated oral-sadistic voyeur (scientist) represent two
types of homosexual attitudes which serve to overcome the Prometheus wish. Mythology is full of strangely
paired male couples, one the manly, unintellectual hero, the other the unmanly clever villain who accompanies,
helps or fights him. Thor and Logi, Siegfried and Hagen, Achilles and Odysseus, and lastly Hephaestus and his
rival Ares are such contrasting types. A closer study of exhibitionistic and voyeur types among homosexuals and
pyromaniacs promises ample material to corroborate the intimate connection between the two types. Their
association in mythology shows how the same Prometheus wish is present in both types in somewhat different
form. The heroic God Thor possesses the magic hammer Miöllnir which is equipped with too short a handle,
and, moreover, is at one time stolen. One of the goats pulling Thor's chariot limps owing to a misdeed of Thor's
despised, yet inseparable friend, Logi, the Nordic God of Fire. Thor was able to slaughter and eat his goats and
as long as he and his guests left the bones undamaged, he was still able to call them back to life. Logi persuades
an unsuspecting guest to destroy a bone; so the goat, after his resurrection, retains a limp owing to the missing
bone. One is reminded of the limping Devil and his favourite animal, the spindle-legged goat, whose shape he
often assumed when appearing to the worshipping witches. Thor, who devours his own goats, commits symbolic
oral castration (like Cronus devouring his children), but is still able to undo the damage. The irreparable damage
is attributed to his unheroic alter ego, the cunning Logi. As the God of the all-devouring fire, Logi is particularly
suited for an oral crime of devouring, for when he shows his eating ability in a competition with a rivalling fire
demon, he eats all the food, though his competitor swallows all the plates as well.
Thor, too, shows himself as a mighty eater, significantly after he lost his hammer Miöllnir to a giant who
now threatens the Gods. Thor deprived of his hammer loses his heroic attitude and resorts to Logi's unmanly
cunning. He disguises himself as his sister (i.e. he has become the castrated woman) and is led as the willing
bride to the giant's palace, where he amazes the giant bridegroom by his colossal appetite. In this cunning
disguise he regains the possession of the hammer and demonstrates his restored heroic manhood by killing the
giant. We see the castration wish found in the figure of the hero can grow into an acceptance of castration (here
symbolized by the loss of the hammer and the disguise as a woman); then the distinction between the cunning
oral-sadistic villain and the exhibitionistic simple hero becomes obliterated.
The figure of the divine smith Hephaestus shows the way of restitution open to the castrated God of Fire. By
taming the fire he forges the sword which the hero will use. We shall see that the taming of the fire probably
presents the first scientific invention. Only the untamed fire is the symbol of unbridled oral aggression, the
controlled steady fire becomes the flame of truth, the symbol of the scientific urge. But Hephaestus, the divine
smith and endowed with the gift of prophecy, still preserves some traits of the cunning oral-sadistic villain. His
rival in the favours of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is Ares, the boisterous and slightly unintelligent God of
War. With Hesiod Ares is still Aphrodite's husband. He represents the heroic alter ego of Hephaestus. When the
spiteful Hephaestus takes his revenge on Ares he resorts to a curious act of voyeurism. He throws a magic net
over the guilty couple to catch them in the act of adultery and calls the other Gods to witness his own shame. His
revenge, apart from being an oral-sadistic act of voyeurism, symbolizes also castration; the trapping of the
couple may represent the 'penis captivus'. We mentioned that the trapping of the Devil in fairy tales has the same
castration symbolism. Thus Ares comes to harm through Aphrodite's dangerous love. But his most dangerous
enemy is the female War Goddess Athene who was born by an act of castration (the splitting of Zeus's head by
Hephaestus) and carries the severed head of the Medusa on her shield. Because of her, Ares is twice wounded,
once by a mortal who is helped by Athene. In the heroic set-up the figure of the castrating Mother tends to
recede behind the homosexual relationship of competing warriors. So it is not Aphrodite who traps Ares in a net
(as for instance Klytemnestra catches her husband Agamemnon), but the castrated cunning villain Hephaestus.
