Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/193

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
ASPECTS OF THE LIBIDO
135

Cabiric cult is present also in the vase picture, while the parallel figures to Dionysus and [Greek: Pai~s] are the caricatured [Greek: Mi/tos] and [Greek: Prato/laos]. Just as formerly the difference in size gave occasion for division, so does the deformity here.[25]

Without first bringing further proof to bear, I may remark that from this knowledge especially strong sidelights are thrown upon the original psychologic meaning of the religious heroes. Dionysus stands in an intimate relation with the psychology of the early Asiatic God who died and rose again from the dead and whose manifold manifestations have been brought together in the figure of Christ into a firm personality enduring for centuries. We gain from our premise the knowledge that these heroes, as well as their typical fates, are personifications of the human libido and its typical fates. They are imagery, like the figures of our nightly dreams—the actors and interpreters of our secret thoughts. And since we, in the present day, have the power to decipher the symbolism of dreams and thereby surmise the mysterious psychologic history of development of the individual, so a way is here opened to the understanding of the secret springs of impulse beneath the psychologic development of races. Our previous trains of thought, which demonstrate the phallic side of the symbolism of the libido, also show how thoroughly justified is the term "libido."[26] Originally taken from the sexual sphere, this word has become the most frequent technical expression of psychoanalysis, for the simple reason that its significance is wide enough to cover all the unknown and