So it was not Gaea who castrated her husband during intercourse, but her son to whom she gave the jagged
sickle. Though the hero almost openly indulges in the forbidden wish for oral castration he represses the
heterosexual relationship with the Devouring Mother in favour of the homosexual heroic relationship with
another hero or with the castrated villain.
 The mythological figure of the divine smith still combines the restitutive powers of the first scientist with
the spite of the castrated villain. Hephaestus' Nordic counterpart, the magic smith Wieland, is lame too. He was
mutilated on the advice of the king's wife. He takes a terrible revenge by an act of trapping signifying castration.
He invites the king's sons to inspect the contents of a chest and as they bend over the chest he slams the lid on
their necks so as to behead them. He then ravages the king's daughter and afterwards escapes by lifting himself
into the air with the help of magic wings. Through his revenge he has restored his manhood.
This crude tale shows the destructive as well as the restitutive powers of the smith who has tamed the
destructive power of the fire in order to create phallic weapons and charms.
The taming of the fire reaches back to the very dawn of humanity. In archæological excavations the discovery of
a fireplace is taken as a strong indication that some curiously shaped objects found nearby are the products of
'homo faber' (man, the craftsman) and not an accident of nature. I submit that the taming of the fire which turned
the destructive devouring element into a means of restitution, was not the result of a utilitarian deliberation, but
the outcome of a dumb obedience to an inarticulate urge. The primitive mind did not differentiate between the
'burning' Prometheus wish within and the raging element without. Freud suggests that what to-day is a mere
symbol of a thing was once identical with the thing symbolized. In taming the destructive self-consuming
element of fire, man also learned to control his own self-destructive Prometheuswish of which the fire is the
strongest symbol. It may seem strange that the primitive mind should not have differentiated between an urge of
the inner world and a thing of the outer world. But we mentioned that we tend to project guilt feelings (and
perhaps all self-destructive Thanatos urges) into the external world. Thus Adam accuses Eve to be the tempter
and projects his own guilty part on to the phallic serpent who counsels his own destruction. The scientific
externalization process projects the inner compulsion of the super-ego into the external world where the
inexorable law of causality is seen to compel the events of nature on their prescribed course. The first scientific
discovery, the taming of fire, can be interpreted as a direct externalization of the Prometheus wish itself. It is
therefore indeed not the result of a rational deliberation, but the inevitable outcome of the externalization of the
burning self-destructive desire within into the self-consuming element without. The control of the destructive
power of fire probably did not at first serve a rational purpose at all, but had the ceremonial use to purify man
and his food, his dead and his sacrifices. So before satisfying his hunger man had to purify his food by cooking;
and be so purified himself of forbidden oral desires which might have become stimulated by the pangs of hunger.
Again man projected his own impurity on to external objects, instead of looking into his own soul.
It is no coincidence that in cultural periods of heroic exploit and scientific exploration which rest on an
intensification of the Prometheus wish the use of fire advances too. We mentioned that the end of the Middle
Ages represented such a break-through of the Promethus wish. The wish expressed itself in the heroic exploits of
mediæval knighthood and the later heroic-scientific curiosity of the merchant adventurers who explored the seas,
but mostly in the first awakening of the scientific urge. We saw how the mediæval pre-scientific curiosity
attributed disasters to the guilt of 'the Witch and the Devil'. As a symbol of the guilty Prometheus wish the fires
began to burn. No public festival could be enjoyed to the full without heretics and witches burning on the stake
for their own salvation and for the public's merriment. The heretic's guilt was a sinful belief which was often
more truly scientific in the modern sense than the common orthodoxy. No wonder that these unhappy
predecessors of the modern scientists had to be 'purified' by the cleansing fire.
There were earlier periods of heroic conquest and exploration. Again it is no coincidence that in those times
the use of fire advances, though it may have been put to a different purpose. Such heroic early cultures of heroic
exploit and exploration were the Bronze Ages of Homeric Greece and of the Vikings. Both the Homeric and
Viking heroes buried their dead by fire. Gilbert Murray points out that burial by fire is by no means the most
archaic form of burial in Europe. The cultures of Homeric Greece and of the Nordic Vikings were preceded by
still older civilizations which practised burial by entombment. Thus the preference of cremation in the later
heroic Bronze Ages gains additional significance. The advancing Prometheus wish and with it the new spirit of
conquest and adventure demanded expression in the symbol of fire which now consumed the sacrifices and the
dead. Though in archaic Greece the use of fire was undoubtedly known—we mentioned that its use might be as
old as mankind itself—it was by no means regularly used for sacrifice. Even down to the classical period of
Greece there survived in the more backward parts of the country the archaic sacrifices of raw flesh. As the
rationality of Greece decayed, a passionate revival is found in the mysteries of Dionysus, the 'Raw-devouring',
which were scorned by the more educated.
It might become possible to associate certain heroic and scientific periods of history with an advance of oral
libido and with its strongest external symbol, the fire. Here might lie a beginning to a psychological concept of
history which would supersede, or at least augment, more arbitrary historical divisions such as the chronology of
prehistorical ages according to the use of certain materials (stone, bronze, iron).
Not only in the phylogenetical history of mankind, but also in the ontogenetical development of the child we can
distinguish a definite oral stage in which the Prometheus wish advances. When the infant turns from an exclusive
dependence on his mother to other children—preferably of his own sex—he passes through a stage which is
characterized by a strong phallic exhibitionism and voyeur curiosity. The boy competes with other boys in games
of urinating. This heroic homosexual exhibitionism is matched by an enormous increase of voyeur curiosity and
an urge to ask questions. The child is hero and scientist at the same time. We said that the scientific interest was
based on an unconscious acceptance of oral castration and the identification with the oral-sadistic mother
(Devouring Mother). Do we then wonder that the first curiosity of the child turns to the anatomical difference
between the sexes which is promptly interpreted as a result of a castration? The woman is simply a castrated
man. The first sexual 'theory' of the child deals with the nature of genital intercourse which is interpreted again
as an oral castration; the woman conceives by swallowing the man's genitals.
I cannot but claim this stage as an advance of the oral Prometheus wish which would precede the Oedipus
stage in which the child courts the parent of his own sex while defying the rival parent of his own sex. The
Prometheus wish rests on oral libido and aggression. It has been observed by Abraham and Glover that the
phallic exhibitionism and voyeurism of this stage was of oral origin. Freud had attributed the phallic
exhibitionism and voyeurism to an urethral libido the development of which would have followed on the
previous oral and anal stages. The infant after his birth passes through an early oral stage of sucking and
devouring and in his second year enters the anal stage when he turns his interest to anal functions and
excrements. This anal stage would have been followed by the phallic stage characterized by the urethral libido
which gradually leads into the Oedipus situation, the climax of the child's libido development. This last stage is
still the object of controversy. We have seen that the interest in the phallus was mainly exhibitionistic and
voyeuristic and rested ultimately on the oral Prometheus wish; it does not warrant the concept of a third urethral
libido concentrated in the phallus. Melanie Klein attributes the final Oedipus stage—which according to Freud
would still belong to the phallic stage—to a genital libido; according to Mrs. Klein we would thus have to
distinguish oral, anal and genital stages of the infantile libido. From the genital stage of the Oedipus situation we
would now have to separate the preceding oral Prometheus stage of homosexual exhibitionism and voyeurism in
which the oral libido advances again.
Melanie Klein discovered that the infant, in the first year of his life, already experienced phantasies of oral
castration. She thinks that this early oral aggression is later transmuted into the 'gnawing' guilt feelings with
which the super-ego attacks the ego. At an early age the child already represses these aggressive wishes so that
they can only be reached by psycho-analytical methods. Hence we need not wonder the child in his 'late' oral
stage (i.e. in the oral Prometheus stage preceding the fully genital Oedipus stage) is no longer conscious of his
Prometheus wish for passive oral castration. The image of the Devouring Mother has already been introjected
into the function of the 'gnawing' super-ego. Only his sexual theories which owe their origin to the awakening
scientific curiosity reflect the early oral phantasies of oral castration with little disguise.
According to Melanie Klein, the first two years of the child's life stand under the sign of the self-destroying
Thanatos. Apart from his aggressive phantasies the child would suffer from almost intolerable anxieties and guilt
feelings. They reach their maximum in the anal stage. Then the cycle turns and the anxieties and guilt feelings
steadily diminish until the Oedipus stage is reached.
Our analysis of the 'late' oral stage preceding the final genital Oedipus stage suggests how this diminution of
anxiety and guilt feelings is brought about. The self-destructive Prometheus wish which feeds the gnawing
feelings of guilt is neutralized by the awakening heroic and scientific activities of the child. If—as I think—the
early oral phantasies of devoured breasts and genitals re-enact the primeval urges and deeds of self-destruction
the child also repeats their eventual sublimation into the heroic and scientific activities of culture.7
It is assumed that neurotic illnesses are connected
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7 Our derivation of the heroic and scientific urges and also of the guilt feelings from the Prometheus wish for oral self-
destruction has no bearing on the still disputed question whether the infant is capable of experiencing guilt feelings already in
his early oral stage or not. All that has to be assumed for the purposes of our cultural analysis is that the early phantasies do
not only express oral sadism, but also oral self-destruction. At some later stage the urge for oral self-destruction is transmuted
into the threefold abilities of experiencing 'gnawing' guilt feelings and of undertaking heroic and scientific activities. To
decide at what stage the wish for physical self-destruction is transmuted into guilt feelings is beyond the scope and the
possibilities of this investigation. If any suggestion can be made at all, the awakening of heroic and scientific urges in the
'late' oral Prometheus stage would point to a similarly belated awakening of the guilt feelings.
with a faulty liquidation of the Oedipus wishes and that the more severe mental illnesses go back to disturbances
in the earlier oral and anal stages.
Schizophrenia shows us the raw material from which the fabric of the adult's super-ego and his heroic and
scientific abilities are built up. The schizophrenic represents a caricature of the hero and of the scientist. The
scientist externalizes his unconscious guilt feelings into the external world and perceives them there as the
compelling causality which forces nature on its prescribed course. The schizophrenic escapes his guilt feelings
by projecting them directly as reproaching and warning voices into the external world. True to the scientific
externalization process which created the fear of the witches and the Devil the schizophrenic feels a victim of
external aggression. As a sham scientist he claims secret knowledge like the knights of the Holy Grail and the
many esoteric societies who try to escape from their unconscious guilt into the sham mystery of secret
knowledge. Like the exhibitionistic hero he may boast unheard-of exploits. He may even display oral aggression
and the oral self-aggression underlying exhibitionism, and connive in his castration. He may consequently
identify himself with the castrated woman and show a manifest homosexual attitude. At one time it was thought
that the homosexuality of the schizophrenic was the source of his illness. But the conscious or unconscious
homosexual attitude of the schizophrenic might hide an even more repressed heterosexual wish. The
schizophrenic by his homosexuality denies that his castration fears and wishes or his phantasies of devouring are
directed toward the Devouring Mother.
Freud welcomes Jung's communications about the similarity between schizophrenic phantasies and the
cosmogenies of mythology. The cosmogenies are the first pre-scientific attempt at arriving at a comprehensive
world explanation and—like the schizophrenic phantasies—show still clearly the Prometheus guilt feeling which
first drove mankind to explore and to understand the external world. They resemble schizophrenic phantasies in
another important point. However overt they display the symbols of oral castration, like the indented sickle
which severed Uranus' genitals during matrimonial intercourse, they still deny the most repressed element,
namely that the male yearns for oral castration as an equivalent for genital intercourse. We saw that the
disappearance of the female genitals during the pangenital crisis of the voyeur libido made the genital urge
degenerate into a Thanatos wish for autotomy by the mouth which was equated with the vanished vagina (vagina
dentata). The schizophrenic cannot arrive at the genital sexuality because it is still tainted for him by the
Prometheus wish for oral castration, and by his illness defends himself against a deeply repressed self-destroying
urge.